The Pop Corporation

It all felt somewhat inevitable that young people would look at the streaming model and wonder why they didn’t have anything to show for their money. Obviously, the convenience of having most of the world’s music in your pocket is a miracle of a thing, but when you look around your room or your house and there’s nothing cool in it, but the direct debits keep leaving your bank account, you may have pause for thought.

Now, if you want access to everything, you need to have a Spotify or Apple Music account, and for movies and TV, half a dozen apps and every single one of them wants your money.

Investors have notices a worrying trend, and it is being floated that this whole thing may have peaked. The reality of their situation in 2024 is that shares in some of the most powerful music companies in the world have tanked. Last month, they saw the arse fall out of the whole scheme, and now, people are scrambling for answers. “Subscription revenue saw a deceleration in growth,” Universal Music Chief Financial Officer Boyd Muir told analysts. “Large partners who have been less successful in driving global adoption have seen a slowdown in new subscriber additions.”

It is particularly bad news for Apple and Amazon who aren’t signing up a lot of new customers. Last year, this was the same case, so this is bad news on top of existing bad news for these companies. However, the difference this time around is that Wall Street got jittery after holding firm for a while. Investors seem to be guessing that the boom years for streaming might be over.

We saw something similar when TV streaming platforms tried to fix the fact that people were stealing content and sharing passwords, and users left Netflix in droves and Disney’s shared dropped through the floor, taking loads of other companies down with them. There is a crucial difference between movies and music though, in that streaming is currently the music industry’s most lucrative income, whereas movies and TV are still much more diverse.

However, it isn’t growing and that is a concern for record labels, and how would they be able to accelerate growth for platforms they don’t own or run? Whether this is a temporary setback or a permanent one, labels and streaming platforms have already started cutting staff. Don’t be surprised if we see a push on merch and vinyl (and other physical formats). We’ve already seen ‘special’ edition records and updated versions of releases, in a bid to wring the coins out of consumer pockets. There’s likely to be new deals brokered with social media platforms for licensing monies.

Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon will be putting their prices up soon, that’s almost certain. If streaming fatigue is as real as it seems with young listeners, then they’ll have to be creative with their tiering, or else things could be about to get worse. Add to this, the fractured relationship between entertainment companies and big tech, there’s lots of reasons to be concerned if you’ve got money at stake in all of this.

Meanwhile, you’d expect young people will rekindle their love affair with illegal downloads and buying whatever physical format is kindest on their pockets.