The beauty of modern streaming
I came across an X post lamenting Spotify charging £12.99 a month for its services. £12.99 is steep to many, especially as the government swoops in for high taxes in an inflationary, expensive consumer economy, don’t get me wrong. And it was only a decade ago when Spotify had free service, until competition reared its head.
Looking at the numbers, £12.99 is a complete steal. We can view this from three perspectives: the historical, the access, and the competitive aspect. In the first instance, the average person in Western Europe in the 1600s would not have come across the concept of the public concert - it was only available to the discerning and wealthy. Fast forward to the 1950s, where research by Sam Glover shows that the average person would have had to work for 12 hours to afford a single record, and we can see that £12.99 for over 100 million pieces of music, and hundreds of thousands of podcasts, accessed anywhere at any time, is the bargain of (this) century.
In the second instance, the access to this music is remarkable. Returning to the previous example - in the 1950s, the only avenue for accessing these vinyls were record shops - HMV was founded in 1921 for this purpose, and has since disappeared from our high-streets as streaming developed. You could only access what was in their catalogues or in the store. And after around 500 plays, the disc would wear out, requiring the listener to work for another 12 hours to afford a new one. This was not efficient. I can listen to Taylor Swift or Skrillex in high definition, surround sound, at the push of a button whether I am in the middle of the ocean on a cruise ship, underground on a metal tube, in my bedroom, or at 40,000ft in an airplane - it is truly remarkable. It’s something that would’ve been pure science fiction in the 1970s, never mind in the 1950s.
Finally, there is the competitive aspect. I have access to three streaming services, by nature of having adjacent subscriptions. Amazon Music (through Prime), YouTube (through YouTube Premium), and Apple Music (because I prefer Dolby Atmos). I may be a fool for forking out an additional £10.99 a month for Apple Music when I already have access to two other music streaming services, but that is the beauty of the market - they offer speciality to the hardware I listen through, so it is worth that additional cost to me.
People will complain about the recent cost increases, but taking into the historic perspective, the slight increase in cost is really priceless. Never before have we had such access to high quality, limitless music and streaming options for an hour’s worth of work. That’s music to all of our ears.
