Diffusion

 Diffusion: Why Music Streaming just... Happened

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APC0R8vhMyc

    Streaming is a term that came around within the past two decades and denotatively moved past its previous terminology into a modernized technological and information based spread of ideas, information, and art forms at an instantaneous speed. To stream a movie, tv show, or song now is a commodity in American society. A little over a decade ago Netflix was a mail order dvd rental service and launched its streaming platform instantly creating a gravitational field pulling the masses to its service. After Netflix other providers whether it be; Hulu, a former YouTube competitor became a subscription based streaming platform highlighting currently airing networks and offering next day video streaming. After the video streaming services, the next and most natural form of streaming would be seen in music. There were plenty of illegal sites where people could listen to songs or even just on YouTube. Apple Inc., came through with yet another major innovation with the creation of its subscription music streaming service Apple Music. Apple Music offered customers the ability to listen to any and all of its streaming library for a flat monthly fee. The music library was swiftly what would take over the pre-existing service seen in iTunes. No longer would customers have to pay for each individual song, but would have free reign across almost all artists allowing musicians to skyrocket at rates never before seen. Music streaming would soon become the more popular method for listening to music. Spotify, Soundcloud, Tidal all came along and expanded the streaming force. This detracted from people who were buying albums and singles by an exponential rate. This created an issue with artistic sovereignty and artistic compensation but was quickly combatted by the creation of the MMA (Music Modernization Act). With that law's conception, the argument for streaming became even more compelling from not only a consumer perspective but also distributors, labels, and artists. The adoption of music streaming was adopted so freely simply due to convenience and affordability. There are far fewer negatives than there are positives especially with the legal protections now in place. For $7.99 you couldn't even buy a full-length album on iTunes, now its enough to buy the entire discographies of over 10,000 of your favorite artsits.