Predicting the next hit; and the Rise of the anonymous star
Edition 02
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SONIC SHIFTS
Tencent Music’s AI-powered tech can ‘predict the next hit song’
This is pretty wild, even if it’s just a claim right now. It has massive implications for the future of music, of who gets to win. Now that this has happened, it is practically inevitable that music labels/executives will rely on some similar predictive model before signing artists in the future (UTR will be no exception). The key thing to always remember is that this is different from a model that can predict the success of an artist - it’s harder to crack that. UTR mission must always ensure artistic development is balanced with potential for virality. That’s because (successful) artists have higher staying power than a random (hit) song. That helps you win the war, even if the battle is lost.
Related: Chris Dalla Riva (his substack on music & data is worth subscribing) wrote a piece on ‘one-hit wonders’ and how it has changed over time - he’s retrospectively looked at the success formula that maps to the different decades - the AI engine essential working on that progress curve to predict a hit.
Vinyl is back
TL;DR, music consumption has evolved from possession (CDs, cassettes, vinyls) to access (streaming), and now inching back to possession. Even cassette tapes are making a comeback. If you read the MIDiA music bifurcation theory, it said that social is going to be the spiritual home of fandom - by taking back possession, you bring social alive again (the inevitable revival of analog). In a decade’s time, streaming is where your career goes to die OR you become the anonymous star.
Rise of the anonymous star
Ever heard of the artist/producer Röhr with over 15 Billion streams on Spotify? Me neither. Spotify in its annual music economics report (2023) shared how 80% of the artists who generated over 1 million USD from streaming are not household names, i.e., they didn’t have a song reach the Top 50 of Spotify’s Daily Global Songs chart. With the way streaming is evolving, it will become the hub for background-esque music for passive/shallow listening. If you want your artist to be a ‘popular’ star, take them offline.
READ THIS SHIT
Stop renting, start owning [your channel] - Helpful framework for sustainable growth for a music artist. Use rented channels (streaming/social etc.) for discovery and growth; Use owned channels (email/website etc.) for nurturing and monetization. EVEN is a new service in the market to build fan experiences directly with the fans.
To build a fanbase, reach every level of fandom - Not all fans are created equal. The fan-superfan binary is a start but you can slice that better. Map that out with the artist growth cycle and you’ll see you can quickly come up with a marketing strategy for artists.
Rethinking musical genre for the streaming era - This is linked to the point I made about search getting multidimensional in the previous week’s newsletter. Search has evolved from neat genres, to vibes - genres are dissolving and we are firmly into the territory of ‘contextual playlists’. This is a natural result of ubiquitousness of (music) data, and tech companies will always be ahead. For artist managers, it’s important to know how this algo-driven ecosystem works for search and discovery as it evolves even faster with AI being deployed.
SEO for Music - The journey to be on top of search & discovery for your artist, starts here. A useful synthesis of the way to structure your SEO of your artists. SEO starts with good metadata - read the importance of metadata for music discovery and search.
KEEP TRACK OF
Downtown secures $500m credit agreement from Bank of America for independent artists and labels This is huge. “Downtown is at the center of a major shift in the music industry where creators and the businesses that support them are completely aligned,” said Downtown Music CEO Pieter van Rijn - he is right and everyone should follow this very closely. I just talked about how it is hard to predict the success of an artist - this development tells you it’s not impossible. Why is it important to predict future success? So that you can lend money to an artist to grow their business. This is the economic revolution coming to the creative economy - you may not see it yet but there is an invisible race to build a bank for creators and someone is going to do it first in the next 3-5 years.
New fund for early career music promoters - You might have come across new grants and funds to support the live music scene. This development is in the broader theme of supporting the ecosystem (not just artists). That is because streaming has messed up the economics of the live music business, changed how discovery happens, leaving live scenes out of the pie. And we’re seeing this industry die. I’m excited to witness what new entertainment experiences are created by folks to win these grants
Music collaboration softwares - Indaband is a new one on the block. This is interesting to me because this is 1) hard to crack; 2) is an antithesis to the music softwares in the market that focus on empowering the artist, rather than helping them collaborate.
That’s all for today. We’ll be back in your inbox next week.
Thanks for reading,
Rohit