The Game of Music Streams
With the ever evolving nature of music business, society is seeing a huge explosion of investments in the music streaming business.  Record stores in the traditional sense is just about extinct and artists are looking at innovative ways to get music out to fans while monetizing the whole experience from discovery to ultimate fandom. Which the launch of Tidal and Apple Music the Game of Music Streams is ever so relevant now. Couple that with existing players like Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Songza and SoundCloud you now have a power struggle for music streaming supremacy.  In this post we’ll focus on the music discovery aspect of streaming and how it can be a key differentiator when consumers are evaluating which service to choose.
Impact of Music streaming
In a September 2014 Pando Daily article, we noticed trends of music app usage far exceeding their social media counterparts. This article inspired me to understand the adoption of music streaming apps by conducting a survey around music discovery to help derive common themes that can help uncover the areas of emphasis for consumers.
Problems with the Music Discovery Experience
What has become apparent amongst music consumers is the desire for features on the following:
1.) The ability to have deep insights into the  musicians that inspire the artists they know and love.
2.) The ability to search through sub genres of music. Â
Simply searching for hip hop groups or artists doesn’t quite suffice for your everyday consumer who views hip hop in many shades of gray.  With respect to hip hop, there’s conscious all the way to southern trunk poppin’ tunes thats considered hip hop. Now let’s shift our focus to rock. Like hip hop, there are many layers to this genre.  Rock can be classified as indie, pop and hard metal to name a few which appeals to different consumers. Â
Opportunities for Streaming Services
In order for music streaming services to truly flourish the services need to provide distinction of sub-genres and the ability to search by artist preferences they follow to enable a rich discovery experience for consumers.  Whichever service figures out the key to consumer’s heart and ears with regards to music discovery will truly emerge a leader in this race.  With all things considered the question still remains, who will win the Game of Music Streams?