Streaming Services and the End of Music Collection

Amazon is just the first company to phase out its cloud music locker.

Why did we come to like playlists in the first place, instead of the compact discs or long play records? Why are playlists any different than mix tapes or burning CDs? It is a quest for personalization on our part as humans which attracts us to Spotify. Is it because of the fact that most of us don’t want to mess about with files? We all forget that tech companies are businesses, that take what we like and turn that into a lucrative addiction.

Artists like Gary Clark Jr., Alabama Shakes and Michael Kiwanuka are finding new audiences as traditional labels falter.

I’m an Apple Music user, but if anything, the situation is both more pronounced and seemingly better on Spotify. People seem to love the Discover Weekly area of the service for new music discovery. This is all music personalized to your tastes. In our age of data, this makes perfect sense.

The company announced that 500 bands set up a Bandcamp page each day in 2017, or approximately 182,500 new bands in the calendar year, and that more than 17,000 cassette tapes were released this year alone.

The shutdown affects both the free storage plan, which allowed for 250 songs to be stored in the cloud, as well the paid plan – originally $25 per year – which offered cloud storage for up to 250,000 songs.