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the people in rich countries were to subscribe, the industry’s fortunes would be transformed, says Claudio Aspesi of Sanford C. Bernstein, another research outfit.

7 YouTube, Google’s popular online video service, is expected to launch a paid-for music-streaming service in the coming months, which should help boost the numbers. So might bundling music with a mobile-phone subscription, as AT&T is doing with Beats, a seller of headphones that has branched into subscription music.

8 Having previously fought losing battles against technological change, record executives have been quicker to embrace streaming’s surge. Until recently Apple’s iTunes was the sole king reigning over the digital-music realm; now there are dozens of princelings. This gives more negotiating power to the surviving three major record labels (Universal, Warner and Sony), down from six 15 years ago. “I see myself as an arms dealer selling to everyone who will buy,” says a gleeful record executive.

9 Streaming is also good news for independent labels, some of which are enjoying double the market share they had on CDs. It is also making it easier for music to travel beyond national boundaries. “We are getting revenue from markets where we never had a presence in the physical world,” such as Brazil, says Fredrik Ekander, the boss of Cosmos, a Swedish label.

10 Charles Caldas of Merlin, a licensing agency for independent labels, says streaming also helps “monetise the nostalgia market” (ie, artists’ past work). In the physical world more than two-thirds of sales are for new releases; on Deezer only a third of songs streamed are new.

11 To distinguish themselves from rivals and help users navigate their vast catalogues, streaming firms are offering curated playlists, compiled by algorithms, celebrities and consumers themselves. Users can also see what their friends on social networks are playing, and share tracks and playlists, which helps new acts take off. Avicii, a Swedish DJ, has become the most streamed artist on Spotify.

12 Streaming is forcing a creative but undisciplined industry to pay more attention to data. In early March Spotify reportedly paid $200m for Echo Nest, which analyses data for music services and helps shape playlist algorithms. Beats soon followed by purchasing TopSpin Media, which collects data to help artists connect with their fans. Warner Music Group recently launched a new label in partnership with Shazam, a music-recognition app. Together they will trawl Shazam’s listener data to identify rising artists to sign up.

13 Providing the streaming services can be persuaded to share their data, record labels will be able to see the response to new songs immediately, and put marketing dollars behind those that strike a chord. Performers will get a better idea where their fans live, to optimise their tour schedules.

14 The economics of streaming look quite different from those of earlier music formats. On-demand streaming services pay a record label about three-tenths of a cent each time one of its songs is played, and online-radio services even less (see chart). But music fans may play a favourite tune dozens, maybe hundreds of times, so those fractions of pennies can add up. Streaming subscribers pay aroun本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。