YouTube Music now hosts 100 million tracks, the streamer tells Hypebot. That matches the 100 million song catalog announced by Apple Music last week.
Amazon Music, Tidal, and Deezer all reportedly offer 90 million tracks. Spotify hosts 82 million tracks, according to stats shared earlier this year. The number of tracks on these services is now likely higher than their last reported total.
With Apple Music and YouTube Music catalogs topping 100 million tracks each and other streamers not far behind, plus 100,000 new tracks uploaded every single day, breaking through the clutter can feel like an impossible task.
Short videos and other strategies may offer a path forward, but it’s unclear whether they can spawn lasting careers.
Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.
What do you think this means for independent artists and record labels? Good or bad or both? What’s the future of the music industry in the hands of tech giants like YouTube, Apple, and Spotify? Let’s break this down. If I’m an artist or a record label, I agree to give the platform my IP (intellectual property - song catalog) in the hopes that I will get engagement (streams) on the platform, and if I do get engagement (streams), the platform will pay me a very small sum per engagement (stream). In the meantime, the platform acquires an enormous catalog of IP (100 million songs) without paying a dime upfront and attracts millions of people willing to pay for this service. The artist still has to do all the work and drive the traffic to the platform. I’m not saying it’s good or bad. Just trying to break it down. As a record label owner, I look at streaming platforms as social platforms where my artists can be found, and if found, we will earn money from the engagement (streams). This is just one revenue source out of many other revenue sources. I’d love to hear more critical insights about streaming and the future of the music business.
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