Rogan, Young, Kanye & the Future of Audio Streaming

I keep thinking about this. I’m sure it’s a take others have, but it’s stuck in my mind and I need to get it out:

I cannot help but think that Neil Young is the first step in a future of music streaming that resembles the world of television streaming. Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, a bunch of others we haven’t heard of yet, serving the same roles as HBO Max and Hulu and Netflix. You need all your subscriptions. Your expenses balloon. Perhaps it’ll be podcasts that create the full disintegration between services. Although it appears it could be music too. 

And there’s the bizarre new Kanye device which, appearing to be the only way to hear Donda 2, seems to solidify this future.  

This scenario.

I’d like to think I can weather this storm by not enjoying podcasts, but if there’s a future where I need one app to hear Grateful Dead and another to hear Neil Young and another to hear Jay-Z and another to hear Billie Eilish then, well, I’ll either have four streaming services for music…

or I’ll listen to a lot more vinyl. Which seems like a good solution anyway. (It’s also what my friend Christopher reminded me was an option when this first began boiling over.)

Listen to this.

And yes, I’ve been listening to a lot of Neil Young at vinyl lately. Go get yourself a copy of Trans if you haven’t heard it before. You’ll thank me.