After Music Streaming Ends, What Comes Next in How We Listen to Music?
Since the inception of music, it’s always been a difficult notion for any person to predict the future of how we listen to music. Besides just listening to music, buying music has vastly changed since the mid to late 20th century.
Despite the difficulties attached to predicting anything, it’s an exciting idea to discuss what comes next in the subject. Previously, we primarily consumed our music intake through the radio or physical properties, such as a vinyl record and later a CD.
Today, the vast majority of us utilize streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music to digest our favorite artists. However, like anything else, music streaming will someday come to an end as the next significant element comes to the forefront. At this point, it’s difficult to say what this means, but what’s next after streaming music?
New Streaming Platforms
Spotify is one of the largest companies as a direct result of their music streaming platform. In recent years, we’ve seen competition from the likes of Apple, Google, and Amazon, but will new streaming platforms come to try and throw Spotify off it’s throne?
Although this is possible, it doesn’t seem likely. Only a handful of corporations control most industries in the United States, meaning competition isn’t likely. The notion of a ‘free market’ is supposed to prevent monopolies from rising, but that’s not the reality.
Look at Spotify at how Amazon is, it’s implausible there will be a serious competitor to Amazon. Since Spotify has recently bought big podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience and The Michelle Obama Podcast, it easy to assume they’ll be the standard for anything audio related. Like many corporations do, as time changes, they’ll change with it.
Streaming Economy (End of Physical Entities)
Before streaming totally fades, there will be a time in history where streaming is the only option to listen to music. Although it’s impossible to wipe out physical properties from existence, it’s possible their production can end.
Obviously, people who currently own CDs or vinyl records will still have them in their personal possession; all this means is the production end can close. It’s challenging to say if this will definitely happen, but like anything else, trends come and go.
Although there’s a resurgence for physical copies of music nowadays, who knows how people will think years from now. No matter your opinion on this, it’s a dejected reality to think about eliminating physical copies of music.
Convenience
Generally speaking, the primary reason music streaming has gotten to the forefront of how we consume music is convenience. No matter the genre, artist, or musician you’re interested in, you can listen to them instantly with a small monthly fee.
This idea of music convenience certainly has its benefits, but some music fanatics disagree with it entirely. Fanatics claim it causes a disconnection between music and the people who listen to it. This definitely has a point, but people who strive for a deeper connection can still achieve it.
Nonetheless, in order for music streaming to become obsolete, there needs to be a platform or technology that makes it even more convenient and accessible for people to listen to music. Whether this is a futuristic chip we get implanted or something else, it’ll be interesting to see what happens after music streaming ends.
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