Fans craving social experiences; music X environmental activism; and search getting multi-dimensional
Edition 01
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SONIC SHIFTS
Swifties drive 1M streams with listening party  [Consumer Behavior] [Fandom]
Taylor Swift's official fan account hosted a listening party for her latest album, which drove over 1M streams on Apple Music and Spotify in under 24 hours. Fans are craving regular social music experiences, especially since live grassroots are practically dead. New apps in the market (Stationhead, Music League) are making this a reality so worth checking out, for fan engagement strategies as a way to build community for your artists.Â
Related: (1) Taylor Swift has been at the cutting edge of building community at gigantic scale, MIDiA put together how the fan frenzy flywheel has been built around her fandom. See graphic below.
(2) We all know about exclusive content and how it drives fandom. What is increasingly coming to focus is how necessary it has become to create ‘walled gardens’ for your artists’ fans in order to be sustainable, before you can be ‘big’. It is no longer the other way around. Single.xyz (service to monetize exclusive content) has shared a guide on how to market exclusive content.
Global music streams comprise of 73% of catalogue music, new released music is at 27% (US market, Luminate 2023) Â [Consumer Behavior] [Streaming]
That’s a seismic shift, meaningfully moving the scale towards older music. Granted this is the US market, but it does say a lot about how fandom is evolving in a developed market. An oversaturated market (more new music supply than demand for new music), coupled with trends such as shallow listening, nostalgia trips are taking listeners back to what they know best. Worth thinking about how to reactivate your artists catalogue of old music time to time - here are 10 tips to market older music releases
Search is going to get multidimensional [Consumer Behavior] [Tech]
Daniel Ek of Spotify shared his 3 new ‘core’ opportunities for music - nothing out of the ordinary but there is a new developing implication for search and discovery with AI in the picture. Today we search for playlists based on vibes (e.g. Sunday morning funk) or genre (e.g. Jazz rap), but tomorrow's search will also be ‘underground electronic from East European beach towns’. Essentially prompt based AI playlist creator - for UTR artists to crack discovery in the future (particularly new artists), one needs to have a clear articulation of how their fans experience their music, in what emotional context it works for fans, linking that to the physical world - so that you can develop their SEO equivalent strategy for multi-dimensional LLM search on DSPs in the future. To know if you are on top of your game, ask yourself - can you describe Ritviz/Anish’s fan demographic beyond the age/gender/location split? PlaylistGPT by Napster/Upbeat.io allows you to create new AI tracks (see graphic), but I imagine a future where listeners might upload an image of a picturesque Mediterranean beach shack and ask to create a playlist based on that image.Â
Music meets environmental activism  [Live] [Tech]Â
You’ll be playing catch up if you don’t start now. Anjunadeep has come out with its Sustainability Action Plan. The UN has launched something called Sounds Right (Anuv Jain is a part of this). Billie Eilish has publicly announced her commitment to lowering the environmental footprint of her music as a top priority - every time she’s off stage she’s talking about climate. Music has its own issues from a climate pov, and there’s more awareness being built around it (read here, here, here). Putting aside artist activism for a minute, it’s definitely important to jump on this train from a live production pov. Here is a list of eco-friendly music organizations that are making a difference.Â
READ THIS SHIT
MIDiA Music Bifurcation Theory - The music business is bifurcating – splitting into two – with streaming emerging as the place for mainstream music and lean back consumption, and social as the spiritual home of fandom and the creator economy.Â
The techification of entertainment - It’s happening. It’s happened. Few would say otherwise but this article puts it really well. The tech solutionism way of looking at cultural artefacts (music) is limiting. The antithesis of this is what UTR has to do, be the counterposition that supports the cultural value of music/art in India.
AI Dataset Ethics - AI music is here to stay, especially since they might be better at algo-hacking their way to success. It might not disrupt creativity in its truest sense, but it has real risk for IP rights. It is a rapidly evolving technology with no legal precedence and the jurisprudence is nascent. Read this quick synthesis of the under-the-hood mechanics of the AI engine and how it relates to music. Â
Western music isn’t what you think - This is the most interesting hypothesis I’ve come across on the social history of music. My gut says it’s true, but we’ll have to see if this stands the more recent ‘recorded’ music century we are living in. Bottomline is diversity matters, and when that diversity seeps into art, is when magic is created.Â
KEEP TRACK OF
Lila - South Asian artists collective in the UK music industry
This dude Vikram Gudi is thinking about how to systemically bring more representation of SA artists in the UK music scene. South Asians represent the largest diaspora in the UK; food and music are two cultural threads that will witness more entertainment spends. Keep a close eye on how this collective evolves.
Related: In the 1980s and 1990s, South Asians created a community around daytime raves in the U.K. Now, a new generation is trying to reignite that same magic.
Snapchat + Live Nation = Snap Nation
AR will probably win over VR in music, which is why this partnership is very interesting. But there’s barely any press on this except that they have ‘deepened’ their partnership. With concerts getting larger than life, this might be one way to bring back the artist-fan relationship in live entertainment. Time will tell.Â
INTERESTING STUFF
I hate self-promotion. I prefer to be the behind-the-scenes analyst strategizing big plans to take over the world. But there’s something called ‘worldbuilding’ that UTR is in the business of, and that means marketing and self-promotion - there is a way to reframe this. Sari Azout is one of my favourite writers and her substack has gems of advice. Click here to read.
Dopamine culture is now mainstream (natural evolution of the techification of entertainment). It’s a double edged sword - Andrew chen writes you can either tap into or counterposition, both can work. My preference? Build a music business over from dopamine culture.Â
That’s all for today. We’ll be back in your inbox next week.
Thanks for reading,
Rohit