The impact of music streaming platforms and digitally curated content on musicians' career development

Abstract

The varying concerns streaming platforms have created for artists over the past two decades guided the topic choice for the current study. Streaming platforms have impacted the way consumers and musicians’ access, share and interact with music (Salo, Lankinen, & Mäntymäki, 2013). The music industry has shifted from a materialized to a dematerialized system since the digitalization of music began with the compact disc (Eiriz & Leite, 2017; Swanson, 2013). As a result, an increasing number of musicians are now responsible for producing and managing their careers (Eiriz & Leite, 2017). In general, artists have both favourable and unfavourable attitudes towards streaming, depending on several factors or whether they are fully independent or an established musician (Aly-Tovar, Bacache-Beauvallet, Bourreau & Moreau, 2019; Marshall, 2015). The way artists can connect with their listeners and recruit new ones has drastically changed with the opportunities the internet has provided, e.g., utilizing different social media platforms and engaging with online communities (Salo et al., 2013). How the success of an artist is measured has also changed both subjectively and objectively since the digitalization of music (Fisher, Pearson, Goolsby & Onken, 2010). Overall, there are many components of the music industry that a musician has to be aware of while creating music and developing their career. The majority of research on streaming platforms has been conducted in the consumer, record label and services sectors; however, little has explored the business models used by early career musicians in a dematerialized market (Eiriz & Leite, 2017). To address this gap in the research, the current study investigated how early career musicians measure their success in the 2 age of streaming to uncover the challenges musicians face when establishing, expanding and maintaining their music career.