A song can reach someone on the other side of the world before its creator has played a first gig. A listener can explore an unfamiliar genre without buying an album. A musician can speak directly to the people who care about their work.
These possibilities have changed what it means to make, release and discover music. They have also created a difficult question: when so much music is available, how does any particular song get heard?
Research on digital music offers a more complicated picture than either a story of liberation or a story of decline. Internet distribution has opened doors, streaming has encouraged exploration, and online communities have brought artists and listeners closer. At the same time, platforms influence visibility, popularity can reinforce itself, and maintaining an audience has become a demanding part of musical work.
From buying recordings to accessing a catalogue
The transition unfolded through overlapping models: physical recordings, shared digital files, paid downloads and streaming subscriptions. Each changed how listeners obtained music and how money reached the industry. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority describes online piracy as a major disruption and legal digital services as central to the subsequent recovery. [1]
Streaming itself had competing effects. In a study published in 2018, Luis Aguiar and Joel Waldfogel examined data from 2013–2015. They found that streaming displaced both music purchases and piracy. Under the payment assumptions used in their analysis, streaming income roughly offset the revenue lost through displaced sales. This was an estimate for that period, rather than a permanent rule about streaming economics. [2]
The scale of the change is now clear. IFPI's Global Music Report 2026 puts worldwide recorded music revenues at US$31.7 billion in 2025, with streaming accounting for 69.6%. These figures describe the recorded music market, rather than the entire music economy or musicians' personal earnings. [3]
More music could reach the public
Internet distribution reduced the practical importance of manufacturing and shipping physical recordings. Combined with cheaper recording technology, it made releasing music possible for more people. Those are related developments: the internet did not invent home recording, but it helped connect recordings made at home with potential audiences.
Aguiar and Waldfogel explored the value of this expanded supply in research published in the Journal of Political Economy in 2018. Their analysis emphasises an easily overlooked benefit: nobody can reliably predict every recording that listeners will value. Reducing the cost of bringing music to market creates opportunities for worthwhile releases that might otherwise never have appeared. [4]
The cultural opportunity extends beyond having a larger catalogue. An unusual project has more room to find out whether an audience exists. Publishing is still only the beginning; listeners need ways to encounter the music, and musicians need the time and resources to continue making it.
Streaming made musical exploration easier
Buying an unfamiliar album involves a commitment. Trying an unfamiliar track within a subscription usually involves very little additional cost. That difference can change listening habits.
In a 2018 Marketing Science study, Hannes Datta, George Knox and Bart Bronnenberg followed people's listening histories across digital music platforms. Adoption of streaming was associated with substantial increases in both the amount and diversity of music consumed. The effects weakened over time but remained evident after six months, and listeners discovered more music. [5]
This evidence challenges the assumption that streaming inevitably makes everyone's taste narrower. It also has limits: the study examined adoption of streaming, rather than isolating the effect of every recommendation algorithm.
Access gives a curious listener more room to explore. Whether that listener uses search, recommendations, friends or a specialist community still matters. A large catalogue creates possibilities; the route through it shapes the experience.
Discovery acquired new gatekeepers
Making a recording available and making it visible are different achievements. Online catalogues can accommodate far more music than any shop, while prominent places in an app or playlist remain limited.
Aguiar and Waldfogel investigated this distinction in their 2021 study of Spotify playlists. Using methods intended to separate the effect of inclusion from a song's existing appeal, they found that placement on platform-operated playlists had substantial effects on success. The platform's presentation decisions could actively influence what people heard. [6]
This gives discovery systems considerable cultural influence. Their choices help determine which recordings reach listeners who were never searching for them in the first place.
Calling all of this “the algorithm” misses part of the picture. Human editors, automated recommendations, interface design and listeners' own choices all participate in discovery. The practical question is how these elements distribute attention, including whether they leave room for artists with little existing visibility.
Popularity can help produce more popularity
In a 2006 experiment published in Science, Matthew Salganik, Peter Dodds and Duncan Watts created an online music market involving 14,341 participants. People encountered unfamiliar songs; some could see previous download counts, while others could not.
Making other people's choices visible increased inequality between songs and made success less predictable across separate versions of the market. The same music could achieve different outcomes depending on how collective choices developed. [7]
Musical appeal still mattered. The experiment did not establish that success is random or that quality is irrelevant. It showed that social information also helps shape results.
A reasonable implication for online discovery is that a popularity count can influence the decisions it appears merely to describe. That possibility deserves attention when designing charts, rankings and listening interfaces. The experiment was an artificial market, however, and should not be treated as a complete explanation of today's platforms.
Being a musician gained another kind of work
Direct contact can make an audience feel like a community. Listeners can share interpretations, ask about a recording and introduce an artist to friends. For musicians, those exchanges can be rewarding in their own right.
They can also become an ongoing professional responsibility. In a 2015 paper, communication researcher Nancy Baym described relational labour: the sustained work of developing relationships with audiences. Her research drew on interviews with nearly 40 musicians, alongside observation of online activity and music industry discussions. [8]
This perspective helps explain why online independence can feel both empowering and exhausting. Sharing updates, responding to people and keeping a community engaged require time and interpersonal skills. Those activities may support a career while also competing with the time available for musical work.
The opportunity to communicate directly is valuable. Recognising the effort involved makes it easier to discuss what a sustainable relationship between artists and audiences should look like.
The pressure to capture attention reached the songs
Listening interfaces may influence the conditions in which music is written. If another track is immediately available, an opening has to compete for the listener's attention.
Hubert Léveillé Gauvin examined this idea in research first published online in 2017 and appearing in a 2018 issue of Musicae Scientiae. An analysis of 303 US top-ten singles from 1986–2015 found changes consistent with attracting attention more quickly, including shorter instrumental introductions. [9]
The qualification matters as much as the headline. A second analysis comparing more and less popular songs by the same artists did not support the proposed relationships. The research therefore does not prove that streaming caused shorter introductions or that a faster opening guarantees success.
It does offer a useful question for musicians: how much of a creative decision comes from the piece itself, and how much comes from expectations about the environment in which people will encounter it?
A larger market does not guarantee a sustainable career
Growth in recorded music revenue can coexist with difficult conditions for individual musicians. The distribution of listening, the ownership of rights and the terms of an artist's agreements all affect what reaches that artist.
The CMA's 2022 study found that the top 0.4% of artists accounted for more than 60% of UK streams in 2020. It also found improved choices of deals for artists, while concluding that ineffective competition was unlikely to be the main cause of the income concerns it examined. These are findings about a particular market and period. [1]
For an emerging musician, industry growth and personal financial security can remain very different experiences. Greater access to distribution does not, by itself, determine how the resulting income is shared.
What should the next stage of online music make possible?
The strongest case for internet music remains the possibility of a meaningful encounter: somebody finding a recording they would never have heard otherwise, and an artist discovering that their work matters to people beyond their immediate surroundings.
That possibility gives platforms something concrete to design for. Can listeners explore beyond familiar names? Can an artist receive useful attention without maintaining a constant stream of promotional posts? Can people understand how their participation supports the music they value?
For Kallitone, these questions are part of the motivation for putting listening and human judgement at the centre of discovery. We want to make more room for the moment when someone encounters an unfamiliar piece of music and decides what they think of it.
The internet has made sharing a song remarkably easy. Giving that song a thoughtful hearing remains a task for the people and platforms around it.
References and further reading
- Competition and Markets Authority (2022). Music and streaming market study: final report. See also the executive summary. UK market study.
- Aguiar, L., & Waldfogel, J. (2018). As streaming reaches flood stage, does it stimulate or depress music sales? International Journal of Industrial Organization, 57, 278–307. Public research summary.
- IFPI (2026). Global Music Report 2026: published industry figures. Covers calendar year 2025. IFPI is a recording industry trade organisation; this is industry data.
- Aguiar, L., & Waldfogel, J. (2018). Quality Predictability and the Welfare Benefits from New Products: Evidence from the Digitization of Recorded Music. Journal of Political Economy, 126(2), 492–524. Earlier open working paper (2015).
- Datta, H., Knox, G., & Bronnenberg, B. J. (2018). Changing Their Tune: How Consumers' Adoption of Online Streaming Affects Music Consumption and Discovery. Marketing Science, 37(1), 5–21. Author's research page.
- Aguiar, L., & Waldfogel, J. (2021). Platforms, Power, and Promotion: Evidence from Spotify Playlists. The Journal of Industrial Economics, 69(3), 653–691. University research summary.
- Salganik, M. J., Dodds, P. S., & Watts, D. J. (2006). Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market. Science, 311(5762), 854–856. Open paper and supporting material.
- Baym, N. K. (2015). Connect With Your Audience! The Relational Labor of Connection. The Communication Review, 18(1), 14–22. Author's publication page.
- Léveillé Gauvin, H. (2018; first published online 2017). Drawing listener attention in popular music: Testing five musical features arising from the theory of attention economy. Musicae Scientiae, 22(3). Ohio State University's research explanation.
Sources checked on 28 September 2026. Publication years and the periods covered by the research are stated separately where relevant.