Australia's Adapting Music Industry Analysis

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The discussion of digital downloading and online piracy in Australia’s adapting music industry is featured in this report, as the contemporary issues facing artists of today is the rapid and continuous growth of social media, networking sites and online streaming services. The introduction of 21st Century style accessibility to music via the internet and various online resources which stream directly to users, has seen a gross decline in physical record sales as well as a decrease in performance sales. This increased popularity in subscription-based music streaming services has significantly affected and altered the way musicians are able to form a stable revenue, and is changing the way industry professionals approach artist management and …show more content…

Websites such as Youtube and free on-demand streaming programs like Spotify, deliver good quality music to listeners worldwide. As of March 2017, Spotify had ‘50 million paying subscribers worldwide, up from 30 million paying subscribers in March 2016’ (Number of paying Spotify subscribers worldwide from July 2010 to March 2017, para 1). Social media sites and online streaming apps go hand-in-hand, as the Swedish-founded Spotify enables users to register via their Facebook, allowing their friends to listen to their personalised playlists and see what they are currently listening to. A recent study conducted in the United States to determine how people access and keep up to date with music, found that 64% of users listened to music via Youtube, 33% via Spotify and only 15% through online blogs about music (Sources used for keeping up-to-date with music in the United States in 2017, para 1). The rapid incline in digital streaming services and their growing popularity amongst millions of users online validates the rise of digital services within the music industry. Although an ‘instant audience’ type of fan base can be formed through these social media platforms, with 30 million songs featured on Spotify and a further 20,000 added per day (Smith, 2017), it seems nearly impossible for Australian artists to stand out in …show more content…

Professor Richard Vella disclosed in his ABC article ‘Music industry faces digitisation challenges, but all is not lost’, only ‘massive amounts of streams can produce substantial income’, as Youtube royalties paid back to artists for streamed music is minimal; the standard price per play being $0.001. Due to this risk, artists are resorting to working in other industries in order to form steady income streams. Data taken from the Australian Council Artfacts (Week 2 Reading) found that of the 60,000 musicians registered to APRA/AMCOS, only 7,600 worked primarily as musicians for their main form of