FRATPACKER WORLD.

BUY YOUR MUSIC. DON’T STREAM IT

Just because they’ve digitalised music, doesn’t mean it should be owned by the machine [both figuratively and literally]. It’s 2026 and it seems like the concept of buying music is now a long-lost ancient art that we get to tell our kids about as we reminisce about the old days and that’s exactly what these streaming platforms were built to do and, dare I say, “They’ve won?”. Well, the battle isn’t over until they’ve killed our hope, and the hope I have in us is strong and live so let’s fight back and Rage Against The Streams.

It’s been 10 years since one of the three, Tidal, major music streaming platforms was launched in South Africa on February 18, 2015, which was followed by Apple Music on June 30, 2015, and finally Spotify in March 2018. Since then, we have seen the eventual and slow death of the South African music industry, especially in the Hip-Hop/R&B/Alt space. If we take a look back in history at CD sales and how they would work, it would be that artist would get about 10% off the sale of a CD. Now, this seems low but when looking at the accumulation of sales it adds up to a hefty number. There was a study done on Afrikaans singer Theuns Jordaan who made R1.7m from selling 210 000 copies of his album Vreemde Stad. From the 210 000 copies sold he approximately took R8.33 off each sale. The logistics of CD sales were that a majority go to the retail outlets for stocking and selling the CD and to the record labels, distribution, publishing, VAT etc.

People will claim that the model of CDs was cheating the artists but really what cheats the artists is the systems that have been placed in the music industry for decades. This narrative around CDs was being pushed, I believe, to make it easier to introduce the system that really is stealing from artists. This narrative helped with the downfall of the CD, and it didn’t help that more technology was being manufactured to make the CD obsolete with cars and laptops not including cd drives in them anymore. This alone caused CD sales to start declining by 30% annually from 2012. When looking at when music streaming platforms came to South Africa research shows that in 2016 physical sales made up 39% of sales, from 52% in 2015, while downloads and streaming accounted for 33%, from 28% in 2015. It’s important to note that in this time digital sales had been available during this period but weren’t as prominent and are still available now yet the promotion of buying digital was never pushed like streaming and we will get into that as well. 

Let us now look at what music streaming services pay by the number. First when counting what the value of a stream is, we must ask ourselves what is the value of the stream and how is it measured? To be honest only the streaming services and the major labels who are in bed with them have access to the streaming data and what value they carry. It’s said that in 2023 music streaming services had a value of $36.7 Billion and that globally the streaming industry brought in a revenue of $100 Billion in 2020. This doesn’t show us the value of a stream but just how much value they can bring in. Now, look at those numbers and let’s look at the fact that there is no clear or standardise pay out amount for  Spotify and Apple Music to artists and therefore no real way to calculate what artists are getting paid or meant to be getting paid. This means that there is no real way to track the cost and value of a stream and everyone is just going off of hearsay and rumours. There’s no real tangible way to know what the value of a stream is.

It gets trickier because streaming numbers are so absurd they had to find a calculation to how many streams is equivalent to single release or download and the same for an album, and the maths is that 150 streams is equivalent to a single download and 1500 streams (10 singles) is equivalent to an album download. Therefore 1 000 000 streams are equivalent to 666 album sales or 6666 equivalent single sales. Even the charts have adjusted to this by crediting equivalent album sales into their systems and why album sales have now become secondary with people just more worried about how many streams you have or monthly listeners. To put it in perspective RiSA (Recording Industry of South Africa) has declared that for an album to be certified gold it needs 25000 sold copies = 30 million streams and for platinum 50000 sold copies = 60 million streams.

Now if we compare this to digital sales on iTunes, where 30% of the slae goes to Apple as the retailer and 70% to the artist [if independent] or the label, we can do the maths and see how much money can be made. If a million streams is equivalent to 666 albums and an artist is selling an album for R100, that means they would be taking R70 of every sale and would bring the total revenue earned to R46 620. Making R46 620 off 666 albums isn’t bad money at all especially when considering that the conversion is an equivalent and not exact equal amount of how many people streamed your album. It could turnout to be that an artist has 30 000 people not just listening to the album but willing to buy the album as well and that suggests there could be a profit of R2 100 000 to be made but again because the data is not open to the public we still wouldn’t know and why it would be great practice for artists to promote the cause of digital purchases so they as well can have more accurate statistics and analysis of not just their sales but fan base as well.

I know looking at all these numbers and what they mean can get confusing, but what the numbers basically show is that it’s cheaper for the labels and streaming services to promote streaming because they get ridiculous results while not having to payout ridiculous amounts to artists. This is also why they have started pushing out more singles than albums because with more people streaming, it’s easier and more profitable to get 10 million streams on one song than try to push to make an album that will do 500 000 sales. It means less money spent on studio, production, artist development, promotion, marketing, publishing, distribution and etc. while being able to exploit the most out of a song. In the same regard this has disheartened artists from wanting to invest their time, energy, love and passion into creating albums because the payout isn’t worth it and people will stream it for a week before moving on to the next project or demanding for the artist to drop an album a year later.

The value of a stream because it is intangible doesn’t hold that much weight on the consumer as much as the value of money does and that’s why we still hold the things we pay money for with high regard. We need the same value put back into music because we see with all this access to music with streaming services fans allow albums to come and go just like the wind and it feels like people don’t value the music and albums how they used to. Everyone is so quick to go listen to all the album drops that take place on Friday at midnight and get their opinions out within hours of listening to an album before jumping on to the next one, it makes one wonder did you even listen to it and how valuable is your opinion. I remember new CDs coming out and saving up to buy your favourite CD and sitting listening to it the whole month and taking time to see if it was worth your hard-earned money. We cared about the value it bought into our lives. We relished every minute, every lyric, every beat, kick, snare and melody. It meant something.

Talking about money and value of albums and singles. The biggest brainwash that was achieved was making us think that music is expensive. I will say that, yes back in the day spending R160 (max) on a CD seemed a lot. Even though it was yours to keep forever, the issues of CD scratching or getting lost maybe felt like it came at a high cost but also it made us realise how much care we had to take. Making sure not to misplace your CDs or leave them on surfaces where they can get scratched and keeping them clean. The funny thing is with the introduction of digital purchase it made albums cheaper because now you didn’t have to account for the cut you had to give retail stores for distributing and stocking your album into the selling price. If you look at iTunes, you’ll see that EPs go as little as R25 and albums go as high as R150 but on average both local and international artists are being sold at R80 an album. That’s equivalent to a shot of alcohol when going outside and even cheaper than a cocktail. Plus, with digital purchases you can download them direct on to your laptop and store them on your hard drive or cloud if you want to. There’s also Bandcamp which is another great digital music store to buy from.

The best part about buying digital music is that it’s yours. You own it. You’re not renting it out from these streaming services. They can’t just remove songs or albums from their services and now you longer have access to that song or album. If you don’t have data you can still enjoy your music without having to pay for an extra cost to enjoy it and if you’re like me you’ve probably asked yourself what happens to all the music the day that one of these music streaming platforms crash or die? Are we then just left stranded in a music-less world because we became so reliant on these services? I do also want to say as much as fans should be buying music, artists need to start selling us their music again. They need to make it an effort to tell us where and how to buy their music and market their product for sales. This will also help fill in the gap of artist development and the recent trend of fans going to shows and not knowing the lyrics or artist not being able to sell tickets because why would I buy a ticket to your show if you can’t even sell me on the music that you’ll be performing at the show.

I’m so passionate about this topic, I could go on and on and talk about how the streaming of music it even lends itself to the promotion and building of AI music and artists, but I believe that this is enough for now. The point has been made on the power of buying vs renting and the true value it can bring to us as fans, the artists who make the music and just the music and entertainment industry as a whole because the more money artists can make from their music, the less they can charger event organisers and promoters for booking and therefore making tickets cheaper for fans and music lovers to afford and go support. I wrote in my last article in order to be raised by the village you must be an activate villager so buy your music and participate in building the economy of the community and making it a sustainable and stable industry yet again.