New Study Offers the REAL Effect of Streaming the Music Industry

Is streaming or good or bad for the music industry? The answer is…neither. This comes from Time Money.

[A]ccording to a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, streaming’s effect on music industry revenue is a flat zero. It doesn’t make money for the recording companies, and it doesn’t lose money. While the NBER report confirmed that streaming ravaged digital downloads, it also found that streaming has edged out piracy at the same time—enough to make up for the loss in revenue.

Spotify’s status as revenue-neutral doesn’t mean it’s neutral for the industry. First of all, people absolutely adore the service, and that means the potential to boost listenership and create more consumers. After all, when users create playlists and put a serious portion of their musical lives into a system, they’re laying down roots as long-term customers. But perhaps more important, streaming has allowed the music industry to once again be involved with the consumption of its product, enabling it to gather potentially useful data and insights into how people listen, share, and interact with music, which will almost certainly lead to further monetization down the road.

Read the entire article here.