Streaming & Playlists to follow

Nowadays, the Streaming Music (delivered music without requiring to download files from the internet) is responsible for more than 60% of the profits of the digital revenues of the music and the reason why the main multinational record companies (Universal Music Group, Warner Music and Sony Music) are pocketing every day millions of Dollars.

In a few years, Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming platforms (Pandora, Deezer, Tidal, etc...) have come to dominate the distribution of music, generating higher revenues than physical sales, a disjunction that has occurred in less than a decade and that today allows that an unknown artist getting included some of his/her songs into a popular Spotify playlist, he/she could see his/her career take off overnight, comparable to what was before appearing on the radio stations. In this way we can see companies offering large amounts of money to include certain songs in those users playlists who count with thousands of followers.

But not everything has been so easy or so fast. Since Sean Parker and his friend Shawn Fanning invented Napster in 1999 revolutionizing the musical ecosystem forever, there have been two opposing positions, the one of those who have dedicated themselves to constantly complain and put legal obstacles and the one of those who have accepted change from the beginning. And it is precisely those who embraced progress, who today have a great advantage in the industry.

Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning back in 2012

Spotify, launched in 2006 by young Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Ek and his partner Martin Lorentzon, with more than 200 million users is without a doubt the platform leading the industry, although today it lives under the siege of giants like Apple, Amazon or even Netflix and the future of its hegemony is constantly put into question. Even more so when it is the only company in this group that depends on subscriptions to its platform to survive. But for the moment, earlier this year and after 13 years and 96 million paid subscribers later, Spotify finally announced profit, a good sign for the entire industry.

Spotify Founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon with the old company logo

While we observe how not only music evolves, but audio and video on streaming platforms, we share with you three Spotify playlist of some of the most exciting music industry events worldwide (with many live shows each one of them) to stay musically updated.

SXSW

Located in Austin (USA), South by Southwest is probably the most established music (and also film and interactive-media) convention in the world.

Click to listen to the SXSW playlist

Reeperbahn Festival

The Hamburg based festival (Germany) is another mandatory event to attend for anyone interested in any way in the music industry.

Click to listen to the Reeperbahn Festival playlist

ADE

The Amsterdam Dance Event (The Netherlands) is the biggest conference and festival for electronic music and a must if you want to expand your network with like-minded people.

Click to listen to the ADE playlist

Cover photograph by Spotify