The unflattening of streaming (and the case for friction)This post builds on our January 2025 post ‘The unflattening of music’ which itself built on two previous pieces (you can find links to both in that post).

Industries arrive at pivot points when an accumulation of fissures coalesce into one big crack. Streaming is approaching such a point. We are still at the lots-of-small-cracks-appearing stage, but there is a clear sense of something building. With streaming revenues now representing close to three quarters of the recorded music market (excluding expanded rights), there is clearly an overriding incentive to fix the problem. Simply throwing in the towel and waiting for whatever comes next would hurt both creators and rightsholders. The challenges come from all directions and with different causes (major rightsholders feeling investor pressure; artists struggling to cut through the clutter; royalties not adding up for too many professional artists; music becoming commodified). But the problem is that the people underpinning the entire edifice – consumers – do not have a problem. And that is what needs most attention. 

When Spotify first arrived in the market 16 years ago, it was little more than a vast catalogue of music with a search box. If you didn’t know much about music, you weren’t going to get much out of it. Thus, the first wave of adopters were music aficionados, hastening the demise of downloads, where many were currently spending their money. Fast forward to today, Spotify – and other streaming services – are a dramatically different value proposition, catering not just to those aficionados (or superfans), but also for the passive massive that upgraded from radio and the occasional purchase. Converting so many passives into subscribers was one of streaming’s most important achievements. However, because there are so many more of them than aficionados (six times more in fact), it is only natural that streaming’s UX has prioritised their needs. This, in turn, has helped hasten the commodification of music. 

The great economic paradox of streaming is that it does not differentiate between aficionados and passives, charging them the same fee for the same product. Little wonder then, that aficionados have shifted their extra spend to live and merch. If the supremium tier does eventually make it to market, it will go some way to addressing this. But it will not be enough on its own – and may well come across as an unusual and out of place appendage to the standard streaming proposition. What’s more, there are signs that Gen Z are not warming to streaming like they should be, with 16-19 penetration growing FAR more slowly than other age groups. What links these two challenges is the fundamentally flat nature of Western streaming UX. That needs to change.

So much of streaming’s success was built on the digital era’s superpower: convenience. Yet it is that very thing that has driven cultural commodification. While convenience may have disrupted the economics of things like taxis, online shopping and food delivery, it has undoubtedly improved the experience. Rides have got better; home delivery has got better. With music however, convenience has improved the experience for some (passives) but lessened it for others (aficionados). Fandom did not catch the streaming bus. To address this, streaming UX needs to change.

The case for friction

As counter intuitive as it may sound, streaming has become too convenient. It needs some friction. Friction is not inherently a bad thing. Done right, it can lead to a sense of satisfaction and personal reward. Think about where friction-with-reward exists in our life: learning a new skill, fitness training, reading a long book. The games industry even turned friction into a product.

Music discovery used to be a high-friction experience. Fans would trawl through (often pompous) music reviews, tune into their favourite DJ’s radio show on a late weeknight, and / or wade through endless shelves of albums in stores, perhaps being fortunate to get a surreptitious recommendation from the person behind the till. Many would say it is entirely a good thing that those are the features of a bygone era (though obviously not music journalists and record shop owners). But as is so often the case, it is the generation that comes after the first wave of adopters that can see what is missing from the new era. This is why, with streaming personalisation better than it has ever been, waves of Gen Z are busy crate digging in record shops. The sense of personal reward they get from finding a gem is simply not paralleled by streaming.

Streaming UX needs to learn how to introduce friction, but crucially only for those who want it, when they want it. The majority of people – even aficionados – want a friction-free experience most of the time. The opportunity is to create invitations to do more. The music industry bemoans the shift from lean in to lean back. Now is the time for dive in.

Crucially, this needs tying to identity, because that is central to the reward. For example, when someone spends time doing whatever the streaming equivalent of crate digging might be, they get a ‘hidden gem’ badge which goes on their profile page (it is perplexing that we still don’t have public user profile pages on streaming). Much as I am loathe to use the G word, gamification will be part of the equation. Music is meant to be entertainment. Listening to a work out playlist in the gym or a lo-fi study playlist is not entertainment, that is distraction. 

Bringing back friction will not solve all of streaming’s problems. No single thing will, but it will finally start to push back against the overwhelming trend of flattening. A whole slate of interconnected solutions will be needed for streaming’s other problems. The good news is that MIDiA is currently working on a major new report that will propose just that. The humbly titled ‘Future of streaming’ report will be arriving in the coming months. Watch this space!