Has Music Streaming Divided Us?
It’s a scene familiar to anyone who’s ever had a car, a group of friends, and a love for music: you all pile into the seats. You start the engine and roll down the windows. You cue up that song, the one familiar to each person in your packed Sedan. And then you take off, singing every lyric from memory in an obnoxiously loud and off-key chorus.
This is music in its most communal sense — music as common ground, as a shared activity and a medium for bonding. For as long as music has existed, it’s been passed around and appreciated from a group perspective. The form has changed; once it was a family going to the symphony on a weekend, then it was two siblings buying front-row concert tickets together, then it was a teenager burning a mixtape for his crush, then it was a college kid making playlists for his best friend back home. But music has always been something mutual. It’s always been a connecting element.
In the age of streaming platforms, that could no longer be the case, or at least not to the same degree that it has been historically. Streaming has been lauded for lowering the barrier to entry for musicians who want to distribute their content and gain exposure. What used to require a record deal, contacts in the industry, and a significant sum of money now only requires a free app. Anyone who wants to release music can release music, provided they have the time and equipment to record it.
This new ease to music distribution, not only on Spotify but on other platforms like SoundCloud and Apple Music, has resulted in a massive influx of content creators. By the end of 2019, Spotify had 1.2 million artists and bands releasing music on its app; SoundCloud boasted 175 million users (though not all were creating content).
These statistics have huge implications for the music landscape. The positives are widely celebrated; individuals can now find songs and albums that truly fit their taste. They can explore genres never played on the radio or released on iTunes. They can support young artists who are just getting their foot in the door. And they can do all this for less than the price of one physical album. From a creative standpoint, the rise of streaming is clearly an enriching phenomenon that is opening doors for people everywhere.
The negatives of streaming, however, are often overlooked. Critics do point out that streaming can cheats artists out of hard-earned money when platforms don’t pay up sufficiently (hence the infamous Apple Music letter from Taylor Swift). But has anyone stopped to consider the interpersonal effects of splitting an audience into millions of sects, millions of niches due to the overwhelming amount of music being distributed?
Collectively, as an audience, we are more fragmented than ever before. With virtually unlimited options to choose from, we are spread to the far corners of the streaming world for our music. It’s not just the more musically inclined or “alternative” listeners experiencing this, either: people of all ages and backgrounds open their Spotify Wrapped (a set of annual customized statistics about personal listening habits) to realize they’ve been listening to subgenres like “post grunge,” “neo mellow,” and “electro house.” This kind of diversity in taste among normal, everyday music listeners is unprecedented. Back when radio was the authority on music consumption, there was a finite number of radio frequencies and stations, and therefore a much more limited number of options for content. The majority of the public was being exposed to the same types of music — whatever was being broadcast. The more alternative listeners could avoid this by seeking out physical tapes or vinyl from artists who didn’t get airtime. Still, though, the amount of music being created and distributed even in physical forms was drastically lower than it is today.
Now, there are obviously still superstars in the industry. Artists like Ariana Grande and Ed Sheeran still consistently top the Billboard charts and rack up streams worldwide. The difference is that the people listening to these acts are listening to 500 other acts as well. Ariana’s “7 Rings” may be one song on a playlist of dozens of other songs from widely divergent artists. A person contributing to Ariana’s streams may also be contributing to the streams of a lo-fi duo, a jazz trio, and a garage rock band all at once.
To put it simply, we’re not listening to the same things anymore. The chance of us recognizing the songs being played in our friend’s living room or our classmate’s car is much lower, given our access to an unbelievably wide range of content. In this sense, the communal aspect of music listening has gotten a bit lost. Sure, we can introduce those we love to the artists we’ve discovered, but does that provide the same sense of instant connection and community that we get from hearing, “Oh my god, I love this song!”?
Maybe the trade-off is worth it. Maybe sacrificing some of the interpersonal qualities of music listening is justified when it means that millions of new artists get to be heard. Maybe the creativity and variety made possible by Spotify and Apple Music outweigh the audience fragmentation that they simultaneously cause.
All I know is that it’s been awhile since I’ve had a car sing-along, and I truly don’t know if that’s a change for the better.
by Hannah Wong
