Peter Robinson, on the sudden impact of Apple Music streaming on his 'buying' habits:
So why buy anything?
Buying a single now means one of three things, none of which have an immediate impact on our own listening.
A) You want to help the song climb the charts. The Official Charts (and now, it seems, the iTunes chart) are still heavily weighted in favour of purchased songs. The Official Charts count one ‘sale’ for every 100 streams. (To be fair this has long been true of teenagers who wouldn’t dream of actually spending money on music for any other reason – throwing some cash at a download means the same as spending money voting in a TV singing contest.)
B) You want an artist – or a label, or a songwriter, or a producer – to have some money. In this case, buying a song is similar to making a donation. Almost a donation to charity, really.
C) You don’t really trust music streaming – what if a song suddenly disappears one day during some sort of royalties dispute?
I encourage you to read the whole thing, particularly the closing lines.
Pretty much sums up what I've been thinking this week as I experimented with Apple Music.
My views on streaming have changed dramatically over the years (there's some posts on here going years back where I bleat on about fidelity and ownership).
I've been using Rdio of late and Spotify before that. However, these services were always complementary to my music in iTunes, where all my purchases, CD rips and bootlegs belonged. Apple Music changes all that.