BBC World Service. This is Helen the Merriman with The Inquiry.

This week is streaming good for music.

It's Monday, the 8th of June.

A man dressed in plain dark clothes, strides across a stage in and out of the spotlight.

Before we close this morning, we do have one more thing.

It can only be an Apple launch. Today they're introducing Apple Music, a streaming service,

which like rivals Spotify, Tidal and others, allows users to listen to songs over the internet without owning them.

It will change the way that you experience music forever.

At Apple HQ, the excitement of the launch was soon punctured by some bad news.

Taylor Swift, the global pop star, published an open letter to Apple.

She was shocked, she says, that during the three month free trial for new subscribers,

Apple would not be paying musicians for the songs its users streamed.

We don't ask you for free iPhones, wrote Taylor Swift.

So why should we give you free music?

Apple quickly caved, but by then the spat had been music. There are other concerns too. Does it affect the quality and variety of music that's made?

And does it change the way we listen?

In other words, our question this week, is streaming good for music?

Before we introduce you to our first expert witness, we have a story for you the story of streaming because to

really understand it you have to go back back to 1982 it's dustproof

scratch proof red by a laser.

A small shiny disc, which makes sounds like these. The compact disc.

The biggest revolution in the recording industry since the invention of the long playing gramophone record.

...