If you love music, don’t stream it
So you say you love music? Is that so? Well, some once said, show me you vinyl shelf and I tell you who you are. Oh, you have no vinyls? Well don’t worry, CDs it is then. Works the same, I guess. Really? No black lacquered CD tower in the corner of your living room? But does that mean … I mean, c’mon…really? You still got tapes? Hey, I love some good mixtapes. But no, not even that?
Judging by that awkward silence right now, I would guess you are the streaming type. Please don’t be offended by my sudden and sharp inhale. I am not judging. I have been down that road. And even today, when I am tired, just exhausted after a long day of stress at work, I will also just kick back and stream some random playlist that titles my mood while not caring who is on that list. But I can control it and stop streaming anytime I want. I just do it recreationally, you know. Sometimes it just makes me feel better. Ok, revise that. That is going in the wrong direction here. But it is still a problem we need to talk about.
Loving music is not a response to a general question.
So you say you love music? Do you really mean it? Or is it just some general response to an even more general question?
I am not talking about an audiophile that hears a humming guitar coil in the Boxed-Set of the *Jimmy Hendrix Experience* over that 192kHz with the audiophile bionic hearing. But if your day to day musical experience derives from a Spotify playlist or an Apple Music Radio channel, don’t tell me you love music. Saying that would render a meat-lover for an aficionado for Street Hot Dogs and canned beef. Get my point? Pure and mindless consumption does not constitute a relationship. You don’t love music you just love to listen.
Don’t stream! You want to own that music you love. Put it on a pedestal and cherish it. At at least put it a shelf. Or for christ’s sake at least a digital shelf if you really want to.
Still following my argument. Probably not yet, but keep reading. We are getting there.
Because guess what? If you are a streamer with a playlist of your most favorite songs that will keep you company for the next 32 hours 16 minutes and 24 seconds, I am very sorry for you. All this will be gone soon and you will be all alone.
I know there is a bit of drama going on here now, but still, it bears a grain of horrifying truth.
Yes, that love won’t last for long. It is not even love, it is only for the money and only temporarily. I know that from my own experience. So let myself be the example that would help you circumvent the pitfalls of easy musical affection.
When I grew up, tapes and CDs were still around. I got a few of them. Then came the internet and the iPhone. Since my criminal chills don’t go beyond casual speeding, I watched the whole Napster and Torrent thing from the sidelines. But then, from the crumbling rubbles of an earthly shaken music industry rose streaming like the musical messiah. A celestial touch down somewhere in Sweden. Spotify big-banged into being. If there would be a godly jukebox in heaven, it would be a streaming service caught in a shiny fifties Seeburg M110C — *Happy Days* style.
And suddenly music was everywhere.
I could get a quick hit everywhere I went. Running through the woods at five o’clock in the morning with Steve Aoki. Cooking Hannibal-style with the *Goldberg Variations*. Or just chilling with the *Monk*. A tonal Ark of everything just in the reach of a click.
The share of streaming services in the global revenue of the music industry skyrocketed within only a few years. In 2011 already 11.5% and two years later already 20%. One out of 15 billion dollars globally is made with streaming.
And not only felt it good to access everything everywhere but it felt good for others as well.
The rise of the small and starving artist with no infrastructure or a record label in the back with the resources to print thousand of hundreds of CDs, they can just put it out there with the same omnipresent click.
Going around the backs of *Big Music*, money going directly to the artist, as deserved some would argue. What better way to support than just consuming and enjoying.
And there I’ve found some treasures like the chilling beats of Dyalla.
Or the forceful electronics of Hyper as a perfectly instrumented Cyberpunk innuendo.
But I probably will never see their music in a physical form.
So, life was great back then. Music was everywhere. And then it started.
Mind a quick detour on how streaming works and licensing for music nowadays?
Actually streaming music is closer to a radio station than to download tracks. Every way of distribution for music, I.e. CDs, vinyl, MP3s or said streaming has its own licensing. While I can buy a boxed set of 8 LPs of the *Jimmy Hendrix Experience* and physically own a copy of that album, streaming more or less just passes through my listening device. There is nothing to physically own here. All there is is a reference to a stored data somewhere else than your iPhone or laptop.
So the moment something in the licensing for a track changes it affects this information and it can be changed with anything you can do about it. Fully out of your control. Since none will come to your house and demand entrance and start destroying your copy on vinyl because the label does not own the rights anymore, a physical copy will stay with you, still with some control over it. You will call that album your own until one of you or both will cease to exist.
A streaming service, on the other hand, would just cut the reference in your playlist. Although you paid some good money over many months, they can rightfully tell you that you can’t listen to that album anymore.
For me, that is actually a very horrible picture to paint. I never thought that something like that may ever happen. Who would have an interest in ending a streaming option?
But you know what? Seems there are reasons after all. For the past months, I frequently saw songs turning unavailable to stream anymore. Not even whole albums, but certain songs — usually the best ones — while the rest kept being available.
Nothing there I could do about it but being terrified about what will happen next.
Could it all be gone anytime in the future? The curse of digital abundance. Everything is available. Right now and can be gone the next second.
And then I realized this could happen to my ebooks as well. And with everything else where rights owners just allow me the usage, not ownership. All the movies I bought over the years on Amazon Video. And the term *buying* does not even fir anymore. I bought nothing but the illusion of ownership and the promise of someone that this illusion is never to change.
Not very likely if you are honest to yourself.
So I am back to physical copies of everything that is so dear to me that I want to love it and keep it no matter what. Books are physical again in my household. My vinyl collection is growing at a faster rate now. And I am going through the painstaking process of digitizing all of them. Although it is a whole lot of work it gives me comfort. I am not in a fear anymore that all that could be gone at some point. I backed up everything so that even the house could burn down and not all will be lost in the fire.
So literally only the end of the world would mean an end of my collection. At that point I wouldn’t need it anyway I suppose.
Paraphrasing Friedrich Nietzsche here: You can not lend an album you love you have to own it. But not mindlessly, leave that for the streaming. My collection is now getting better curated than before. It is an effort I put in it and the time I carefully spend.
Nevertheless, I keep the streaming for the smaller artists and to keep a wide-open ear on that landscape. Maybe if I ever get used to the rubbish quality of MP3s — which is a totally different discussion — I even might buy the albums as a download if there will never be a physical copy of it.
But other than that, do me a favor and buy the music you love. Own it and make it yours and don’t cry over the music you will lose eventually. That is the mindful love for everything.
