In Arisha Shory’s blog post titled “A Change in the Music Industry” she describes how the music industry has evolved from CDs to music downloading to music streaming. Music streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora have adopted a subscription base business model in which customers pay a relatively cheap monthly fee in exchange for access to a vast music library that includes almost every song. Additionally, customers can stream all of these songs through any of their devices with internet connection, and streaming songs doesn’t take up precious memory space from these devices. Given all of these advantages that streaming music has over downloading it or buying CDs, it is no surprise that music streaming has become the next way of doing business in the music industry.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the music industry’s shift towards music streaming is Apple’s whopping $3 billion purchase of Beats Electronics and Beats Music. Apple has always competed against other music retailers through its iTunes music service, which allows users to purchase songs from its music library and download them to each of their devices. However, Apple’s acquisition of Beats Music earlier this year made it evident that Apple felt that it was falling behind other competitors such as Spotify by not adopting the music streaming business model. With Beats Music now under Apple’s ownership, Apple will probably seek to combine the music streaming functionality of Beats Music with the ease of use and intuitiveness of iTunes, and with it regain its leadership in the music industry once again.

Peer blog post source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/arishashory/2014/11/07/a-change-in-the-music-industry/

Image source: http://i0.wp.com/codigo.lisabn.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2014/10/Beats-Music-app.jpg?resize=640%2C360