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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

#91

Post by 52-6F-62 »

shams93 wrote: post #85
52-6F-62 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, maybe not. There's a larger variety of business model behind record labels than what people usually mean when they refer to record labels. They're not all middlemen trying to take a cut out of artists. Those exist, and artists have always railed against the model... and then start their own label. Labels are mainly a house for all of the logistics behind an artist. No artist wants to spend 90% of their time ma…

From my experience going back to 1990 everything is actually MORE controlled by the majors than ever before. Its so easy for google to bury you, all the so called "discovery" platforms are a pay to play scheme. Once pay to play became the norm in southern california the music scene died and that was back in the early 90s even before the internet.

That's too bad. It's a big world. There are a lot of small-mid-sized artists making a living with smaller labels.

Not everybody needs to be the next Lizzo or else its abject failure.

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

#92

Post by finiteseries »

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

Outside narrative driven / sports / blue planet level stuff, isn’t a huge part of TV just YouTube/Podcasts/etc now? Curation and everything built in.

I was led to a oddly human travel show and watched it go from a few thousand to millions of subscribers over the past couple years, they were recently on the Ukrainian / Russian border the day before the invasion talking to locals and ended up leaving on a refugee train in 1080p60, 3+ million views.

Questionable character I don’t want to promote and some of the episodes I don’t want to be associated with, but that’s tvesque isn’t it?

Repeat for true crime, history, cooking, children, educational, political commentary, informercials…

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

#93

Post by skinnymuch »

bryans wrote: post #70
basisword wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wil…

I think you're maybe putting too much emphasis on the platforms, particularly on them being a single opportunity that goes away at some point. Every platform, regardless of whether it's a specific function like Spotify or a content hub like YouTube, is a separate venue representing a series of opportunities, not a singular event. If you need evidence of that, you can find countless new YouTube channels finding succes…

> countless new YouTube channels finding success in the same markets

This is seeing the survivors. Even if there are 100 new big YouTube channels per year for some saturated niche. That number might practically speaking basically mean zero if 10 million people every year earnestly try to succeed in that niche. The hit rate on this example is 1 in 100K.

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

#94

Post by skinnymuch »

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…

If things in life were directly proportional to effort and similar things. We’d be living in a meritocracy. Society doesn’t work that way. There are most certainly people who failed while putting in more and better effort than others who succeeded.

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

#95

Post by SapporoChris »

basisword wrote: post #51
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…

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, wil…

I think I get the point. Advertising has merits, so does being a first adopter. It's possible to make it without advertising or being a first adopter, it's also possible to get swept under the rug.

I think the goal from the artists perspective is to reach the most people while reducing advertising costs.

The goal for the consumer is to be able to easily get the music they like at low costs. This is getting met, but I'd like to see the costs lowered. (consumer bias)

Currently the environment is benefiting early entreprenuers of streaming platforms. The costs are lowering for artist which is also good.

I'd like to see the balance to continue to shift more to the artists, but not to the point where one artist can dominate over another.

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

#96

Post by skinnymuch »

bryans wrote: post #45
nemothekid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're giving them far too much credit. They're still very much trying to figure out the Napster era, as to this day they are suing pirates left and right because they genuinely see that 0.01% of the market as a threat to their security.

What do you mean by pirates? RIAA is suing the distributors and creators of pirated content. They are not suing individual pirates much at all. You said “to this day…left and right” which indicates your average person as that was the most know thing they were doing before in the 00s.

That’s not true any more.[0]

0. https://jolt.richmond.edu/2018/03/15/has-the-riaa-given-up-o...

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

#97

Post by basisword »

bryans wrote: post #74
basisword wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

>> 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.

It’s their job to have existing relationships with the bloggers, they aren’t just sending cold emails. And I’d they don’t have relationships they can built them thanks to the credibility they have naturally compared to Jim for some cool indie band sending random emails.

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

#98

Post by vmception »

skinnymuch wrote: post #93
bryans wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're maybe putting too much emphasis on the platforms, particularly on them being a single opportunity that goes away at some point. Every platform, regardless of whether it's a specific function like Spotify or a content hub like YouTube, is a separate venue representing a series of opportunities, not a singular event. If you need evidence of that, you can find countless new YouTube channels finding succes…

> countless new YouTube channels finding success in the same markets This is seeing the survivors. Even if there are 100 new big YouTube channels per year for some saturated niche. That number might practically speaking basically mean zero if 10 million people every year earnestly try to succeed in that niche. The hit rate on this example is 1 in 100K.

This is only sort of true, basically music artists and other content creators can support themselves now. They don't have to go work at Wendy's or learn a different marketable skill now.

In the past the only way to do that was to get the backing of these massive capital pools, and dance when and where they say dance, all to get a little trickle down to that artist. Even if that fame resulted in fortune, it was still the smallest piece of the pie.

When someone has X subscribers paying $Y/month directly to them, with fairly low overhead costs of their content creation, they simply aren't going to be in other parts of the workforce and definitely aren't going to be begging labels, because its good enough for most for the time being.

So it doesn't really matter about the saturation in the same way you assumed.

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

#99

Post by bryans »

skinnymuch wrote: post #93
bryans wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're maybe putting too much emphasis on the platforms, particularly on them being a single opportunity that goes away at some point. Every platform, regardless of whether it's a specific function like Spotify or a content hub like YouTube, is a separate venue representing a series of opportunities, not a singular event. If you need evidence of that, you can find countless new YouTube channels finding succes…

> countless new YouTube channels finding success in the same markets This is seeing the survivors. Even if there are 100 new big YouTube channels per year for some saturated niche. That number might practically speaking basically mean zero if 10 million people every year earnestly try to succeed in that niche. The hit rate on this example is 1 in 100K.

Ignoring that your hypothetical examples are using extremely unrealistic numbers, the overall point you're trying to make is actually right in line with the success rate of any startup, which makes perfect sense and is the entire point. There is not an infinite amount of societal bandwidth to allow for 100% of everyone to be successful at everything, but the startups who stay flexible enough to pivot and take advantage of new opportunities are typically the ones who find sustainable success.

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

#100

Post by gumby »

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…

> Sometime in the next year or two, we will see the first truly independent music superstars achieve household-name status. Once that veil is broken, then the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking -- if they're not already.

We are almost there but not quite. Justin Bieber famously got his start on YouTube, which is a step up from A&R scouts haunting the clubs -- he was 14 and in Canada so probably would never have been found. But a label signed him and increased his exposure by several orders of magnitude. That wasn't even 15 years ago.

Moving from the opposite direction is live music revenues -- from the late 1980s The Grateful Dead made most of their money from touring, not albums, and were one of the top grossing acts for a few years despite a paucity of hit records (a phenomenon the music and financial press seemed to find incomprehensible). Like Bieber, they needed the labels to get there, but then again they started about 60 years ago. They were also pretty into investigating new technology and models despite playing somewhat "low tech" music.

And some breakout stars now control their own finances and corpus, which is also new and really of the same vintage as the Bieber example. I think Ke$ha was a pioneer in this regard, but she built on a prior precedent of some label-developed megastars (e.g. Bowie, Beatles, and famously Prince) who managed to get to the point where the labels needed them more than they needed the labels. Ke$sha pulled it off before getting to that point and she's not the only one (interestingly the only ones I've heard of doing this are all women, but it's not like I follow the music business).

The phase change I'm waiting for is when someone can really break out on their own without a Svengali like the labels. The influencer "infrastructure", such as it is, is too tenuous to pull this off today. But like you, I don't think it's far away, though next couple of years seems too soon. But within the decade.

The fascinating thing about this is the whole debate about how fair the streaming payments are will go away. Instead the stars will likely prefer that the music not be paid for at all (that will magically increase its frequency in the mix); instead it will function as a kind of free advertising for alternative revenue streams. In this, the example of the Dead is illustrative.

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