My verdict: streaming is a good thing for both fans and the music industry.

Streaming has almost eliminated piracy. People want the convenience of streaming songs on their phones more than they want an illegally garnered download on their computer. They are willing to pay for that convenience. The artists are getting money.

This is even true of YouTube. When record companies put up videos, they get money from the plays on YouTube.

When they don't put their music on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, etc., we're back to "no legal way except for buying the entire album" again, the way it was in the 90s (I'll go into how bad that was in a bit). When there is a legal way to stream songs, people do it! Just OFFER it! Don't try to sue YouTube and Spotify out of existence; take advantage of them!!! The attitude of "DESTROY OTHER OPTIONS TO FORCE PEOPLE BACK TO WHERE WE WANT THEM" is what I find wrong.

Streaming has broken the stranglehold of the record companies. This is what the record companies hate so much, but it's a good thing. They are not looking out for the artists and they never have been. The Eagles sued their first record company; Don sued his again later as a solo artist; Don started an interest group against record companies at one point, although this seems to have been back-burnered now that the record companies have convinced artists their true enemies are their own fans.

I came of age in the 1990s, when labels had stopped offering singles so they could make people pay full price for a CD (at one point about $20) even if they only liked one song on it. It was all or nothing. It got so bad that the federal government had to step in to stop the labels from colluding to raise prices via market manipulation. The money they got from driving up prices was not passed down to the artists. People who fondly remember the "old days" and wax nostalgic about the 70s often forget how bad it got in the mid-to-late 90s because they weren't necessarily buying CDs of new artists then, which were the ones that cost the most.

Before streaming, buying an album was a crap shoot. You heard a couple of songs on the radio and if you liked them enough, you bought the CD and hoped for the best. I was one of the people paying $20 for a Savage Garden album because I liked "Truly Madly Deeply" a lot, only to discover the rest of the album was mediocre at best. I can't remember the last time I played it. (If you're asking "Who are Savage Garden" right now, you're proving my point lol). That was the price of a new CD in 1998. $20 for one song = RIP OFF, but before streaming and after the death of the single (thanks to the record companies), there was no other legal way to get the song.

No other legal way... but it was when CD prices were at their highest ever that Napster become super-popular among my age group and younger. Coincidence? I think not.

Was it right to steal music? No. But I can bet you if the record companies were still in control and there was no alternative way to get music like streaming, we'd be paying at least $40 for our CDs now. I get that number by extrapolating how much CDs cost in the early 90s from their cost in 2000; they had doubled in price in less than 10 years. Even if you challenge that extrapolation, you have to admit that we would surely be paying more than the $20 we paid 15 years ago.

Before streaming: I bought a couple CDs a month, maybe, because I was a college student and spending more than $40 a month on music wasn't feasible (I remember having to wait months for the price to go down; after about a year, you might be able to get a CD for $15, unless it was something like the Eagles Greatest Hits which never went down in price). I guess some people could afford to drop $100 a month or more to get a variety of music. Lucky them. For many people, they just didn't buy very many CDs per year, and didn't get to hear anything except what was played on the radio.

Before streaming: albums went out of print. You had to buy them used once that happened, and it often didn't take very long for it to happen if the album wasn't a huge hit. The artists got nothing from those re-sells. Now, they get money even when you play their oldies and deep cuts that you can't find in the stores.... yet they still grouse because it isn't enough money. They preferred zero?

Before streaming: only biggies and those with a lot of radio play got heard. Now, the little guy can get heard, too. You like the music, you can buy the album. The little guy makes more money now - he can even cut out the record company altogether by putting his own music on the services. The big shots are forced to share the wealth. For most artists, that's a good thing.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for streaming!