Streaming Music?

Today I came across the news that apple is actually starting their own streaming music service. Just like Spotify and the latest addition, Tidal. Personally, I have never tried any music streaming services except for Soundcloud. And YouTube, because some people feel that YouTube is another form of streaming music service. Which is kind of accurate, since I can play my playlist of favourite music.

As of now, my only source of music entertainment is my iPod or these days, I've been using my Discman. I'll randomly pick a CD from my collection and listen to it at night. And I still listen to my iPod to go to sleep. And when I woke up halfway through sleep, I'll listen to music again.

The discussion about streaming music being the "future" of music is buzzing now. Personally... I don't know. I've been reading articles, watching vlogs and videos about this issue. An article says that it is not really a fair and great way for the artists to be making money, but it's good for the service provider. Another article says it's a better way for artists to make money because people "pay" per stream of their music. Or something like that. I'm not entirely sure about how this streaming music works.

I would say a paid-music streaming service is a much better idea than illegal music downloads. As you know I've always been buying CDs of my favourite artists. Or CDs that to me are worth buying. If physical formats are not available, I'll buy their albums either in iTunes or Bandcamp. Personally I prefer Bandcamp because the money goes straight to the bands (maybe they have to pay Bandcamp a fee too). And also Bandcamp allows me to download in whatever format I wish to download.

Actually joining band has made me respect artists more. To prepare for a 2 hour concert, we put in so many hours of rehearsals, sectionals and self-practices. Same as artists - they put in so many YEARS of hard work and experience, to create new songs for an album, and not forgetting to rehearse for tours worldwide! All of these hard work are not easy nor cheap! And to me, as a fan, the smallest way I can help them is to buy their music and of course go to their concerts. And buy their merchandise.

Imagine you're a band, you squeezed your brain off to write songs, rehearse so many hours to record an album, and then you discover that people are downloading your songs for free. I would feel so hurt heh. Although yes I am guilty of downloading some songs for free online. It's not because I want to, but it's because I really really love the song but it is not available anywhere. 

Also, I purchase songs because their quality is so much better than some those freely downloaded songs. I can get pretty OCD when it comes to song quality.

Which brings me to my next point - availability. Like I mentioned above, some songs are actually not available in every country. There are a lot of songs unavailable in Indonesia's iTunes store. Although somehow across the years, they get more and more available. So you know perhaps, streaming music is the way to go, if it means that the songs are going to be available universally?

But without a doubt, I am going to continue collecting physical formats of my favourite artists' albums. Until somehow, everyone decided that CD should go extinct and... Yes. Now most of my favourite artists are in Spotify. But it is not available in Indonesia so I listen to their songs in my iPod from the albums that I bought. And also I don't like the idea of just owning "files" in the future. There is a sense of sentimentalism and pride, when you own physical formats!

Can't imagine in the future, the conversation we'll have about new songs will go like....

"Hey have you streamed the new _______ songs yet?"