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Ever since Thom Yorke's Atoms for Peace removed their albums from Spotify, a heated debate has been raging over the value of streaming music services for musicians and the music industry.

The argument may have gone mainstream in recent weeks, but it's not a new discussion. In fact, the question of how streaming pays off for musicians has been causing ructions within the music industry for a couple of years now.

It's an emotional debate, and an important one at a critical time for artists and the industry, as they look for the best way forward after more than a decade of declining sales for recorded music, post-Napster.

Yet it's also a debate dominated by gut feelings and data of varying quality, and a tendency to slip into polarised opinions along the lines of "Spotify is just the latest embodiment of THE MAN!" or "Thom Yorke's a rich HYPOCRITE!"

Earlier this year, I published a roundup of views and data on the streaming music / artists debate for industry site Music Ally. Now feels like a good time to publish an updated version here, with a selection of 10 pieces for artists and fans alike to read and think about.

If you care about music, should you ditch Spotify?

Sasha Frere-Jones, New Yorker:

"Streaming suits catalogue but cannot work as a way of supporting new artists. Spotify and the like either have to address that fact and change the model for new releases or else all new music producers should be bold and vote with their feet. Spotify say they have generated $500 million for "license holders." The way that Spotify works is that the money is divided up by percentage of total streams. Big labels have massive back catalogues, so their forty-year-old record by a dead artist earns them the same slice of the pie as a brand new-track by a new artist.

The big labels did secret deals with Spotify and the like in return for favorable royalty rates. The massive amount of catalogue being streamed guarantees that they get the massive slice of the pie (that $500 million), and the smaller producers and labels get pittance for their comparatively few streams. This is what's wrong. Catalogue and new music cannot be lumped in together. The model massively favors the larger companies with big catalogues."

Not Frere-Jones' words, but a useful collection of the tweeted criticisms of Spotify and the streaming business model by Atoms for Peace's Nigel Godrich.

Damon Krukowski, Pitchfork:

"One way we could start is to collectively acknowledge that nobody can really claim digital streams as exclusive property. So let them flow freely - from everyone, fans included - instead of only from companies that have cut deals with the copyright holders. Services like Spotify might continue to operate as they are, with their pittance of revenue sharing, but they would have to compete in an open market of free streaming by musicians and fans.

What I am envisioning is something like what has developed for music posting via YouTube, but allowed to proliferate throughout the network, without corporate control over context or quality. Perhaps that kind of competition would spark newly cooperative ideas, and take us away from the antagonistic relationship between much of the music business on one hand, and the network of musicians and fans on the other."

Independent musician Krukowski (of Galaxie 500 and Damon and Naomi) has already made one influential contribution to the streaming debate with his Making Cents op-ed for Pitchfork last year, breaking down his royalty payments.

That's an important read, but his new piece has some thoughts on how the music industry might learn from open-source software culture, with musicians finding a new "decentralised" network to distribute streaming music and make money off the back of it.

How You Turn Music Into Money in 2012 (Spoiler: Mostly iTunes)

Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic:

"The income of a non-mainstream artist like me is a patchwork quilt and streaming is currently one tiny square in that quilt. Streaming is not yet a replacement for digital sales, and to conflate the two is a mistake. I do not see streaming as a threat to my income, just like I've never regarded file-sharing as a threat but as a convenient way to hear music.

If people really like my music, I still believe they'll support it somewhere, somehow. Casual listeners won't, but they never did anyway. I don't buy ALL the music I listen to either, I never did, so why should I expect every single listener to make a purchase? I think that a subset of my listeners pay for my music, and that is a-ok because...and this is the key.....there are few middlemen between us."

Not Meyer's words, but those of cellist Zoe Keating, on whose data the article is based. Keating published a Google doc of her digital royalties for a six-month period, to help people analyse where the money was coming from, and what streaming's role might be in that. "In the interest of evolving the discussion, I am making myself into a data point," as she put it.

97% of Keating's digital income came from sales through iTunes, Amazon and her own Bandcamp page, but as the quote above indicates, she sees streaming in a positive light.

Also read her What I want from internet radio blog post from November 2012 where her views are just as applicable to Spotify and other streaming services: "I wish I could make this demand: stream my music, but in exchange give me my listener data... The new model says that in the future I'm not supposed to sell music: I'm supposed to sell concert tickets and tshirts. Ok fine, so put me in touch with the people who will buy concert tickets and tshirts."

Spotify versus iTunes, when are streams-over-time worth as much as a sale today?

David Touve, personal blog post:

"Imagine that the world is comprised of only two possible fans, and you get to pick only one of them: One of those fans will buy a download today. The other fan will enjoy your music through a streaming service for years to come.

You would be paid $0.70 - today- from the fan who buys the download today. From the other fan, you would receive payments-per-stream at the end of each year - over time - over the life of your copyright (95 years).

At what price per stream, and number of streams per year, would the two fans - the streamer and the downloader - be paying you effectively the same amount of money in today's dollars?"

When artists sell music, they get a one-off cut of the selling price. When that music is being streamed, they get a (much smaller) payment for every play. Musician Sam Duckworth recently explained how 4,685 Spotify plays of his last solo album earned him £19.22, but the question is just as much about how much streams of the album might earn him over the next 10, 20, 30 years.

Economist David Touve has been applying his knowledge to exactly this question, in an attempt to provide useful data on how streaming payouts may compare to download sales over time.

How Much Streaming is Really Worth to Artists: a Consumption Analysis

Mark Mulligan, Music Industry Blog:

"The net result is, working on a pure like-for-like basis, the per-play value of a download to an artist is $0.033 compared to $0.005 for streaming. Downloads are thus 5 ½ times more valuable to artists than streams. Of course this is still a disparity but it is much, much less than the 150 to 200 times value that has become common currency.

It is also worth noting that the artist streaming pay out rate ($0.005) is actually 45% of the rights owner pay out rate ($0.0112). So artists are earning nearly the same out of streaming as the labels and publishers."

Mulligan is a music industry analyst with a good, balanced handle on how new business models like Spotify fit into the wider scheme of things. Again, a key point here is to think about pay-per-play over a longer period of time, rather than simply comparing download and streaming payouts now.

He also notes that a lot of data around streaming royalties has "been misinterpreted and stripped of crucial context", including the contract an artist is on, whether they write their own songs, and how their music is getting onto streaming services.

Making Dollars: Clearing Up Spotify Payment Confusion

David Macias, Hypebot:

"The music business is a harder slog than it used to be. Media is fragmented into a million pieces and it's very hard to achieve the ubiquity that acts used to be able to achieve, and thus sell what they used to sell. Piracy is still rampant. But there are acts that are doing very well, because they are paying attention to where the money goes, and not bellyaching, sans facts, about the music business.

If Spotify is so bad for the music business, why are revenues for the recorded music business in Sweden up 30% (first half of the 2011 vs. the same time period in 2012), when in most other countries, it's down or flat? Spotify is responsible for roughly half of the music business revenues in Sweden."

Macias runs US firm Thirty Tigers, which distributes albums for independent artists. This was his response to Damon Krukowski's Making Cents article, and he suggested that musicians should be asking their labels tough questions about streaming money, rather than just Spotify and rival services.

He also suggested that in the earliest days of digital music, the music industry "conducted their affairs in an atmosphere of fear and lack of understanding, and many bad decisions resulted", and warns that now more power is shifting to artists and managers, "let's be careful not to make similar mistakes because we're approaching the discussion from that same vantage point of misinformation and fear".

Spotify's D.A. Wallach Explains How Spotify Pays Artists

Mike King, Hypebot:

"People need to transition from unit-based thinking to consumption-based thinking in terms of royalties. We feel the metric of success should be based on how many people are listening to your music over a period of years, as opposed to looking at how many units are shipping in one week.

People are used to seeing big numbers from a unit-based model, but that's really front loading what is happening. Comparing iTunes sales with Spotify payments over a two month period of time is not a great way to look at things.

What we are trying to create is a system in which you earn royalties forever for good music, and the time horizon is simply different than what folks are familiar with now."

King's interview with Wallach - a musician who's also Spotify's official "artist-in-residence" - is a good primer on how the company is pitching its business model to musicians.

It includes his hopes for the future that "If we can get to the scale of Netflix - which has 20 million subscribers - we estimate we'd be paying out to artists what iTunes is paying out on a year to year basis".

Although more accurately he means how much Spotify would be paying out to the music industry: labels and publishers, and then onto artists and songwriters depending on their deals with those rightsholders.

Adventures in the Netherlands

Will Page, Spotify:

"The last published study on the relationship between Spotify and piracy was in 2011, when an industry report stated that piracy in Sweden had fallen by 25%.
Looking beyond Sweden and to bring the debate up to date, in this report we focus on Spotify's recent success in the Netherlands. What does piracy look like there, now?

Working with analytics company Musicmetric, we are able to understand how regularly people use BitTorrent for music piracy and how levels of piracy dier from one artist to the next. Not only has the number of people engaging in music piracy in the Netherlands fallen in recent times, it also appears to be an infrequent activity for most of those who remain."

This report was published by Spotify's own director of economics, although it's not a direct response to the artist payouts debate. Instead, it's an analysis of piracy, sales and streams in one country - the Netherlands - looking at whether Spotify and its rivals have reduced piracy there, and what happens when artists withhold their albums from streaming services.

No surprise, perhaps, that it suggests the answer to the first question is yes, and that in the second case, artists who withhold see more pirated downloads per legal sale than those who don't.

Even so, this is a reminder that since they first launched, streaming services have argued that they're cannibalising piracy more than sales, but have lacked definitive data to prove their case. This report is Spotify's attempt to make a step forward on that front.

Why Spotify is NOT the Enemy of Artists, and Who Is...

"As much as we disagree with Spotify over their rates and PR spin on several issues, we also recognize that they are legal, licensed and pay out royalties as they have been negotiated. Artists are able to opt out of Spotify individually (and also if their label permits). It is for these reasons that Spotify are NOT the enemy.

However this begs the question, if Spotify are not the enemy, who is? Well, as we stated above it is the massively deceptive Ad Tech businesses who have been financing mainstream music piracy for over a decade. This is the Silicon Valley internet tech lobby (lead by Google) who seek to dismantle and destroy copyright protection for individual creators."

Google-bashing is increasingly common within the music industry, but this piece from The Trichordist isn't just about that. The blog, which campaigns for an "ethical and sustainable internet" for artists, has regularly trained its sights on advertising-supported piracy sites, where ads from big brands (served by major ad networks) may be providing an income for copyright infringement.

One facet of this argument: if more of those advertising revenues were flowing into the coffers of Spotify and its rivals, they'd be paying artists more money. A US scheme was recently announced to block ads from Google and other networks from sites offering pirated content, so there is action on this score.

I'm all for discussing streaming, but please stop shouting

Andy Malt, CMU:

"To be frank, any new self-releasing artist who thinks Spotify alone will provide them with a living is a fool. Or is being advised by a fool. Indeed, any musician who thinks that sound recording revenue alone will provide a viable income stream is living in a dreamland. And that's not a particularly new phenomenon - even in the height of the CD boom, record sales income was only one of a number of revenue streams for artists, and in the early years of their career it wouldn't be a key income either.

Artists need to build themselves a business that incorporates records, songs, merchandise and/or tickets, and look for simple ways to maximise all those revenues.

Crucially, they also need to start developing premium products and services for core fanbase - fans who have always been willing to buy more than a gig ticket every year and a record every other, but who were often left under-supplied by the old music business. Which is why, for artists, the real revolution caused by the web isn't the emerging streaming market, but the boom in direct to fan and pre-order sites."

Out of the many thousands of words written about Spotify vs Atoms for Peace, this article on trade website CMU has the best blend of balance and constructive suggestions for the future.

The point is not just that artists can sell tickets and t-shirts so shouldn't worry about how high (or low) their streaming payouts are, though.

It's a pointer to a healthier relationship between services like Spotify and musicians, where the former find more ways to help the latter make money by pointing fans towards tickets, merchandise, box-sets, crowdfunding campaigns and so on.
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Spotify vs Musicians: 10 things to read to better understand the debate

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Ever since Thom Yorke's Atoms for Peace removed their albums from Spotify, a heated debate has been raging over the value of streaming music services for musicians and the music industry. The argument may have gone mainstream in recent weeks, but it's not a new discussion.

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Streaming services have changed the way superstars put out music, but fans are getting left in the cold. Will this new reality last?

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Streaming services have changed the way superstars put out music, but fans are getting left in the cold. Will this new reality last?

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"This year, if you wanted to keep up with new albums by Beyoncé, Drake, Frank Ocean and Kanye West, among many others, you would have had to subscribe to not one but two streaming services."

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This year, if you wanted to keep up with new albums by Beyoncé, Drake, Frank Ocean and Kanye West, among many others, you would have had to subscribe to not one but two streaming services. In a strategy that could represent a fundamental shift for the record business, Apple Music and Tidal have sought to pull users from Spotify, the world's biggest streaming service, with a series of competing exclusive releases. As part of the deals, Apple, in particular, funds superstar artists' songs and videos, and showcases them on TV commercials and online radio stations.

But over the past few months, a backlash has developed against this new reality. The tipping point may have come in August, when Frank Ocean delivered a video album, Endless, to fulfill the terms of his contract with Def Jam/Universal, then gave a superior album, Blonde, to Apple as part of an exclusive deal. ( Blonde sold 276,000 copies in its first week - only Drake and Beyoncé have had bigger debuts this year.) Lucian Grainge, chief executive of Universal Music, the world's biggest record label, responded by sending an internal memo banning all Universal artists from making exclusive deals. Then, in September, Lady Gaga became the biggest star yet to come out against exclusives. "I told my label that if they signed those contracts with Apple Music and Tidal, I'd leak all my own new music," she said in an interview with Apple's Beats 1 Radio.

On Gaga's side of the streaming debate is Spotify. The service has 100 million users, 40 million of whom pay for premium subscriptions, and an ironclad policy against exclusives. "We think exclusives are bad for artists and bad for fans," says a source close to the service. Spotify has reportedly gone so far as to retaliate against artists who have accepted exclusive deals with other streaming services, deliberately burying them once the exclusive shows up on Spotify, and keeping them out of top playlists. (Spotify reps have denied this.)

The dispute over exclusives comes at a time when streaming has asserted its dominance in the music business. After a post-Napster malaise going on nearly two decades, labels finally increased revenues this year, by 8.1 percent, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

At the same time, labels aren't the money machines they were in the CD era, and Apple Music gives artists an alternate revenue source. Over the past year, it has funded videos by Taylor Swift, M.I.A. and the Weeknd, and given artists from Drake to DJ Khaled their own Beats 1 shows, not to mention TV advertising. In September, Travis Scott's Apple Music exclusive, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, became his first album to hit Number One on the charts.

Superstar exclusives, in turn, have helped Apple and, to a lesser extent, Tidal generate millions of new customers, intensifying competition with Spotify. Apple, with pop-star-friendly Jimmy Iovine and his staff manning a sort of Record Industry South at the tech giant's new Los Angeles outpost, has learned that it makes sense to throw money at star power, regardless of what labels think. The exclusives "are working. These are successful," says Sean Glass, an ex-Apple Music employee. "But I know these don't contribute to [labels'] bottom lines as much as they would like."

For Universal, at least, exclusives started to look like a dubious business proposition. "They were starting to see diminishing returns," says a source close to the situation. "By going to a single platform, you're limiting the audience."

But for now, Universal is the only label taking a stand against exclusives. Tom Corson, president of Sony-owned RCA Records, says that after the success of recent exclusives like Bryson Tiller's Trapsoul and The Get Down soundtrack, the label would consider more if the right deals came along. "They're very tricky," he says. "We've used them to our advantage here; on the other hand, they do limit the exposure of the music. It's an ongoing discussion. I don't think we need an ultimatum or policy at the moment."

Exclusives may be driving a wedge between some artists and their labels. Almost every artist contract has language that allows a label to release an album however it wants - and deny an exclusive if necessary. But, still, if Beyoncé wants to do an exclusive, label execs might not want to disagree. Perhaps equally alarming for labels, Chance the Rapper achieved massive success this year with an assist from an Apple exclusive - and no label whatsoever.

"Exclusives are terrible for the music industry and fans alike."

Ocean may have represented a worst-case scenario. Usually, an artist can't leave a contract without a breach-of-contract lawsuit. Reps for Ocean and Universal wouldn't comment on the split, but music-business sources say the label let him walk into Apple's arms - a major-label divorce that Prince and Neil Young were never able to achieve.

Ocean had been unhappy at Def Jam for years and was looking to quit the label as quickly as possible. "I couldn't get nobody to pay attention to him," producer Tricky Stewart, who brought Ocean to Def Jam, told a reporter. Another source with knowledge of the situation believes Ocean's departure was inevitable. "Frank Ocean is a unique case," the source says. "He's an eccentric artist [who] doesn't want to be affiliated with a label."

What does all this mean for fans? Namely, that they should expect exclusives to continue for the near future. Iovine recently said as much, suggesting that music listeners get used to the idea of having multiple streaming subscriptions, in the same way TV viewers might subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu.

The situation partly reflects the vacuum at the heart of the music business - it's a Wild West where whoever invests the most money could win. But some worry that fans will get lost in the struggle. "Exclusives are terrible for the music industry and fans alike," says a music-business source. "The industry has traditionally been terrible to consumers. We drove them to piracy from overcharging for CDs with two good songs attached to 13 album cuts. Now, labels and streaming services are making them pay for a subscription service that doesn't have all of the music they're looking for. It's easy for millionaires like Jimmy to say that people will have multiple subscriptions like Netflix and Hulu. The reality is that half of the country can barely afford gas for their cars or to eat out more than once a month."

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Scorecard: 2016's Biggest Exclusives
These stars partnered with Apple or Tidal - here's how it worked out.

Service: Apple Music
Terms: A reported multimillion-dollar deal, including "Hotline Bling" video production and Beats 1 interview
First-week sales: 1.04 million
Verdict: Apple's campaign helped Views become the year's biggest-selling LP so far. "I imagine Apple benefited mightily in new-subscriber trials," says Larry Miller, a former music exec who directs the music-business program at NYU Steinhardt.
Kanye West, The Life of Pablo
Service: TidalWest is a Tidal co-owner with a reported three percent equity in the company.
First-week sales: 94,000
Verdict: Great album, messy release, disappointing sales - Kanye said it would be available only on Tidal, then reversed course within a few weeks. "Just massively confusing," Miller says.
Frank Ocean, Blonde
Service: Apple Music
Terms: Unknown. But by leaving Def Jam, Ocean gets to keep the profits for himself, including what Forbes estimated to be $1 million in the album's first week.
First-week sales: 276,000
Verdict: By fleeing Def Jam/Universal, Ocean made music fans sympathetic to major record labels. "The optics on that were not perfect for him," Miller says.

Beyoncé, Lemonade
Tidal
Terms: As a part-owner of husband Jay Z's company, Beyoncé earns additional equity when subscriber numbers rise.
First-week sales: 653,000
Verdict: Lemonade was a critical and commercial smash (nearly 1.7 million units sold by midyear), and Tidal briefly shot to the top of the iTunes App Store rankings upon its release. "Flawless execution," Miller says.

Sales based on track-equivalent units, including streaming and download numbers, according to Billboard.

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How Apple Music, Tidal Exclusives Are Reshaping Music Industry

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This year, if you wanted to keep up with new albums by Beyoncé, Drake, Frank Ocean and Kanye West, among many others, you would have had to subscribe to not one but two streaming services.

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January 27th is being called "the day the music died" by many Canadians. That's the day that an Ontario judge approved bankruptcy for Canada's largest music retailer HMV.

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On Friday January 27th, an Ontario Canada Superior Court of Judge approved placing HMV Canada into receivership. The application was filed by HUK 10 Ltd, a subsidiary of the U.K. restructuring company Hilco UK which bought HMV in 2011.

Court filings show that retailer owes $39 million to the restructuring firm and has not made a payments in more than two years. Major and independent music and film distributors are owed millions more.

All 103 HMV Canada stores are liquidating inventory and closing before April 30th. HMV operates as a separate company in the UK and Hong Kong.

HMV stands for His Master's Voice, the title of a painting by Francis Barraud of the dog Nipper listening to a cylinder phonograph, which was bought by the Gramophone Company in 1899.[5] For advertising purposes this was changed to a wind-up gramophone, and eventually used simply as a silhouette, according to Wikipedia.

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Day The Music Died In Canada: HMV Bankrupt, Closing All 102 Stores

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January 27th is being called "the day the music died" by many Canadians. That's the day that an Ontario judge approved bankruptcy for Canada's largest music retailer HMV. __________________________ On Friday January 27th, an Ontario Canada Superior Court of Judge approved placing HMV Canada into receivership. The application was filed...

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Big shifts in the music business tend to make artists wary, and perhaps rightly so. With the exception of superstar acts like Adele and Taylor Swift, musicians and songwriters across the board have seen their earnings dwindle thanks to the new payment models of digital downloads and music streaming-and they've been plenty vocal about their complaints. Some major acts like Radiohead's Thom Yorke have lashed out against some of streaming's less-than-ideal royalty cuts.

Much of the ire is aimed at record labels: the giant, corporate entities that negotiate royalty payments with streaming music services and have long been accused of hoarding profits at artists' expense. But Thursday (Feb. 4), one label started to sing a surprising new tune. Warner Music Group-one of the "big three" record labels in the world, along with Sony Music and Universal Music-declared it will pay artists a portion of whatever it makes from selling its ownership stakes in services like Spotify, if (or when) those businesses ever go public.

Not to be outdone, Sony Music quickly shouted out its own promise to do the same.

At this point, a Spotify IPO is still months away-if one even is to happen. That means Warner and Sony are only making vague, hypothetical commitments. It's also unclear exactly how much money artists stand to make from the maybe-deals: Warner and Sony didn't disclose the size of their stakes in streaming services (although some estimate Warner's hold in Spotify to be around $200 million, assuming a recent Spotify valuation of $8 billion)-nor did they explain how they would divide and distribute the payouts made to musicians. Artists are unlikely to snag any sizable wealth from these deals, analysts and industry experts say.

Still, the twin announcements mean a lot on their own. They're signals from record labels that artists are valuable, and that their frustrations about profit are being heard-serving, as MIDiA Research analyst Mark Mulligan told Bloomberg, "even more than a gesture or a token of good will... almost a statement of ideology."

The language Warner used is particularly telling. "As there is an ongoing debate in the media regarding how artists should be paid for use of their music on streaming services, we wanted to take this opportunity to address the issue head-on," CEO Stephen Cooper said to investors on a company earnings call yesterday. Clear is the message here: Warner wants to recognize that artists-and their concerns-do still matter.

Of course, the extent of artists' power within their labels won't be put to the test until all these hypothetical events really play out. But with the biggest major label, Universal Music, now being called upon to make a pledge similar to Warner and Sony's, it seems the record industry is finally due to start paying more attention to the actual people on whom they hinge their business.

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Music streaming is forcing record labels to try playing nice with artists

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Big shifts in the music business tend to make artists wary, and perhaps rightly so. With the exception of superstar acts like Adele and Taylor Swift, musicians and songwriters across the board have seen their earnings dwindle thanks to the new payment models of digital downloads and music streaming-and they've been plenty vocal about their complaints.

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37% of the British population are listening to music on YouTube, compared to 12% on iTunes; 10% Spotify’s free tier and 4% Spotify’s premium tier

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Warner Music Group has announced a new partnership, with Sony Pictures subsidiary Internet Media Services (IMS), which the label hopes will boost its advertising revenues in some under-monetised parts of the world. IMS...

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Big music data: streaming youth, YouTube v Spotify and more

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Big data isn't a new music-industry trend. Labels, managers and artists have been awash in data since the early days of the digital music era.

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Most music streaming services offer free trials, student discounts and various. Spotify is available for free if listeners are willing to bare with 1 minutes worth of adverts every 5-10 songs. These opportunities are taken advantage of by listeners, at the cost of everyone involved in the music making process.

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It started with the likes of Amazon and iTunes replacing the bricks and mortar HMVs of the world, and was followed by the usurping of magazines by music blogs and social media. More recently, the music world has witnessed the incursion of online subscription services like Spotify and Deezer into radio territory.

Disruption has now shifted up a gear, with social media being used as a direct-to-fan marketing tool that puts the artist in direct contact with their global fan base. It means a touring band can outsell traditional outlets, all via a tweet and an email, and at a marketing cost that is close to zero.

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The ins and outs of streaming are apparently more confusing and politically rooted than Donald Trump's campaign. As we attempted to understand who is still holding out of which service and why - or even better yet, who is holding out only certain albums and why - the most simple answer is that there's a whole lot of s#!t going on in regards to streaming. Beatles fans rejoiced in December when the group finally joined the streaming revolution, as others mourned the loss of Taylor Swift's discography from Spotify. And as for Black Keys fans, you won't find the duo's two most recent albums, and ,available to stream anywhere though their older work remains fair game. Amid the confusion, one thing has become clear: At the current moment, a library of millions of songs aside, no one streaming service alone can offer everything.

Between legalities and/or lack of lucrative offers, some artists have been struggling to navigate through this (relatively) newfound digital medium while others have fearlessly taken on the role of leader (I'm talking to you, T. Swift), building a platform out of physical sales and standing strong atop it to speak out against unfair payment. Even if proper payment were a guarantee, streaming services would still be in the ring to battle it out over exclusive content. Kanye's bold claim that his latest album, The Life of Pablo,will " never be for sale" (it was, only briefly, available on Tidal) is evidence of where alliances lie in the sense of streaming, as if Tidal's lengthy and star-studded list of owners wasn't indication enough. While Apple Music's exclusive offer grants artists an outlet (via Beats 1) rather than a piece of the pie.

Yes, it's enough to make your head spin. But perhaps some relief has arrived. Below is a list of late adopters, if you will ... artists who are withholding streaming, in one way or another, and the best explanation possible as to why and how, willingly or not, they are doing so.

-Lyndsey Havens
Staff Writer

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Taylor Swift

Apple: YesNoExcept for 1989
Not many artists have the commercial clout to stand up to music's middle men, but Taylor Swift has such broad appeal that she's been able to demand better terms from all of them. Spotify couldn't afford to meet those terms; bye-bye, Spotify. Apple didn't want to pay artists during Apple Music's three-month trial period; Swift wrote them a letter and they caved. The absence of from Tidal, then, is probably a play for a better deal for her blockbuster album, although the details are hidden behind the scenes. -Wren Graves

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Prince

Apple: Only HitnRun Phase TwoOnly "Stare" from HitnRun Phase TwoYes
"The internet's completely over," Prince declared in a 2010 interview with The Mirror. He cited iTunes and YouTube as top predators who devour what should be an artist's paycheck - which is why he banned both services from using and offering his music (though HitnRun Phase Two is available on iTunes). This in mind, it came as no surprise when Prince pulled his entire discography from every streaming service. What did come as a surprise is when he announced his music would only be available on Tidal - he then used the platform to release both HitnRun Phase One and HitnRun Phase Two as Tidal exclusives. Since its inception, Tidal's main mission has been to pay artists more fairly, and it does, which is why Prince so strongly supports it as his (sole) streaming platform of choice and continues to shun the rest. -Lyndsey Havens

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Garth Brooks

Apple: NoNoNo
GhostTunes:God, yes.
What, you don't have GhostTunes? The media store created by Garth Brooks that began distributing Garth Brooks' CDs, Garth Brooks' digital albums, Garth Brooks' collectibles, and Garth Brooks' paraphernalia? The site that describes Garth Brooks as, "Country Music Legend/Icon"? It's the next big thing, according to Garth Brooks. Country's version of Tidal (and with a growing roster of musicians), GhostTunes was launched in 2014, and artists like Taylor Swift, AC/DC, and J. Cole have chosen to strike distribution deals. This is probably because GhostTunes pays 80% to the royalty holder and keeps 20% for itself, well below the industry average of 30%. There's no streaming, so it's unlikely to attract many of the young and poor, but that might not be the goal. Streaming doesn't pay as well as albums do, and besides, Garth joked that his 2014-15 shows were "the official wheelchair-and-walker tour." -Wren Graves

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Bob Seger

Apple: NoNoNo
Bob Seger prefers to keep his life somewhat private and moderately simple. He told Rolling Stone he stays off social media because he "has no desire to be that public" and that he stays off of streaming services personally by choice and professionally because of a stalemate that has him frustrated. "I wish people could get any song at any time," he said in the article, but explained that the ongoing and unresolved issue with streaming lies with his manager and Capitol Records. -Lyndsey Havens

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Tool

Apple: NoNoNo
The old "albums vs. singles" debate strikes another blow against streamers. Maynard James Keenan falls squarely in the "albums" category, and fans of Tool have to make a choice: the whole record all at once or nothing at all. It's interesting to note, however, that this obstinate attitude only extends to Tool; Keenan's more recent projects A Perfect Circle and Puscifer are both widely available. In the same way that Keenan seems to have left Tool behind him, he has kept the commercial ideas of the period in the past, right where he found them. -Wren Graves

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King Crimson

Apple: NoNoNo
Guitarist Robert Fripp, the only member to have played in King Crimson since it formed in the late '60s, has had a bone to pick with labels regarding unfair payment for nearly as long. One of his more notable injustices can be traced to none other than Kanye West, when West sampled "21st Century Schizoid Man" on his hit "Power". West's song racked up over 1 million views on YouTube before Fripp was even approached about granting permission to sample his song. Over the years, Fripp has alluded to several other troubles he has had with Universal Music Group, and refraining from streaming services allows him, and King Crimson as a whole, to maintain some control. So though you can't stream the group's debut LP, In the Court of the Crimson King, on any streaming service, you can find The Flaming Lips' reimagined version of the record if you are feeling desperate. -Lyndsey Havens

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Thom Yorke/Atoms For Peace/In Rainbows

Apple: YesNoNo
Thom Yorke, who called Spotify "the last desperate fart of a dying corpse," has unsurprisingly withheld his non- Radiohead projects from that service and Tidal. He went on to say, "I feel like as musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing ... What's happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen." What is surprising is that he has reached an agreement with Apple Music, perhaps because he thinks the service does a better job of remunerating new artists, his chief complaint with streaming services. Yet his stance on YouTube is perhaps more illustrative; he says that they "steal music," and true, they do pay out less to artists than every other service. But Yorke doesn't litigate his videos off the site, as some other entries on our list have chosen to do. Fans can still watch the video for "Black Swan", but Yorke doesn't see any of the money. It's a high-wire act, the balance between getting paid and appeasing fans, but Yorke walks it more gracefully than most. -Wren Graves

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Which Artists Are Still Holding Out on Streaming?

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The ins and outs of streaming are apparently more confusing and politically rooted than Donald Trump's campaign. As we attempted to understand who is still holding out of which service and why - or even better yet, who is holding out only certain albums and why - the most simple answer is that there's a whole lot of s#!t going on in regards to streaming.

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"It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is." - Taylor Swift

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This may well be remembered as the week Taylor Swift established herself as the most powerful 24-year-old in music industry history.

The singer's latest album, 1989, is expected to have the largest sales week for any album since 2002, when Eminem sold a little over 1.3m copies of The Eminem Show in its first week. It will also be the first album to sell more than 1m copies in the US this year amid declines across the industry.

Yet this week was also marked by Swift's decision to remove her entire back catalogue from music streaming site Spotify, arguably the biggest growing source of music consumption in the world. It boasts more than 10 million paying subscribers, across 58 countries, on top of the 30 million who access the streaming service for free.

The move has been condemned by some as shortsighted and applauded by others as a savvy way to drive up her album sales.

The singer was one of Spotify's most popular artists, with 25% of listeners having streamed her songs. Her songs were on 19m playlists and the lead single from 1989, Shake It Off, went straight to number one on Spotify. But the singer's relationship with the site has always been rocky - Swift initially refused to release her 2012 album Red on Spotify, critising the fact that artists receive between just $0.006 and $0.0084 per song play.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal in July this year, the singer said: "Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It's my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is. I hope they don't underestimate themselves or undervalue their art."

Swift is not the first artist to withdraw music from spotify. Radiohead's Thom Yorke called for a boycott of the service over unfair payment practices, removing all his solo projects from the site and describing it as "the last desperate fart of a dying corpse". The Beatles, AC/DC and The Black Keys are also not available to stream on Spotify.

Despite the vast numbers of people streaming her music on the site, David Holmes, an editor for tech publication Pando Daily, did not think Swift removing her back catalogue from Spotify would "have any noticeable impact on her sales".

He said: "She has probably sold over 1.3m copies of her album in the first week and nobody has done that since Eminem in 2002. She is one of the few artists today who can really drive sales and not just streams, so I don't think this is a move that will hurt her at all.

"But Taylor Swift is an anomaly. I think you could count on one hand the number of artists that could pull this off and remain popular - as digital download sales are in freefall. I do think eventually every artist is going to have to be on a streaming service ... Over time, if artists want their music to be heard in any meaningful way, they need to be on a streaming service."

But Holmes said the implications of Swift's move for Spotify could be more serious.

"In terms of Spotify this is really not great news, particularly because iTunes is about to relaunch its own streaming service," he said. "iTunes is unique from Spotify because they also drive digital downloads, so we could see deals where artists are giving Apple exclusive rights to stream it, on whatever subscription service they create, because they are still focused on people buying their albums. And if Apple was able to get exclusive deals with the kinds of artists that still sell albums - your Beyoncés, your Taylor Swifts, your Lady Gagas - that will really, really hurt Spotify. So there are a few things about this in the long term that may not bode well for Spotify."

Others have suggested that Swift's decision to remove her music from Spotify could be tied to the sale of her Nashville-based record label Big Machine, for around $200m. Driving up the instant income from digital downloads, rather than the "steady trickle" from streaming, could boost the profits and value of the label, particularly as Swift, their most valuable asset, is nearing the end of her contract.

Spotify said it hoped that Swift would return to the service, noting that nearly 16 million users have played her songs in the last 30 days. The company claims it paid around $500m in royalties to rights holders last year and $1bn since 2009. It says the biggest album on the service each month typically generates more than $400,000 in royalties.

Jamie Oborne, manager of band The 1975 who also have a big teen following, said that for most musicians Spotify was now an essential part of people discovering and accessing their music and said Swift was "an isolated example".

"For an artist like The 1975, Spotify is mainly a discovery tool," he said. "It's a new mode of consuming music and it obviously has a value. The fact that she had so many millions of subscribers does show there was a real audience for Taylor Swift on Spotify, so it was maybe an odd thing to have done but I wouldn't say its risky for her."

Oborne continued: "Spotify is growing in importance for all artists as it represents a cultural change in the way people consume music. We don't see it as a negative platform - obviously like anyone we'd prefer to see the monetisation of streaming be higher - but I can see no reason the we would ever remove our music from it."
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Taylor Swift takes a stand over Spotify music royalties

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This may well be remembered as the week Taylor Swift established herself as the most powerful 24-year-old in music industry history. The singer's latest album, 1989, is expected to have the largest sales week for any album since 2002, when Eminem sold a little over 1.3m copies of The Eminem Show in its first week.

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"As artists seek to protect their own revenue they are signing exclusive deals with streaming services."

- This leads to bankruptcy of physical music shops

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The Rise of Music Streaming Services and What It Means for Listeners and the Industry.

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The Rise of Music Streaming Services and What It Means for Listeners and the Industry.

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Spotify
Apple Music
Deezer
Tidal
Pandora

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‘In iPod culture we are simultaneously connected and disconnected from the urban world that we inhabit; connected through the use of our mobile technologies whilst simultaneously disconnected from the physical world through which we move’ Bull 2007:13