Changing Music Consumption Patterns

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Hello fellow music lovers,

I've been looking at some changing music behaviours while I’ve been indoors. Most of these thoughts were inspired by the Music Business Podcast, which featured the amazing Cherie Hu, sign up to her newsletter.

In this covid-period, supply chains across industries have been disrupted and consumer demand has changed. One thing remains the same, we need music in our daily lives, its unavoidable. 
To begin, I want to highlight the number of music listening scenarios has changed dramatically. Lets look at these scenarios as traditional supply channels for music

Previously you had these options

Commute

  1. Public transportation - long haul and short haul

  2. Private transportation - Car trips

Communal listening - which encompasses many scenarios

  1. Workplaces

  2. Gym

  3. Bars/ Nightclubs

  4. Retail stores

  5. Private listening with friends 

  6. Live events

This means that the places where people find/interact with audio music has shifted slightly. However, that hasn’t slowed our interaction with entertainment. '60% of people are engaging with more entertainment according to MRC Data and Nielsen Music'

What can be done or is being done

We know live events are the bulk of Artist and Label revenues, with that in mind lets look at some positive trends that can enable audience growth and consequently revenue growth 

An app where friends can watch live performances communally

  • Can houseparty become that app?

  • How do people use zoom creatively for entertainment

  • Or build your own app

  • How can that be monetised?

Free live streams on socials

  • Some are in the form live a series of live content 

  • Cross Pollinate audiences by going on with other artists

Gaming is a growth scenario

  • Twitch has been good for artists who have a gaming audience, You can earn bits which are twitch currencies

  • Artists having music in Games is another touch-point for reaching their audience

Digital assets like Travis Scott in Fortnite are ways of engaging with fans but very expensive to set-up at the moment

  • Artists and Labels will increasingly need to work with game and software developers to create digital worlds in the near future

VR is another area that has seen a surge recently, see Facebook's earnings

  • "Despite pandemic-related hardware shortages, Facebook’s virtual reality business exploded at the start of 2020. The company revealed yesterday that it made $297 million in non-advertising revenue during the first quarter of 2020. That was “driven largely by sales of Oculus products”

Video is changing audio

  • Music in tv shows/movies/tv ads, is how we now consume audio we would have listened to in retail stores and public spaces, it could increasingly become another

  • Good Video content means artists and labels can benefit from selling distribution rights to distribution platforms (e.g Netflix, HBO)

  • Opportunities to distribute show content with promoters like AEG and Live Nation will increase as they seek to use their social media presence to do more than sell tickets on behalf of artists

  • This will mean there is a need to keep an abundant inventory of content as large live events may not be back until early next year

  • Audio and consequently streams will not be enough to drive audience growth,engagement and consequently revenue. A combination of audio and visual content will take more priority because it can be monetised at a higher margin

Marketing and Tools

  • Platforms like Patreon are useful for engaging and getting a subscription model for content 

  • Tracking audio performance is increasingly important to understand audiences and marketing performance globally, here's a cool tool


This highlights changes in consumer behaviour and the new supply channels of available going forward. the The virus has only accelerated trends we that were in the pipeline and in the next few months we will see efforts being put into making these trends become the norm.

Let me know what you think, this is a discussion.

P.S This was an email I sent to friends

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