Music streaming service

A music streaming service is a streaming media service that focuses on digital audio, including music, podcasts, and Internet radio, sometimes with a social media component. These services usually have a subscription business model and allow users to stream music on demand, including digital rights management, from a centralized library. Some services may offer free tiers with limits on use, funded by online advertising. They typically incorporate a recommender system to help users discover other songs they may enjoy based on their listening history and other factors, as well as the ability to create and share public playlists with other users.^[1]

Services were launched in the late 1990s, and after legal wranglings and shutdowns in the 2000s, they grew significantly during the 2010s, and overtook music downloads as the largest source of revenue in the United States music industry in 2015,^[2] and accounted for a majority of revenue since 2016.^[3] Streaming services, along with streams of music-related content on online video platforms, were incorporated into the methodologies of major record charts; the "album-equivalent unit" was also developed as an alternative metric for the consumption of albums, to account for digital music and streaming.^[4] The services led to a cultural shift for consumers renting rather than buying music outright.^[5]

Consumers favoring streaming platforms over physical media attributed convenience, variety, and affordability as advantages.^[6]

Streaming has been criticized by some artists for making them earn less from their music and artistry compared to physical formats, especially with pay-per-stream systems. Some critique that this system makes it so artists get paid as low as $0.001 per steam, while streaming services like Spotify report record profits.^{[7][8][9][10]}