Has anybody asked this yet? Would people really be buying every new Youngboy single for $1.99.(or even 99 cents)Would you really be paying a whole $20 to listen to a 69 album? I don’t think so,at least not at the quality and rate guys these days release music.

Streaming was always an obvious attempt to cheapen music,not just for the consumer,but for record labels. The whole game flipped from rappers selling music first to selling themselves first,the album isn’t the product anymore,the artist is. It’s nothing for someone to pay $9.99 for access to almost every piece of music in existence,they still have to want to pay attention to you tho and sometimes,it’s for all the wrong reasons.

Not many dudes rapping now besides a handful could make anyone go out and buy a real product. Rap would be in the gutter without streaming.

Thread is dead,I must be on to something

You askin a question you already know the answer to lol

Some of the biggest hip-hop bangers/hits that peaked 20-50 earlier in last decade would''ve been top 10/20 hits today

I’ve always felt like I’ve known the answer but I wanted to put it out there in a thread for some reason. I just couldn’t see this rap s*** surviving if rappers actually had to sell a product. Rappers(today) aren’t really selling us s*** if you think about it.

music would be different without streaming, more imput from the label, less quantity, more focused on radio hits, etc, and rappers today would be like rappers in the 00s on how they approach albums

but guys like youngboy would be selling their mixtapes out the truck and it would be sold out im convinced

Yes.. The format in which it's being released would just be very different

Datpiff would still be fosho booming, there'd be more free mixtapes

Youngboy would still be popping with free mixtapes but he would have to come up with a true debut instead of calling random mixtapes albums.

It depends on the artist. Artists like 69 would not even crack the top 40 if streaming wasn’t a thing.

The Mach-Hommy model
It works even in the streaming era

I think an Uzi or Thug still sells well without streaming,maybe 100K-150K at most. A Roddy Rich type dude however where his single blew up after the album released would probably still be trying to prove himself on that level.