The year's explosive growth of streaming music services has seen newcomers and veterans of all sizes battle it out for the hearts, minds, and ears of would-be customers everywhere. Streaming music has moved on from the YouTube and MySpace-dominated days to include a variety of paid and free options from the likes of Spotify, Beatport, iTunes (we see you, Beats Music), Rdio, and of course, SoundCloud.
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By and large, Spotify had a great year in 2014. Yes, there was that little feud with Taylor Swift, but between a 25% increase in user growth, having a suggestion algorithm that actually works, and working more closely with dance music acts of all genres, they were a clear front-runner for many people. (Particularly those who are cool with a subscription-based service.)
Not wanting to be left behind, YouTube jumped into the subscription game too and announced their new ad-free Music Key service in November. If you use AdBlock, you'll probably have some idea as to how this will work.
In the second half of 2014, barely a week went by that we didn't hear something from SoundCloud. They kicked out some high profile accounts due to copyright infringement (both legitimate and bogus); they figured out that whole monetization thing; they grew faster than ever; they signed a deal with Warner Music Group too. A lot of people complained about their servers crashing, but all in all things looked better than ever for the Berlin-based startup from a business perspective, even as their insidious attacks on the very core of their identity (mixes and music that include uncleared samples or tracks aka DJ culture), continued unbridled at the hands of their own legal department, intent on servicing the needs of the three major labels.
Everyone's favourite file-sharing service, BitTorrent, emerged as a newcomer in the game too. Though their peer-to-peer music publishing service, Bundles, wasn't a streaming service per se, it competed directly with the industry heavyweights and represented a paradigm shift in the way that artists release their music. We put the service to the test and were impressed with the results.
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