Who Pays For Music?

Authors

Meg Aman, Bryant University

Document Type

Dissertation

First Faculty Advisor

Roberto, Michael

Keywords

Music; Digital Economy; Music Industry; Music Market

Publisher

Bryant University

Abstract

The purpose of this capstone project was to determine the attributes of consumers that pay for music, specifically music streaming services. The recent decline in current individual track sales and the increase in the number of streamed songs, highlights the relevance of this topic. The increasing popularity in music streaming has caused much contreversy in the music industry. Many artists are unhappy with the low revenue they receive from songwriting royalties from these streaming services that offer a free platform. Artists are not the only ones who need consumers to pay for music, the music streaming sites that provide free tiers also need their consumers to pay for premium content if they evenutaully want to earn a profit. To research this topic a survey was created and results were collected about consumers’ listening and purchasing habits. Once survey results were collected, regression analysis was conducted in order to determine correlations between the traits of consumers and whether or not they pay for streaming services, individual songs, and digital albums.