John Darko
It’s a provocative title, I know.
In a video published earlier this year, I said that streaming music was “free”. This caused some consternation in the comments section: “I pay $15/month for mine. It’s not free,” came one retort; “Where are you streaming for free, John?” asked another; “What on earth are you talking about ‘free’?”. It’s a lesson to anyone making YouTube videos that one’s exact choice of words matters. We must be as precise as possible. On this occasion, I wasn’t precise enough. What I should have said was that streaming music is effectively free.
Allow me to explain…
Some audiophiles can live with a small collection of albums: say, 50 or so. Not me. I just cannot relate to those who spend thousands of dollars on hi-fi hardware to improve the sound of only a handful of albums. My thirst for music is greater than my hunger for hi-fi. Music is the fuel in the audio engine, the horse that pulls the hi-fi cart. Given a day or so to write them down, I could build a list of 1000 ‘essential albums’ off the top of my head and without much effort. If I’m into an artist, I generally want access to most – if not all – of his/her/their entire catalogue.
To own 1000 essential albums for life, I would need to buy each on vinyl or CD.
Let’s assume I buy everything on CD. If we dispense with second-hand pricing and markdowns to buy each album as brand new from a retail outlet, we might land on a worse-case unit price of US$15 per CD. I realise that some new release CDs sell for more than US$15 but many others sell for less. US$15 is an estimated median. At US$15 per CD, our 1000-strong CD collection would see me spend US$15,000. That’s a long way from free.
I could rip these CDs to a music server for a home streamable collection. That brings downloadable FLACs into view. Assuming I could find everything on my essential album list as a download on Bandcamp, Bleep or Boomkat (or similar) and assuming a median cost of US$10 per album download, I would still be looking at ten grand to assemble the entire collection from downloadable media.
Vinyl is now the USA’s most popular physical format and I dig vinyl as much as I dig CDs. Let us now consider buying those 1000 ‘essential albums’ on vinyl. If we peg the estimated median price of a new record at a (conservative) US$30, buying 1000 albums would run me US$30,000. In reality, used records and a keen eye for bargain bin pick-ups would see me spend less; but I think it’s clear that assembling a music collection on vinyl is also a long way from free.
What about streaming? Pricing for Tidal or Apple Music’s lossless streaming varies by territory but let’s assume a monthly subscription fee of US$15/month. A smattering of my 1000 essential albums might not be on a streaming service but I think it’s safe to assume that more than 950 would be covered (even if not as my preferred master).
Sharper readers will already be yelling at their screens: “But we own our physical formats and streaming is renting”. True. So, let’s look at a lifetime’s supply of streaming. Assuming a 50-year subscription window: US$15 x 12 months x 50 years gives us a total of US$9000. Factoring in inflation, that might rise to US$15,000. I think it’s reasonable to say that a lifetime’s supply of lossless music streaming will cost me between US$9000 and US$15,000.
However, our streaming calculations have yet to consider the cost per album. If I restricted my day-to-day listening to the 1000 albums on my essentials list, I’d be looking at a per-album price of between US$9 and US$15. That’s not too dissimilar to buying everything on CD.
But this doesn’t take into account new music discovery. Over twenty or thirty more years of music fanaticism, my list of essentials might expand to 2000 albums to cut that per-album cost in half. If I were to arrive at 3000 essentials, I’d be looking at US$3 – US$5 per album.
My Roon server tells me I have around 8000 albums stored as FLAC on the internal SSD; and I consider each one essential to some degree. If we divide US$15,000 for a lifetime of streaming service access by 8000 essential albums (available on that same streaming service), I would pay just over $2 per album for a lifetime of (pseudo)-ownership.
I am sure you can see where I am going with this.
Apple Music and Tidal both boast a library of 100 million songs. Assuming 10 songs (on average) per album, that’s 10 million albums. But no. Let’s not do that. Let’s assume 20 songs per album for an estimated 5 million albums per streaming service: US$15,000 divided by 5 million albums drives the per-album cost down to US$0.003. That’s one-third of one cent for a lifetime’s access to each album. Not even the most optimistic used CD and vinyl pricing could get us close. In the context of 1990s pricing where each album ran us at least US$10, it’s laughable. No wonder all but the big-name artists consistently complain about streaming’s meagre remuneration.
And that’s what I mean when I say that streaming music is effectively free.
Three more thoughts:
- I pay €40/month for Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud and Tidal
- I think music streaming subscriptions are far too cheap: if we wish to see artists get paid more, we need to pay more
- Some people will say almost anything to avoid facing up to 2.
