Streaming Has Already Taken Over The World, So What The Hell Happens Next?

Streaming has taken the music industry by storm - and we're still trying to keep up with it.

New services are appearing (and disappearing) by the day, and as we try to adjust to the new trends about music consumption, it's easy to forget that it's pummeling forward by the day. 

Facilitated by The Orchard's Henry Compton, the Rise & Rise Of Music Streaming panel at Face The Music debated where streaming services are going next, with some ideas from some of the music industry's brightest minds.

Bandcamp is a service with a vastly different model to other streaming services - you pay for a product, and not only do you receive it in whichever format you choose, but you also get a digital copy. 

Bandcamp's Andrew Jervis pondered the financial feasibility of streaming services.

"One of the big questions many platforms have to solve is, how do we make this work?" Jervis said.

"Financially, at least, it's not actually working for a lot of platforms out there… they're bleeding money left, right and centre. So let's see what happens in the next few years.

"If that changes, if they can reach this point where it tips, will it work on a large scale? Let's wait a few years and see if it becomes a profitable venture."

Both Mushroom Publishing's Tommy Faith and Xelon Entertainment's Arlo Enemark believe streaming services will soon take on board their own content.

"I think we'll see a lot of personalised curation," Enemark said, adding, "I think it'll be connecting people to individuals."

"I think we'll see professional radio presenters but in the new model, as the old model is dying off of commercial radio," he continued.

"We'll just start seeing that desire, the relationship, that getting up in the morning and having that conversation with people and having music around that. We'll see that play out in the new model." 

Faith had a very interesting prediction for the future of streaming, driven by the successes of Netflix in creating a number of award-winning content. 

"I think an interesting model to look at is Netflix and the way that they create their own content," Faith explained.

"They'll give Adam Sandler $10 million to make whatever series he made for Netflix, or any director, the Baz Luhrmann series with The Get Down. I suspect that streaming services are gonna go straight to the vein as well, and try and cut record labels out of the exchange.

"I think the next thing will be Spotify, instead of offering $12 million for an exclusive, when artists like Drake go out of contract, they'll go 'why don't you just go direct with us? We'll give you $30 million, we'll own the masters, you'll be a Spotify artist.'

"I think that's gonna be the interesting thing to look forward to, whether Apple and Spotify and all the others will try to buy into that market and cut out the middle man, because then if they own the masters, they have less problems distributing funds, income could potentially be a bit straighter for them..."

Meanwhile, Ditto Music's Sarah Hamilton explored the relationship between business deals and the way music lovers consume music as a result.

"It's interesting that a lot of the people in this room would be musicians or music lovers or working in the industry and so interested in finding new music, but I guess there's a lot of business development deals that happen that all really affect how other people will consume music," Hamilton said.

"Like, people who are in Woolworths who love the playlist might then want to use Pandora more, or someone already has Apple Music for three months and that might change things. There are a lot of deals that might affect a lot of consumers."

Pandora's Matty Newton was responsible for the creation of Woolworths' instore playlisting and shared some of the huge radio streaming company's goals. 

"We need to make money from advertisers to keep this whole trade running and at the moment commercial radio is still extremely strong in that area," Newton said.

"But Pandora in the USA have Questlove hosting a weekly show at the moment, and we're currently intensely trying to figure out who can do that in Australia, like who the tastemakers are who can host shows on our new Aussie indie music channels for us.

"In the future we're gonna start incorporating video - in the USA, we've already seen this working, we've seen a massive uplift in people getting sucked up to our second tier in the USA, happy to pay $5-$6 a month because if they watch this 15-second commercial from Ford, you get to replay your favourite song as many times as you like, or you get half an hour of unlimited replays.

"As we move towards more interesting personalised content, everyone in this room should think of themselves as their own tastemaker."