THE ECONOMIC AND CREATIVE IMPACTS OF STREAMING ON THE MUSIC INDUSTRY: Does Spotify’s attractiveness stifle or challenge the artists creativity, in an era of musical overabundance and competition characterized by a lack of economical transparency?

Music has enormously changed in recent times. Compared to a hundred years ago, nothing is done in the same way. The recording techniques, the production, the distribution and the listening have continuously developed, and sometimes dramatically changed, from decade to decade until now. Naturally, these several shifts could and should be analyzed from multiple perspectives. In this thesis I will examine the relation between the economical and the creative evolution of the music industry with the advent of streaming services, more specifically with the arrival of Spotify. Many observers1 have pointed out that the economics of music streaming lacks transparency. It is often criticized for its low artists compensation and for its distorting influence on the music market. In contrast, the democratic access to a huge catalog of music history combined with tailored suggestions of discoveries appears to be an exceptional incentive for artistic creativity. I will present these elements and ponder over their ambiguous coexistence by interviewing multiple professionals of the music industry. Two managers of the main collecting society for the French artists and performers2 have shared with me their opinion on the health of jazz and classical music. Also, nine artists practicing different genres of music and belonging to different generations exposed to me their process of inspiration as it is influenced by Spotify. The diverse results allowed me to detect and discuss several types of responses to the inspiration process encounter when confronted with streaming services. This will lead to partly elucidate the economical and creative impact of music streaming and suggest further possibilities for improvement, as far as transparency (on the economic side) and creativity (on the artistic side) are concerned.