Does anyone know what the revenues are like, compared to a physical album purchase?

Even before streaming services, musicians’ contracts were generally pretty crap so they didn’t make that much off the sale of a physical album either.

inside a 12″ square of glossy cardboard with original artwork printed in beautiful full colour on both sides

This is the only attraction to vinyl these days. I have some albums I won’t part with just because of the sleeve. I don’t listen to ’em though, I put the CD on.

Have had Spotify for a while – was using it to listen mostly to stuff i already have in other formats.

Having recently bought a car that has capacity for just 1 CD, I hooked up my phone via Bluetooth/FM to play music I’d downloaded to the phone. Spotify has let me build huge mix tapes of stuff I’ve liked over the years, download those to my phone and play them at my convenience.

Setting up a family account, with 3 growing kids should save us both some cash and some storage issues longer term…

Definitely a recent convert

Never used a streaming service and never will do. I do not want to be tied to paying a subscription

I will always buy my music on some form of hard copy and if I choose to, then rip to mp3 for the phone

i remember looking forward to get a cd, which at the time was silly money and thumbing through the booklet and looking at the cover and print on the cd itself. then after a few months it would start to skip or you would go to play it and your brother/sister/mate had stole the disc out of the sleeve.

Used Spotify briefly years ago.

Not a fan of streaming. No real reason, just because…

Do maintain a Google Music account for easy access to my purchased and uploaded stuff, but don’t stream any ‘external’ content through it.

Love to buy a physical thing, whether vinyl or CD. Use the download codes to grab portable versions, but nearly always use the physical thing if listening at home (grew up in the original death throes of vinyl and still like the ritual associated with listening to it).

Even like the dirty sound of vinyl played on bog standard kit (totally different IMO to the harsh, ‘clean’ dirtiness of lower bitrate .mp3).

after a few months it would start to skip

Got 100s of CDs, can’t remember any skipping. Must have had a dodgy player.

usic and Spotify have been my 21st Century record shop. On balance I’ve wasted a lot less money on crap.

I very rarely spend money on crap these days, but I still regularly spend a fair bit on music, in a physical format, I really can’t be doing with streaming. Yes, I can download stuff, but so what, I can just add more music from my ever expanding iTunes library to my phone, which already has as much music on it than I could listen to in a week, and when I upgrade to a new phone later this year, which will have 256Gb of storage, I will be able to carry my entire library, should I wish to – I won’t, because some music just doesn’t work well when being carried around, like entire symphonies, for example.
And streaming hasn’t the quality of CD’s ripped at 320Kb, although I know you can get lossless files, they take up much more space and don’t sound any better, a fact that’s been shown quite a few times, I’ve proved it to myself, I honestly cannot hear any difference between a 329 AAC file and an Apple Lossless or a FLAC file, through a pair of £350 UE triple driver monitors.
Also, it’s just not possible to go up to one of your favourite artists and shove a memory stick with some Spotify playlists on and ask them to sign it, they’re much more receptive to a small pile of their back catalogue on CD or even vinyl. Murray and Natalia of The Dears were chuffed to bits that I took along all their back catalogue a couple of weeks ago, it was the first time I’d met them in the twenty-odd years they’d been recording, that’s were the connection comes that isn’t there with just streaming stuff.
Another singer/songwriter I know was talking about getting a million streams of a track from her new EP, she earned less than £20, AFAIK.
That is just immoral.
With streaming, it’s just another disposable commodity, there’s no personal investment involved, nothing meaningful, it’s all just wallpaper with no emotion.

with streaming, it’s just another disposable commodity there’s no personal investment involved, nothing meaningful, it’s all just wallpaper with no emotion.

This is misty eyed bollards to be fair, music’s emotional content has **** all to do with what format it’s presented on

Getting stuff signed by the artist is not something I understand. I’ve had plenty of chats with bands at gigs and remember them nicely enough without having to come across as a little fanboy autograph hunter (bit like getting a selfie with them, I reckon.)

If it weren’t for Spotify I wouldn’t have discovered the awesome that is Synthwave.

It analysed what I listened to and put together a mix for me, I ticked the tracks I liked, and it then found more stuff etc etc. I’ve now got an awesome collection of artists I’d previously never heard of (and probably never would have!). I’ve been fortunate enough to see some of these artists live in the past 6 months.

I’m basically stating this for the people on here who don’t use streaming services. They are so convenient too, especially when you want to listen to music at work without the required thought process of choosing what specifically to listen to.

When I go to gigs I refuse to even look at the band, attention seeking bastards that they are. Sometimes I just put my hoody up and face the bar all night.

Never used a streaming service and never will do. I do not want to be tied to paying a subscription

A basic Spotify sub is free, so long as you don’t mind the occasional advert.

And streaming hasn’t the quality of CD’s ripped at 320Kb

Spotify “high quality” is 320Kbps, IIRC (Ogg Vorbis I think).

Problem I found with Spotify is for albums there can be rights issues where certain tracks have different rights and are missing in your country. It’s not so bad for the majority of typical users who just listen to random tracks, not albums, and mostly new music. More annoying for my kind of use. Always full albums and mostly old music.

That said I do stream. From my NAS and/or from Onedrive where I can dump my music on my 1TB storage and it becomes available in stuff like the Groove app. Doesn’t matter about rights, it’s just available and I can make it offline if I want. I don’t do app streaming much though. I mainly stream FLAC files from my NAS to one or more devices around the house. All ripped from CDs, which I then own forever and cannot have them disappear due to rights issues, expiry of service or lost internet connection.