As technology and society rapidly change, the way we listen and purchase music adapts. In recent years, record sales have plummeted due to the convenience of the internet. Rather than going out and buying a record, you can now gain unlimited access to millions of songs by paying the miniscule fee of ten dollars a month for services such as Spotify and Apple Music. This platform is full of benefits for musicians and the listeners, but also comes with tremendous downsides.

For the consumer, the price is what draws everybody in. At ten dollars a month, you can access and save 20 million songs onto your smartphone. Compared to the 100$ dollars you can spend on ten albums, you can pay 10$ for a month of unlimited access to millions.

While the consumer saves money, the artists drastically loses his share. Each play on Spotify generates 1/10 of a penny for the musician. The musician gains 2% of the profit from the streaming service, while the rest is divided amongst the record company and spotify take a majority of the cut. Overall it would take 1,117,021 plays a month for the musician to make minimum wage.

This is devastating for musicians. Records alone used to provide enough profit for musicians to make a living, but now with the convenience of the internet there is now a reliance on touring and live performances. This is a much more complicated way to make a living, and now the artistry involved in creating an album will eventually be discarded with this emphasis on live performances.

However, the musicians gain exposure necessary to success. This is mostly due to Spotify’s “discover” category . This option exposes listeners to a variety of new artists and genres based on their own musical tastes. Spotify even creates a “discover weekly” playlist which generates a thirty song playlist of new music that they’ve never listened to before. This helps millions of artists gain popularity and a dedicated fan base.

Overall, Spotify is a program that creates convenience for the listener and exposure for the artists. While, there is not much profit being made for the artists themselves, the publicity they get through this program makes up for that loss in revenue. Through Spotify’s dedication of promoting smaller and newer artists, these musicians gain a larger fan-base that results in more revenue from live performances.