Music industry has seen a lot of changes over the last few months, and if it’s always interesting to dive into the numbers and take a look back, there’s a lot to look forward to. So let’s see what the trends are this week!
#1. Music streaming services market analysis
You may have seen it come up here and there: music streaming platforms have been studied for the end of the year to begin to understand how the market has progressed in 2022. Luckily, we have a few of the main takeaways to look at.
First things first: Spotify is still way ahead of all other platforms, although they’re losing a little bit of ground. This is primarily explained by the rise of Tencent Music Entertainment and NetEase Cloud Music in Asia, a market that Spotify is not tackling right now. On another front, the number of subscribers is growing, not as much as in 2021, but still increasing. We’ll let you dive into more details if needed!
#2. From playlists to videos
“The pie of ‘discovery market share’ has become more fragmented,”said Daniel Sander, chief commercial officer of music marketing technology company Feature.FM. And indeed, it seems like some changes we’ve been talking about have come to a concrete conclusion.
Playlists have always had a strong appeal to all artists looking to enhance the possibility of being heard. Right now, short video platforms are taking over the good old playlist’s impact. The fact that TikTok is becoming the main way to discover music is showing how much the situation is changing. Before trying to get into playlists, many music artists and their teams would get a track to air on the radio. So welcome to the new step: getting picked up for a TikTok challenge!
#3. 2022, the year of SoundCloud
It all points to a success when it comes to the Fan Powered Royalties turn taken by SoundCloud at the beginning of 2022. After hiring big talents such as Tracy Chan, sealing major deals with music companies like Warner, SoundCloud emerges pretty triumphant.
According to estimations, the Fan Powered Royalties system is allowing the platform to pay artists more than the pro-rata redistribution in place now. In 2022, SoundCloud managed to pay approximately 100 000 artists through this system. But the true value in this, is the data on listeners themselves.
As Eliah Seton, President of SoundCloud, said: “Optimizing and commercializing fandom is going to be all-important to unlocking a music business that does work for most artists.”. Now, the company has to make their business model run smoothly on users’ end and on the creators’.
#4. Is fractionalized ownership of music copyright new?
No, it’s not. But we never really saw it take off. It may change now that Scott Cohen announced his investment in a new venture precisely working on this. The main difference being the fact that intermediaries would be decentralized.
Here we have an explanation of how the fact that copyright ownership being divided could help engage audiences and fans on a whole new level. Which would actually help getting some creative projects off the ground as easily as if they were supported by a Major. We’ll let you take a look at a new possible trend for the music industry.
#5. Music is now part of the VR/AR strategies
It’s about time that the sound component of immersive technology takes more space. To make sure that the immersion is complete, surrounding sounds, and therefore music, is indispensable. There are still some technical challenges to unlock: latency, high quality sound equipment… A lot of experiences will become even more impressive for users, see it for yourself right here!
