When I enrolled at UCLA, I chose to minor in music industry since I am highly passionate about music and want to eventually work in the industry.

Recently, I took a course which fulfilled my performance requirement and although this course was learning to perform and record music, the professor required us to purchase the songs we would be learning rather than streaming them.

He’s a professional musician who has worked with many artists and he mentioned that streaming music services such as Spotify, Tidal, Pandora, and Apple Music are ruining the incomes of artists.

Since most of these streaming platforms offer free streaming and a subscription based unlimited streaming, artists are not making money for their music. They only get a small percentage of profit each time their music gets streamed and even if their songs are popular and heavily streamed, they will not be making as much money as someone would assume.

Not only is it affecting the artists but also the team behind making their music.

Although I use Spotify and pay for a subscription for it, I know how beneficial as a college student it is to have these streaming services since you get pretty much get unlimited music you want to listen to for a cheap price. But as someone who wants to work in the music industry, I know that I'd like to have a good-paying job and have everyone in the industry to also be able to do so as well.

As I was growing up, I found it sad that people were mainly buying music online rather than buying physical copies of albums as I found so much joy in purchasing CDs. I have a CD collection and I rarely add on to it now since falling into buying digital music and the streaming music world.

I know that it is hard to buy every single song or CD since it can get expensive but I believe that if you love an artist, you should support them by buying their music.

You don't want CDs or vinyls or even digital purchasing and downloading to die off. Support as many artists as you can because it affects their livelihood.

You can keep your subscription but once in a while—go buy an album on the iTunes/Google Play store or go to your local record store and buy an actual CD/vinyl!