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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

#71

Post by Paianni »

nemothekid wrote: post #23
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…

> They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed Before this was the Napster era, then the MySpace era, then the SoundCloud era, and now the TikTok era. Somehow those damned labels keep figuring out.

We've lost Polygram, BMG and EMI in the last 30 years, that's three out of the six major labels that were current in the 90s. The remainder are slowly becoming dinosaurs.

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

#72

Post by djkoolaide »

gentleman11 wrote: post #53
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

Bandcamp. A lot of artists just sell their stuff directly on their Bandcamp page now, and you get the choice of format when you download (MP3/WAV/FLAC/etc).

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

#73

Post by warp »

gentleman11 wrote: post #53
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

iTunes still has a store where most music is DRM free, and available in a lot of countries (as opposed to Amazon MP3, which is only available in a few). If you have a Mac it's fairly easy to right-click a purchased, downloaded song in Music.app and click "open in finder", so you can copy it (or the entire album) to some self-hosted music server/app.

There are sites like bandcamp, boomkat, beatport, bleep, 7digital, but they all have smaller collections, so may not have what you're looking for.

There's also budget options of questionable legality hosted in countries with a more flexible approach to music licensing, like e.g. mp3va.com.

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

#74

Post by bryans »

basisword wrote: post #56
bryans wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's a conspiratorial and untrue claim. The most popular curated playlists (i.e. ones that aren't algorithmically produced by Spotify under the guise of curation) don't actually have label influence. Anyone can contact those curators directly, and if presented with something palatable, they will most likely put it in rotation.

> 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.

What do you think the record label is doing when they contact a curator or radio station? It's the exact same as if a musician had contact them. It's an email to a person, who makes a decision based on the content.

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

#75

Post by wwweston »

> driven by paid subscription streaming

If you look at the RIAA's revenue figures over time:

https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/

The story they sure seem to tell is that revenues in the music markets over the last 40-50 years are driven as much (or more) by favorable macroeconomic trends than any particular format.

Hence the huge rise in CD sales in the irrational exuberance of the 90s. Was there anything about CDs in particular? Maybe the quality got people to pay more and boost revenues, but that probably wouldn't have happened w/o increased disposable income. CDs prominent heights in that chart are as much a function of when they were introduced (during boom time) as much as anything else. They didn't "drive" revenues themselves.

Streaming is probably pretty similar. There's some particular features: streaming increases convenience when it comes to management/access and dramatically slashes the consumer cost (and artist revenue). But I'm not going to bet it's driving revenue over macroeconomic trends. In fact, I'd be willing to bet it has actually hobbled revenue at some level, since it cannibalized digital retail that was growing pretty handily even during the last recession and piracy options.

Guess we'll need a recession like 2007 to find out. Streaming might be stickier than other formats since cost is capped, but I wouldn't rule out that paid subscriptions suffer.

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

#76

Post by browningstreet »

I pay for Youtube Premium (Music) and Apple Music.

I don't really want to, but I listen to a variety of music, but a lot of sleep sounds & ambient music, and I keep that on Youtube. I listen to everything else on Apple Music, otherwise all my recommendations become Ambient heavy. My "ambient" moods and my "anything else" moods don't really overlap.

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

#77

Post by colinmhayes »

CharlesW wrote: post #64
xmprt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

> Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make. You don't need a label to distribute your music on major music services. https://www.tunecore.com/

Pretty sure indie artists get paid less by the streaming services, but the much bigger deal is getting onto the playlists. Spotify sells playlist/discover spots, and the only artists who can afford the fees are the ones who are backed by labels.

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

#78

Post by alfiedotwtf »

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…

> Financial support has always been a very well-understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary promotional activities."

This. Just look at TLC, one of the biggest R&B groups of their time, and yet they were personally broke.

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

#79

Post by colinmhayes »

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.

> The vast majority of curating and playlisting is through bloggers or social media

Not sure about this. Maybe for big music fans, but most casual listeners aren't reading music blogs. They're throwing on spotify playlists which allow artists to pay to get boosted. Guess what, it's the major label artists that can afford those payments. They're seeing that their favorite tiktoker made a video with some new band. Guess what, the tiktoker was paid by a label to use that music.

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

#80

Post by lotsofpulp »

bryans wrote: post #61
lotsofpulp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible this method was doable for them without the backing of bigger money because it's sort of novel? If everyone starts live streaming reddit and tiktok, what will make certain groups stand out versus others? I would guess there would be an opportunity for paid promotion, maybe by Reddit or TikTok themselves.

That's an argument which could be made for any market or industry. There are obviously a finite amount of people in the world, and those people have a finite amount of time to find and listen to music, so there is always competition and certain artists are going to stand out among others -- that's the nature of human preference. But that doesn't automatically mean a few are successful and everyone else fails. It's a…

I think it has more of an effect on markets where the marginal cost of an additional sale (or attention) is effectively zero, which results in very bimodal winner (or top few winners) take all type situations.

Not that there is anything wrong with considering success to be whatever you achieve without outside funds trying to promote you, it all simply depends on personal goals and what you are willing to give up to gain an edge.

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