Cost of being a music fan; and the US cultural hegemony on the decline
Edition 03
Hi folks
Happy Wednesday! Welcome to The Industry Playlist 🎵
This week I dive into the cost of being a music fan (it’s becoming exorbitant!) and why US cultural hegemony might decline if TikTok is banned.
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Now, let’s get to it.
SONIC SHIFTS
Winner takes all in monetizing fandom - cost of being a music fan [Fandom] [Live]
Big acts are getting bigger and they’re taking a larger share of the fan's wallets - this article has excellent data on how much $$ different acts are commanding. Depending on where you are standing, the reality is that the rich get richer in the economic system we live in, and music and fandom is no different. The big acts are winning both in streaming and live. When Goldman Sachs writes about the live music thriving, they are specifically referring to the big acts getting bigger, something akin to a monopoly, economically speaking.
Impending TikTok ban in the US - US cultural hegemony on the decline [Tech] [Culture]
TikTok has a huge impact on global (digital) culture, and the loudest voices on the app are US consumers – and largely US teenagers. Viral trends often first start on TikTok before they get to IG or YT Shorts; if and when TikTok shuts in the US, these kids will find themselves not driving digital culture anymore in the same way. That vacuum might be a boon for other cultural trends to emerge.
Spotify is testing prompt-based search [Tech] [Streaming]
I wrote earlier about how search is getting multi-dimensional. Spotify is testing this feature out in the UK and Australia. Genres are dissolving, and Spotify’s data is telling them exactly that. In the prompts, you can refer to places, activities, animals, movie characters, colours, and emojis. Spotify shared that "the most successful playlists" are made out of combinations of genres, moods, artists, or decades - time to start articulating the search prompt for your artists.
READ THIS SHIT
[Attached PDF] Water & Music -cutting edge thought leadership on the new music business. Found a primer on data in the music industry - every A&R professional should read this guide.
How the Music Industry is in a New Age of Arrogance
A bit alarmist but I agree with the sentiment and the larger message - this was in a direct response to the Goldman Sachs report I referred to above. Essentially if you are not in the superstar leagues, life as a musician is hard; if you are not an arena, life as a grassroots live music venue is hard - bottomline is that the socio-cultural value of music is eroding, it will get a lot worse with AI music in the mix.
How to sell your soul to the music industry
The eternal dilemma of an artist. Artists are caught between the pressure to go viral and the desire to stay true to their craft. Is there a way to dance with the devil without losing your soul?
We are now in the "mega/microculture" era for music
Put simply, the big artists are bigger than ever, mega-sized even, but then there’s an increasingly stark gap until you get right down to the smallest microcultures that are tiny, highly fragmented and increasingly unable to really make a dent.
Music Industry Trends Q1 2024
It’s an everything long-list of trends - worth skimming through though.
Music Curation in the AI Era: Evolution or Extinction?
Very important meta-question. The article asks an even more interesting practical question - can AI find new music (as opposed to finding similar music which it does pretty well)? “Asking whether AI or people are better at making playlists is, I fear, a little like asking whether servers or chefs are better at making a meal. AI doesn't "make" playlists in the sense that humans do, it just interpolates patterns from the human playlists that already exist. If AI people, it would have nothing new to learn from”.
KEEP TRACK OF
Daily Music Data - follow them on Instagram
That’s all for today. We’ll be back in your inbox next week.
Thanks for reading,
Rohit