In music’s streaming wars, customers are the casualty

In the olden days, you could go to the store to pick up an album on its release day, which had been announced weeks ahead of time.

In college towns, stores that specialized in selling music — “record stores,” they called them, and they sometimes smelled of incense — would open at midnight the night before an album’s release so fans could get a first crack at them.

That bygone era — say, 15 years ago — all seems so quaint now.

Now, consuming music is a frustrating, arduous process, like trying to find someone to fix a broken Blackberry. CDs were replaced by MP3s, which were replaced by subscription services, which were supposed to solve the problems of the ailing music industry, which has watched sales fall steadily since the days when Justin Timberlake was still in *NSYNC.

But the industry has failed to get behind one subscription service, leaving a fractured marketplace and consumers playing hopscotch to try and keep pace with their favorite artists, who have replaced long marketing campaigns with quick-strike album releases with no lead time.

Want to stream Beyoncé’s “Lemonade?” Better have a Tidal subscription. Looking for the new Drake? His album was exclusive to Apple Music for its first two weeks. Chance the Rapper’s latest? Also on Apple, or streaming for free on Datpiff.com, but nowhere to be found on Spotify or Tidal.

Radiohead’s new album, “A Moon Shaped Pool,” is on Apple Music and Tidal, but no luck for Spotify users. And Adele, the biggest selling artist in the world? No one is streaming her latest, “25,” that one you’ll have to buy on iTunes or pick up on CD at Target. (But good luck playing that CD in your car, since automakers are no longer putting CD players in cars.)

Taylor Swift was the first major artist to draw a line in the sand on streaming services with her album “1989,” which she refused to make available for streaming. (It’s still not on Spotify or Tidal, but the Album of the Year Grammy winner is streaming on Apple Music.) At the time it was a controversial move, but it helped set up today’s climate where superstar artists play favorites with certain streaming services, which is good for them, but lousy for fans.

Spotify is the streaming industry leader, with a reported 30 million subscribers and 100 million users via its free tier. The service, which launched in North America in July 2011, is user friendly and has strong brand loyalty, but lags way behind in artist exclusives.

Apple Music, which launched in June 2015, boasts a reported 13 million subscribers and lands sweetheart deals with many top artists. Tidal — which was briefly the only place to hear Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo,” and is still the only place to stream the majority of Prince and Neil Young’s catalogs — trails them both with 3 million subscribers.

The subscriber numbers — Spotify has added a reported 10 million subscribers since Apple Music’s debut, the Swedish company reported this week — show that consumers care more about functionality and familiarity than star wattage.

But whether the current system can continue, with artists doling out albums to specific services and consumers having to juggle multiple subscriptions, is doubtful. Superstar sales aren’t hurting — Drake scored his best sales week yet when “Views,” which was released April 29, sold 852,000 copies its first week — but frustration may mount among customers who don’t have the “right” subscription to hear the new music they want.

Can three major streaming services survive? It’s possible, but online business models show there’s usually one dominant player per field and several also-rans. There’s Amazon for retail and there’s Google for searches, and then there’s everyone else.

Streaming is here to stay, that much has been determined. Now it’s up to the industry to figure out the best way forward — for artists and for consumers.

In the meantime, toggling between Apple Music and Tidal and waiting out the free trials for each feels like joining those 12 CDs for-a-penny clubs and then dodging the late fees.

It’s enough to make you long for the days when an album was released and you could go pick it up in a record store, sometimes at midnight, and listen to it in your car on the way home.

agraham@detroitnews.com

(313) 222-2284

@grahamorama