Zoë Keating on the Streaming Service Debate

Zoë Keating on the Streaming Service Debate

By: Joseph Zapinski

Zoë Keating is a professional cellist that has become somewhat famous for more than just her music. Her take on streaming services like Spotify and Google Play have provided new insights into the debate surrounding this topic. In my opinion, what makes her words on this issue so important and so necessary, is that these opinions are coming from an established musician who is already deeply involved in the music industry. She isn't the most popular, but nevertheless has made her personal brand popular enough to make a living from doing what she loves.

Keating takes a fresh look at this debate and has provided metrics of her own to show up-and-coming artists, curious music listeners, and anyone else who is interested what someone like her actually makes selling her music online. One of her biggest points is that digital music sales are still the most important weapon in a musician's arsenal. She points out that thinking you can actually make a living from streaming services alone is wishful thinking. Streaming is not a tool to make money, rather it's a way for artists to gather data about how people listen to their music so that they can better market and sell their content in the digital music sphere (referring to places like iTunes.)

This opinion is just a very small portion of a huge debate going on in the music industry at the moment about the power of streaming services and whether or not their business models negatively affect emerging artists. However, as mentioned before, it is a different way of looking at this issue and should be very insightful to emerging artists who are trying to navigate the difficult world of making money from your music in the digital age.