What is On-Demand Music Streaming?

On-demand music streaming contrasts with non-interactive webcasting because it is an interactive service, meaning the user is able to listen to any song in the Digital Service Provider (DSP)’s database without any restrictions on time or playback capabilities. The user can pause, skip, rewind, and create playlists—but not copy the digital file.

Popular on-demand music streaming services include Spotify, Tidal, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and Bandcamp. In the world of computing, such DSPs are considered “cloud servers,” meaning they operate via remote servers which store data and allow users to access them wherever there is access to the internet.

Check out some of our other guides on music industry topics at Exploration Learn, or subscribe to our YouTube channel for more information.

In this newsletter:

Research firm Luminate’s mid-year report for 2024 reveals significant growth in the recorded music market. The report also highlights that 46 artists achieved over 1 billion US streams, with major distribution playing a significant role.

LANDR, an AI-focused music platform, has introduced the Fair Trade AI program to help musicians benefit from AI technology while ensuring consent and compensation.

New US Senate bill aims to further curb AI’s unchecked use of copyright material, with proposals for AI content watermarks and protections for creators. RIAA boss Mitch Glazier says that “leading tech companies refuse to share basic data” and the COPIED Act “would grant much needed visibility”.

Now, the details...

Exploration Weekly - July 19, 2024
Compiled by Ana Berberana

Global On-Demand Music Streams Up 15.1% in First Half of 2024

Research firm Luminate has published its mid-year report for 2024, with a raft of stats exploring the continued growth of the recorded music market. The headline stat: 2.29 trillion. That’s how many on-demand audio streams there were globally in the first six months of 2024, up 15.1% from the same period last year. The report zeroes in on North America for other stats, reporting that US on-demand audio streams were up 8% in the first half of this year to 665.8bn. So, the US accounted for just over 29% of global streams, but that share is falling slightly – down from just under 31% a year ago. One thing that hasn’t changed: the share of US consumption between current and catalog music. It’s exactly the same as last year: 27.2% is current music and 72.8% catalog. Other trends picked out by Luminate in its report include Latin music being the fastest growing ‘core’ genre in the US, growing its share of on-demand streaming there by 0.51 percentage points year-on-year. There were also small rises in share for rock, pop and country, although R&B / Hip-Hop (grouped together as one core genre in Luminate’s methodology) is still the biggest in terms of actual streams. There is also some analysis of the environment for artists in the US. Luminate noted that 46 artists had more than 1bn US on-demand audio streams in the first half of this year, and 43 of them “had major distribution listed on their most-streamed track”. Of those with between 10m and 50m streams in that period, 62.3% had major distribution, while of those with 1m-10m streams, 62.1% had independent distribution.

LANDR’s ‘Fair Trade AI’ Program Lets Musicians Earn Money by Contributing to AI Training

AI-focused music production, distribution and education platform LANDR has devised a new way for musicians to capitalize on the incoming AI age with consent and compensation in mind. With its new Fair Trade AI program, any musician who wishes to join can be part of this growing pool of songs that will be used to train LANDR’s various AI models, tools or systems. Dubbed the “music industry’s first mature opt-in attribution model,” the team at LANDR feels this is a viable route to get artists a new recurring revenue stream and to help it develop next generation AI music technology at the same time. LANDR has been in the AI music space since it launched an early AI mastering solution in 2013. Now the company has grown to provide a much larger suite of tools, offering everything from distribution services, educational courses, plug-ins, mastering and more. Participating artists will receive 20% of the revenue generated by LANDR’s tools — whether it is an AI plugin, mobile app or cloud service — that make use of this dataset in its training. Musicians can also add in new music to the dataset over time, growing the share in that 20% of the revenue pie that they will receive from being part of the dataset.

US Senators Propose COPIED Act to Rein in AI's “Theft” of Creative Content

US senators have proposed yet more new legislation to regulate generative AI, with music industry trade organizations welcoming the move. The COPIED Act would “set new federal transparency guidelines for marking, authenticating and detecting AI-generated content” and “protect journalists, actors and artists against AI-driven theft”. “Artificial intelligence has given bad actors the ability to create deepfakes of every individual, including those in the creative community, to imitate their likeness without their consent and profit off of counterfeit content”, says Marsha Blackburn, one of the senators sponsoring the bill. “The COPIED Act takes an important step to better defend common targets like artists and performers against deepfakes and other inauthentic content”. Mitch Glazier, CEO of the Recording Industry Association Of America, voiced his support for the bill saying, “Leading tech companies refuse to share basic data about the creation and training of their models as they profit from copying and using unlicensed copyrighted material to generate synthetic recordings that unfairly compete with original works”. He added that the COPIED Act “would grant much needed visibility into AI development and pave the way for more ethical innovation and fair and transparent competition in the digital marketplace”. The proposed legislation would require the US National Institute Of Standards And Technology to develop new standards, and a watermarking system, to easily identify AI-generated or AI-manipulated content. Additionally, it would establish standards to allow creators and journalists to attach ‘provenance information’ to their content online, as well as prohibiting “the unauthorized use of content with provenance information to train AI models or generate AI content”.

The Major Labels Are Suing Verizon — Infringement Complaint Targets Subscribers’ Alleged P2P and BitTorrent Piracy

The major labels are suing Verizon over the alleged “pervasive” copyright infringement of its internet subscribers – with an emphasis on “P2P file-sharing networks” and BitTorrent itself. Notwithstanding the numerous references to file sharing and BitTorrent, the majors (and a number of their subsidiaries) only recently submitted the straightforward complaint to a New York federal court. First identified by TorrentFreak, the legal action marks the latest in a line of cases against internet service providers (ISPs). In keeping with the longstanding industry focus on curbing ISPs’ alleged infringement – or more specifically the alleged infringement of their subscribers – Verizon is hardly a stranger to courtroom confrontations with the RIAA. While that doesn’t fully explain the dated verbiage, it’s worth bearing in mind amid this newest infringement battle with Verizon, which allegedly “provides its high-speed service to a massive community of online pirates, who it knows repeatedly use that service to infringe” the protected works in question. Those works include releases from all manner of commercially prominent artists, according to the straightforward legal text, which closely resembles that of several other infringement actions against ISPs. All told, the filing companies have “since early 2020” forwarded north of 340,000 infringement notices to Verizon under an agreement with piracy monitor OpSec (formerly MarkMonitor), per the document.

Random Ramblings

  • Shape of Streams: Ed Sheeran Crowned U.K.’s King of Streaming.
  • Music sales are growing faster than games and video in the UK.
  • Explore science fiction worlds from the last few decades – and what these fictional settings tell us about ourselves.
  • Billboard Explains: Katy Perry’s success on the Billboard Charts.

Who is Exploration?

Exploration is proud to be the company of choice to administer much of the world’s most important media. We rely on advanced technology and a competent, full-time staff of 70+ people to help our clients and partners better control their data and collect their money.

We wrote a free book on how the music business works.

To see who is collecting your royalties, request a free copyright audit.