http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/10/20/yougov-music-streaming-expensive/
 
smh.

A sad state of affair. People will pay $8 for a beer in a bar or $5 for their morning coffee but they refuse to spend money on music. They'll waste hundreds of dollars and even wait in line to have the latest phone model - regardless of the fact that the one they bought a year before is still absolutely adequate - but won't pay $10 for a record, not even for streaming.
 
The first album I bought was Ozzy Osbourne's Diary of a Madman, back in 1983. The average price for an album back then was $12 plus tax. 33 years later, I can buy Diary of Madman on CD for $5.99 on Amazon, have access to the MP3 instantly and get the CD delivered on my doorstep in a couple of days.
 
And still, people feel so entitled that they refuse to pay for it.
 
I have a very passionate relation with music - streaming just isn't in my genes. I love albums. Not those overly self-indulgent 90 minutes contemporary records, but albums in the classic sense. I like to sit back with a record sleeve or a cd booklet in my hands and read lyrics and notes and credits. Or just listen. And form some kind of bond with the music, make the record a part of my life.
 
Streaming is the equivalent of previewing for me.
 
Maybe music has become so omnipresent in our lives that it has lost all its value. It's disposable background noise. And the truth is that a lot of what's released nowadays actually is nothing more than that.

There were some advantages to the recording industry controlling the markets (but disadvantages as well)  I still feel that music is a very personal expression, and very unique from one artist to the next.  I've never felt that art can be commodified.  The reason a lot of contemporary painters get famous is simply because their art is so rare.  You might be on to something, the fact that it's ubiquitous now.  Media is everywhere.  The market has also gotten gigantic...basically the whole world is a market rather than just certain countries.  The problem might be that *good music and good musicians* aren't rare.  There are chinese school children who play the violin as well as itzak pearlman, that's just a fact.  Our music education programs have become so good and ubiquitous that it's just not rare any more to hear great music.  Professionals have to rethink the value proposition. :D:D (ducks)

I wonder if these people could appreciate listening to music on a nice stereo system with two big speakers like the good ole days. We invested $$ in what we listened to. I agree Rain there's nothing like it. My 20 year old is amazed how good music sounds a good system but he mostly listens to music on his iphone.

eph221
 Our music education programs have become so good and ubiquitous that it's just not rare any more to hear great music.  Professionals have to rethink the value proposition. :D:D (ducks)

While I do agree that there are some incredibly gifted young people out there, I think a most of those kids are missing the target by a thousand mile. While the mechanical aspect of performance has reached unprecedented level, thanks in large part to all the tools people have at their disposal, a lot of those performers seem to be plagued by an absolute lack of emotion and/or taste. 

As it should be - maturing a soul, and the ability to express that soul through music takes time. 
 
This wouldn't be such a source of concern if the public didn't suffer from the exact same problem. Hence, hardly a week goes by w/o some video of a young "prodigy" going viral - and if in certain cases the mechanical aspect of the performance is indeed flawless, it is most often absolutely devoid of soul. The number of child prodigies out there is directly proportional to the number of talentless tone-deaf parents and adults. And they are legions...
 
From little 8 year old "channeling the soul of Aretha Franklin" to a 12 year old who "gives Yngwie a run for his money" only 3 months after he first picked up the guitar - what always strikes me is that people really don't hear the difference. 
 
And thanks to TV shows like The Voice, musicians are now expected to provide entertainment to those uneducated, soulless, tone-deaf people, like some kind of feat performing puppy. In fact, the public is so numbed that they must be told that they're about to "feel" something, they need to be walked through the same pattern time after time, and be assured that that the huge epic chorus is just about to explode and that the singer will soon switch to full voice.
 
Actually, I'm not sure the audience would still know how to react if they didn't have the judges acting as a barometer and the applause signs. I'm not convinced that the formulaic build-up alone would be enough for them to realize that they are feeling something (or should be).
 
 
 

quite good!

I pay $10/mo for spotify and get access to a massive catalogue of music I could have only dreamed of up till a few years ago. Thing is, I don't feel like I appreciate it as much either. I blast through songs and artists like eating candies. Now if I, a musician, feel like I don't appreciate it as much, how does the average listener feel?

I remember when people started downloading music a friend of mine was so proud to tell me that he had every Zappa album (official ones, I presume), everything by Paul Simon, and basically everything by every artist he liked.
 
All I could think was - when are you going to listen to all that stuff? Where will you find the time to listen to 60 some Frank Zappa album? And admitting that you ever manage to listen to every single one, what will you get out of it? 
 
It's like people taking a gazillion pictures and filming everything - that stuff just piles up on a hd somewhere.
 
To this day, I try to keep the same approach. I shop for music on iTunes, put tons of things on my wish list and every now and then, I order one of them on CD (or buy it directly on iTunes if sound quality is irrelevant). And then I stick with it for a while.
 
Like that most recent Elvis album I bought last week. I listen to it every chance I get. I feel that that's how music stays relevant and really becomes part of your life.
 
 

I find it odd as well. Don't they have to pay for standard radio and TV in the UK?  Is that why some think $8 is too much?
 
What really bothers me about all the online stuff is that too many people think it is perfectly fine to pirate anything they can get their hands on. I think that is why they don't appreciate it - it costs them nothing and it is all treated as trash. Maybe it is akin to Debeers and the diamond trade. If big vinyl had been able to continue to control the market then perhaps music would still be worth something. I'm not necessarily saying that is the way it should be but merely putting forth a possible theory.
 
It is not hard to see how disposable music has become when a kid with Garage Band and 15 minutes can crank out some drivel that is the next viral sensation garnering scads of rabid fans. One good thing in that scenario is all the 'fans' have pirated copies.

Rain
I remember when people started downloading music a friend of mine was so proud to tell me that he had every Zappa album (official ones, I presume), everything by Paul Simon, and basically everything by every artist he liked.
 
All I could think was - when are you going to listen to all that stuff? Where will you find the time to listen to 60 some Frank Zappa album? And admitting that you ever manage to listen to every single one, what will you get out of it? 
 
It's like people taking a gazillion pictures and filming everything - that stuff just piles up on a hd somewhere.
 
To this day, I try to keep the same approach. I shop for music on iTunes, put tons of things on my wish list and every now and then, I order one of them on CD (or buy it directly on iTunes if sound quality is irrelevant). And then I stick with it for a while.
 
Like that most recent Elvis album I bought last week. I listen to it every chance I get. I fell that that's how music stays relevant and really becomes part of your life.
 
 

Heh, that's me.  I have an unfortunate "completionist" bend to my psyche.  I'm almost through enjoying all of Bill Nelson's discography (I have most of it).  Sure, it took a few weeks because of listening to other things in-between, but I'm all the way into 2008.  My end goal is to be able to create playlists in any of a thousand ways then enjoy them on one of my multiple iPOD's or stream the music eventually.
 
The thing is, I'm listening to music a lot so I don't feel like I have too much of it.  Just turn on a radio and it seems you hear the same 120 songs over and over and over and over again.