Over the years, the way people get their music has changed greatly, both in positive ways and negative ways. Personally, the change has been positive for most people because music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, give more access to music. However, the start of music streaming had a negative beginning.
It all started with Napster. According to Will Brewster, a journalist for MixDown, back in 1999, Napster grabbed a lot of college students’ attention. Napster provided a platform for music lovers to not only download albums for free, but also gain access to rare live versions, alternate cuts, and demo versions of their favorite artists. When institutions found out about Napster they started to block it from their network. But, students found a way around that by using MP3 players. By the 2000s artists like Dr. Dre and Metallica filed lawsuits against Napster for releasing their music on their unfinished songs. By 2001 Napster had to shut down. This was a negative start to what would eventually become music streaming because it was actually music pirating because artists were not giving their permission to download their songs.
According to Roshan Dwivedi, a blogger on Muvi, in 2001 Apple started creating a platform for music and they came out with the first generation iPod that could digitally hold music. When 2003 came around Apple released the Itunes store. Itunes music could be easily transferred from online sources and CDs to iPods. The iPod became popular since it not only enabled songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use but also allowed listening to songs on an unlimited number of iPods. In 2015 Apple Music was launched. According to the Muvi Blog, the goal behind Apple Music was to become a “cultural platform” and a “one-stop-shop for pop culture”. People can select music to stream from their devices. Users have an option to listen to existing playlists and access the entire iTunes library. Beats 1 is Apple’s Internet radio station that is broadcasted in over 100 countries 24 hours a day. It was a music streaming service that allowed artists to collaborate with Apple and make a profit. It was good for the artist because they would be able to make more money and Apple would promote their music.
According to Brewster’s article on MixDown, Pandora was launched in September 2005. Pandora was the first to offer a personalized music streaming experience, based on a user’s listening history. Pandora allowed users to bookmark artists and discover new songs. After Pandora, the main goal was to make it a customized radio station, which the company did, evolving into an online streaming website offering free content/music to users with advertisements. Pandora offers a Pandora Premium where users can listen to music without ads and make a playlist that they can listen to while they are offline. This evolution was positive because it expanded the music streaming platform to more users. The more people have access to music, the better it is for the industry. This was good for new artists because it helped them gain popularity so more people would listen to their music.
Spotify launched in October 2008. According to Dwivedi writing in the same Muvi article cited previously in 2001 “Spotify’s freemium service offered music streaming with digital rights management that protects the copyright of content from record labels and media companies.” Freemium lets you listen to music for free but with advertisements. Spotify’s premium features which you have to pay for, include improved streaming quality and offline music downloads. Spotify lets people create playlists and edit and share the playlist with different users on Spotify. Spotify has access to more than 30 million songs. In another article written by Will Brewster, a journalist for MixDown, Spotify is available in many parts of the world including Europe, America, Australia, and parts of Asia. 70% of streaming revenue does go directly to recording artists and labels. While Spotify has broadened the music industry even more, in my opinion, it’s just an imitation of Pandora. Younger teenage listeners seem to prefer Spotify because the layout is more simple.
Streaming music services have changed quite a bit from the start of Napster to the iPod to Pandora and Spotify. While music streaming had a rocky start, it now proves to be beneficial for artists and listeners.
MOOSE PRINTS 
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