Spotify / Tidal / Beats and all the other streaming services don't cater to the typical coli poster. Most of us here grew up downloading and picking our music specifically .. so finding download links, managing our downloads, and manually syncing across devices isn't a huge issue for us.
Streaming services are for a generation below us who are used to growing up on services like netflix and having the convenience of 95% of music easily streamable from any device and all you need is your login. They want to click a search button and be able to listen to Drake, then Haim, then Fetty Wap, then Ed Sheeran.
They don't want to have to go to audiomack, then atrilli, then torrents, then whatever the equivalent of these sites are for rock, pop, etc. The growth numbers of these services show streaming is the new "radio" and might even cannibalize itunes store sales also.
I think this is why Jay-Z's rollout of Tidal didn't work like he planned. He marketed it like it was the early 2000s and he can just name drop something like Belvedere, Roc-A-Wear, etc. and people would ride the wave, but the younger generation don't buy into him like that and the older generation are pretty grounded in never paying for music since they all download shyt.
Breh nobody wants to have friction when it comes to consuming the content they want.
It was just easier and frankly to do that. You would have
albums weeks in advance all of the time. Let's say Graduation, it dropped on the internet a good 3 weeks before retail and it was
normal. You had cats having albums like months in advance - TI's King or Lupe's F&L for example. The advantage of being an illegal downloader was
massive. If you wanted the ATCQ discography, you could literally type that into Google + .rar and you would have a link. Or you could use a torrent and have it just do it in the background. The only other way would be to drop £30 in the app store or £40 for CD's.
In say.. 2007 or 2004.. if you really loved music (tv & movies) you would cop premium passes to Rapidshare, MU etc. to download multiple files quickly to get an artists discography. If you were about that life you would pay extra for faster broadband. And no matter what you did, you would expect to listen to your music on 2 devices max. and a car.
But the game has changed. Albums only leak 2-3 days before they hit retail. We have 5-6 devices we expect to have our whole music collection. I don't think Streaming is a generational thing. It's an evolutionary thing. I've been pirating music since '99. I've largely stopped. Because that £9.99 is less to me than all that time wasted downloading albums and mixtapes. I stream 95% of my music. Whether it's Spotify (discography stuff), soundcloud (indie, new, unsigned), DatPiff (mixtapes not on Spotify) or YouTube (the rest). Downloading music is some old school shyt I have to do if i'm
desperate.
I agree Jay Z's marketing technique is old school.