With music streaming services under fire for paying meagre royalties – and the likes of Taylor Swift removing their entire catalogues from Spotify – attention is being drawn to the musician's deal. Services now offering musicians data in lieu of dollars begs the question – is info enough to placate disillusioned artists?

Spotify has announced a new feature that lets listeners know which artists they discovered before they became popular. Named ‘Found them First’, the service will give music lovers bragging rights, finally putting an end to the ultimate hipster debate of who discovered that band or genre first.

Music fans may not buy as many albums as they used to, but they’re still supporting their favourite artists and discovering new ones via festivals and services like Shazam. In the second of our two-part series we explore how live music and data mining are shaping the future of the industry.

With the arrival of Apple Music, continued growth of Spotify, and a vinyl revival, it’s clear that the music business is in a state of flux. So how will the way we find, play and share music change in the future? In the first of two reports we see how Spotify and vinyl are shaping the industry.