Music streams on services like Spotify are about to start counting towards the UK’s official albums chart, but could streaming ultimately change the way albums are packaged and paid for by fans?
A new report by music industry consultancy firm Midia Research hopes so. It pitches a future of “interactive artist subscriptions” where albums look more like apps, and where fans pay artists a small amount every month for access to their music – with streaming services acting as the middlemen.
The company’s Next Generation Music Products report claims that this could be the key to winning over artists – from Thom Yorke to Taylor Swift – who have publicly expressed their concerns about streaming’s impact on musicians.
“A new generation of music products are needed, built around interactivity, multimedia and artist subscriptions. Products that will be radically different from their predecessors, and that will, crucially, be artist-specific, not store or service specific,” suggests the report.
Its theory is that the keenest music fans would happily pay their favourite artists more money through a mixture of subscriptions for an app-like experience blending music, videos, photos and other interactivity, and crowdfunding.
Midia thinks that albums – or rather “360° music products” – could become something that fans subscribe to over a period of 12-24 months, with new music and content being pushed to these apps over the course of that time.
They’d also provide a way for fans to buy merchandise and tickets, as well as in some cases to pledge money to help artists record their next album – and get early access to it as a reward.
Social features will also be important. “360° products will enable users to connect with other fans within the app, chat with artists and to import their Twitter and Facebook friends to automatically extend their social graph into their music experiences,” claims Midia.
“Artists will need to learn to invest time in participating with their fans in 360° products, from inviting feedback on demos they have seeded through to actually chatting in the forums.”
Some of this is happening already: musicians are experimenting with apps, even if the most high-profile examples haven’t quite hit the mark.
Bjork’s Biophilia app was critically acclaimed but its commercial success is unknown, while Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP app was a fun, novelty GIF-creator rather than the revolution in music delivery that was originally promised. Most artist apps have been more functional affairs.
Midia thinks streaming services could play an important role:
One solution is artist subscriptions within streaming services, with users paying a small monthly fee – say $/€1 – for a month’s worth of artist content.
With the cost added directly to a monthly music subscription, users would get access to a curated channel of artist content including all the features of 360° music products. Artist subscriptions should, just like standalone apps, be immersive, programmed and interactive experiences, telling the artist’s story to new fans and enriching it for existing fans.
Artist subscriptions should also give users flexibility, allowing them to continually swap and change artists. Most fans will have a few artists they want to keep connected to, but will also want to have the ability to deep dive into a new selection of artists every month or two.
Some artists may feel uneasy at the idea of albums being replaced by app-like “products”, while a practical barrier is that streaming services like Spotify are not currently set up to offer individual micro-subscriptions like those proposed in Midia’s report.
Apple, on the other hand, already has an app platform – complete with a thriving in-app purchases economy – and is working on a relaunch of its Beats Music streaming service later this year. Most speculation about that has focused on its likely price and whether Apple will push the new service to every iOS device.
Adding features like crowdfunding or individual artist subscriptions, not to mention the app-like blend of music, video, games and social feeds pitched in Midia’s report, could be the curveball that Apple needs to wrongfoot the streaming opposition.
(Previous reports about U2 and Apple working on another project together – “It’s not a new format, but rather a new way to package and present an album” – may be relevant here.)
At the same time, the ideas mooted in Midia’s report might be exactly what Spotify and its rivals need to get one up on Apple in the streaming world, while winning over more of its doubters among musicians.
