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Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

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Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#51

Post by basisword »

bryans wrote: post #37
basisword wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.

Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently). In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after man…

How long does that work for though and for how many artists? If you get on a new platform early you can find success, but once the platform becomes swamped with content it's impossible to stand out without creativity, luck...and funding. Unless you're lucky enough to find the next platform.

Additionally - 15k monthly listeners on Spotify is a pretty great starting point. Most indie artists, regardless of quality, will struggle ever even reach that without a lot of outside help (or luck).

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#52

Post by basisword »

mikepurvis wrote: post #50
basisword wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.

Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc. First 2 Eleven is a YouTube cover band who I believe are still fully independent and On the streaming side, musicians like Danielle Allard are killing it, though sometimes in a scenario like this it's unclear if it's even the goal of the person to "go mainstream" vs just…

I'm not saying it's impossible, it happens for sure. But the death of labels has been predicted for the last 20 years and somehow they've managed to continue to make themselves relevant.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#53

Post by gentleman11 »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #2

I am having a hell of a time adjusting to a streaming-focused music world. On one hand, I love having access to pretty much all the music I want, and have discovered a lot of new artists (through no help of the apps themselves, however). On the other hand, having my library randomly switch on me with songs disappearing, album covers swapping out or renamed is driving me NUTS. Not to mention the general buggyness that…

Where can you buy (drm free) music these days? After google play shut down, I haven’t known where to go

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#54

Post by throw_m239339 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #39
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Listen to any smaller artist and they'll tell you streaming services are only good for exposure and the real money is in ticket sales, swag, and physical and digital sales to buying customers.

This seems like a problem associated with how money is apportioned out by the streaming services. As I understand it, they basically throw all the user money into a big pot, and throw all the streams into a big pot, and then apportion it out that way. However, the problem with that is, if I don't listen to Taylor Swift at all, why is a portion of my subscription fee going to her? If, say, $10 per month of the money I…

> However, the problem with that is, if I don't listen to Taylor Swift at all, why is a portion of my subscription fee going to her?

Because Spotify needs to pay extra to have the right to stream Taylor Swift, or Dua Lipa, not OBX.

> If I listen exclusively to Obscure Band X, then all of my money should go to them

Well, that's the thing, some of your money will always go to Taylor Swift or whatever label she is on, regardless of whether you're listening Taylor Swift or not.

As an musician myself I'm NOT on Spotify and actively prevent my music to be on that platform. "Exposure" is meaningless. I make 1000 times more money slapping ads on my music on Youtube than these streaming services.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#55

Post by mikepurvis »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #44
bryans wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently). In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after man…

Same with software, books and manga and video games I think. The only digitalized industry where indies still don't really have a place is tv/movies

There are loads of people making indie movies/docs out there, I think, it's more a question of exposure— there's a long tail of them that get uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube and then just die there. There's some limited curation going on with aggregator channels (eg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA), but it's not mass-market in the way that a Netflix series is.

Which definitely does seem like a missed opportunity for the streaming platforms. Maybe one of them needs to step up with the equivalent of Stream's Greenlight programme— an opportunity to temporarily have your stuff listed alongside the AAA content, and if it hits whatever the numbers are, they'll buy it from you?

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#56

Post by basisword »

bryans wrote: post #41
IMTDb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think labels are more relevant than ever. In a world where it's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you guessed it - labels. Thing is that - in order to be relevant, and play that role - labels need to actually develop a style and expertise in the specific genre/type they want to operate in.

> In a world where it's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you guessed it - labels. That's simply untrue. The vast majority of curating and playlisting is through bloggers or social media personalities and not through labels, so I'm not sure where you got that from.

Who has access to those bloggers and social media personalities? Labels. Otherwise you're just sending your demo to a blog and hoping it might get listened to in the same way you would have sent it to a college radio staton 30 years ago.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#57

Post by xmprt »

basisword wrote: post #20
bryans wrote: post #15

The self-congratulatory nature of the article and quotes actually betray a self-reassurance, because in reality, record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant. They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed. The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any nee…

Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.

I think that while it's been "technically" possible to have an audience without labels for at least a decade, it's been incredibly difficult because of all the barriers to entry that labels have put on the industry. YouTube has Vevo. Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make.

Your options have either been to fight and more than likely fail (or succeed with one viral song and then fail) or give in a join them. However recently, the tide has been turning because labels haven't figured out how to gatekeep things like TikTok (yet).

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#58

Post by [deleted] »

LegitShady wrote: post #14
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Listen to any smaller artist and they'll tell you streaming services are only good for exposure and the real money is in ticket sales, swag, and physical and digital sales to buying customers.

I feel like this was true before streaming as well. smaller artists would say 'the label takes so much of the record sales, touring/swag is where I make money'

[deleted]

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#59

Post by [deleted] »

bryans wrote: post #37
basisword wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.

Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently). In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after man…

[deleted]

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#60

Post by conradfr »

bryans wrote: post #15

The self-congratulatory nature of the article and quotes actually betray a self-reassurance, because in reality, record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant. They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed. The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any nee…

There's great labels still, like Sargent House.

Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly independent but there's still non-music work that a label would do for you that you now have to manage.

And even if the stories about the struggling musicians becoming rock stars has always been embellished, it seems nowadays most of the current ones had financial security before pursuing their music career because of the low budgets available to develop new artists.

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