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Streaming Is Killing Great Music in Favor of Familiar Formulas

02_05_ManeyBowie_02
02_05_ManeyBowie_02

Technology is making sure that from now on we get a boatload of Adeles but never again the likes of David Bowie. 

Did you see Straight Outta Compton? Nothing like N.W.A is going to happen in any foreseeable future either. We’re looking at another decade of music that’s about as culturally significant as a new Ben & Jerry’s flavor.

This is the opposite of what was promised at the dawn of the Web. Digital media was supposed to blow open the music industry, making it possible for any intrepid fringe artist to assemble songs on a laptop for next to nothing and find an audience somewhere out on the bony end of the long tail. We were going to be awash in creativity.

Instead, the technology has altered layer upon layer of music’s economics in a way that wildly favors safe mainstream acts while kicking the daring outliers to the curb. Music in the streaming era is a winner-take-most affair—like almost told an interviewer: “Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again.”

Goodbye, David Bowie. Hello, boatload of Adeles.

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