Science says: Streaming services affect our listening behavior

It is well-known that streaming services as Spotify, Deezer and Tidal have had a huge impact on the whole music industrial organization, above all how money is earned and how much is earned. However, a recent discovery is that online streaming also influence how music listeners consume music when they easily can access endless libraries of albums and songs at no additional cost, save for the subscription fee. As the evolution of on-demand music has shown us, what matters most is the simplicity of the listening experience. A plethora of streaming services are introducing hundreds of millions of listeners to streaming music, and making sweeping changes to the listening experience via curated playlists, smart algorithms and other completely new, hyperconnected approaches.

Researchers Datta, Knox and Bronnenberg at Tilburg University, Netherlands, is one of many research teams that study this phenomenon and its implications for music sales and fan loyalties. In their latest study published in Marketing Science last year, they demonstrate that online streaming initially leads to that streaming listeners listen to much more music and to a wider range of artists – increasing quantity and greater diversity. Compared to listeners using traditional phonograms as LP’s and CD’s, streaming listeners more often discover new music but are however less loyal to specific artists/bands, save for their top rated new discoveries that will get higher play rates.

The result of their study, and many similar studies, show that streaming listeners listen to “fewer superstars and expand their attention to a wider set of artists” meaning that streaming services as Spotify and Deezer might be more advantageous to smaller artists and labels and to some part even out the huge differences between major labels and small indie labels. How it affects the fan base of artists/bands due to fickle consumer behavior is not part of the study but might be interesting for future studies since it affects how to adapt to a changing taste in music.

Link to the study (for those who find scientific papers interesting enough to read)