With the advances in availability of high-speed Internet access, music-streaming services are starting to gain ground against the prior approach of purchasing and downloading individual tracks via a service such as iTunes. There are many options already out there and new services coming soon. So rather than try to examine all of the available options, let’s take a look at the four major services.
Spotify
One of the original major streaming services is Spotify, and a lot of people will think of Spotify first if you ask what streaming services they know of. With a current catalogue of over 20 million songs, both paid and free ad-supported options, Spotify has a good foothold in the streaming services arena. Spotify also has shown to provide slightly better payouts by volume compared to some of the other services when it comes to independent artists (sorry but the labels are taking nice chunks of the pay for signed artists). Unfortunately, compared to those other services Spotify has a small customer base.
iTunes Radio
Apple’s new Radio service is the new kid on the block, but with Apple’s widespread iTunes customer base of about 600 million users, Apple has a very good start in this competition. Apple Radio is free but limited to users creating “stations” which play a mix of artists based around a starting point. Users can’t stream a full album from a specific artist. This may ultimately be a drawback for the service, but considering this is the model originally created by Pandora, this may prove to be highly sustainable. In the end, the real trick is to expose users to “new” artists that are similar to their searched artists/songs and their taste of music in the iTunes purchases.
Google Music All Access & Youtube
Google Music is another newcomer and as a result doesn’t have any real specific count of active users. Like Apple though, Google has a strong foothold thanks to the numerous other services it provides with Youtube being one of the most influential in this regard. Many music lovers and artists utilize Youtube already as a way to listen to and share music. Lyric videos are becoming more common now, and some artists are even streaming their albums in full as a free preview before the official release. Considering these factors, Youtube is a great way to drive traffic to Google Music and may make Google Music one of the biggest contenders eventually. Google offers both paid and free versions of Google Music access. Youtube is primarily free but channels can now charge subscription fees.
Pandora
Pandora is one of the first “successful” streaming services in that they were able to gain a decent foothold before streaming became more commonplace. As Apple Radio now copies, the original idea was to let you search for a specific artist or song, and then discover and rate new recommendations. By telling Pandora what you liked that was suggested to you, the service would gradually improve the suggestions it would give. However, anyone looking to be able to stream a whole album from an artist was out of luck.
Overall, it doesn’t matter how much money you expect to make from any of these services since most are pretty close-lipped about how they handle the artist payments. You best bet is to determine which ones seem worth it based on what they offer to the customer. Picking a service with a larger user base and is more popular with your own fans will benefit you the most. You must also consider that your fans are going to have different preferences. Some will want to be able to stream your album in full while others may only care to hear a single song. Then you will have those that want to be able to do both. You don’t have to submit your music to all of the services out there. In some cases, submitting your music to a certain service would cost more than it would earn. No matter what though, making sure you have the option to stream the album as a whole is going to be crucial.