The way in which Spotify (and other streaming services) hurts the development of music isn’t what most people say.

The problem with per-stream plays is that it is based on pop music logic: more streams equals more money. Fair!

But many recording artists made a modest living by releasing music that you might not want to listen to over and over and over. This music is often labeled ‘art’ or ‘experimental’ or whatever, and for the enthusiast, paying $15 for a record of this stuff was great.

Streaming services have no answer for this problem. It’s up to something like Patreon, if anything, to fill this gap.

This is all sorta fine, but what grates in me is that it seems none of the streaming providers have even thought about this. They just don’t seem to be that in to music, and just think of types of pop music as representing all of music.

This is where that above quote is just a little irritating.