The year is 1870, 7 years before the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison. As a musical artist, if you wanted to distribute your content to an audience, you did so through sheet music, either painstakingly copied by hand, or if you were lucky, replicated on some kind of a printing press. Music distribution has come a long way since then. Artists can upload music to platforms like TikTok or YouTube with the click of a button. But how has this changed the industry?
The most prolific way that people engaged with music in 2020 was streaming platforms, of which, Spotify continues to be the most popular. Even though it’s easier than ever for artists to upload content to a large audience, the question remains, are personalization algorithms and streaming services through Spotify harming or helping musical artists?