I thought that streaming was supposed to stop young people from pirating music. Uh-oh

Twenty-five years ago when Napster and its sort began allowing us to share music online, we did it because:

• We were tired of a growing number of acts who released CDs with one good song. Want that track? Buy the whole CD for$15 and get a bonus 11 sh*tty tracks.
• We had no option to buy that single track on its own. CD-singles were being phased out and no one except punk bands were releasing 7-inch singles,
• Pay fifteen dollars (and often more) for a CD was considered too much. Weren’t prices supposed to come down? They did not.
• File-sharing gave us access to more music that we could ever afford.

Illegal file-sharing wipe out huge swaths of the recorded music industry. Revenues went into free-fall. Artists lost their deals. And even when Steve Job threw everyone a big lifeline by offering the industry iTunes, music piracy continued.

But then came streaming. Rhapsody was the first modern streaming (est. 2001) but it took until the arrival of Spotify in 2008 before streaming started to become a thing. There were a lot of casualties along the way–Rdio, Mog, Songza, and dozens of others–but streaming is now responsible for somewhere far beyond 75% of all the music consumption.

We now have access to at least 110 million songs in decent-quality resolution (and often better) through our phones. And all at a cost of zero (or something close to it.) So why in the HELL would anyone bother pirated music?

Check out the this research from Statista. Young music fan (i.e. those under 24) seem to have rediscovered stealing music.