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The State Of the Music Industry Is Bad,But It Has Still Seen Worse Days

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While more music is being produced these days than ever before, this high production does not necessarily equate to the highest revenue of all time. In fact, it actually has equated to rather the opposite end of the spectrum.

2014 saw the smallest weekly sum for album sales since data tracking first began in the early nineties. This downward spiral included an 11-month wait for any artist to sell a million copies of a studio album, until Taylor Swift finally broke this dry spell when her album ‘1989’ dropped at the end of last year.

The landscape of the music industry has shifted considerably due to one main factor. The wonder, or nightmare rather, that is online music streaming. The music business body, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has recently reported that Britons streamed 14.8bn tracks in 2014, twice the figure of 7.5bn in 2013, as internet connectivity becomes more reliable and more engrained into our everyday lives.

To put a positive spin on it though, things could definitely be worse. With some historical context shed on the situation, we can see that the music industry has definitely seen worse days. In the 1920’s and the 1930’s, the arrival of free music ultimately led to the industry downsizing to a mere 5% of its previous stature and size. This reduction lasted for two whole decades until the 1940’s when the jukebox made a firm and game-altering appearance, in which people were invited to pay to hear music again.

It is needless to say music has come a long way since the invention of the jukebox…or has it? People are still creating playlists, and lining up their tracks, only difference is that now it is all occurs online. This time though, instead of aiding the music industry, it is actually crippling it, almost to the point of an actual break. Online streaming figures have zoomed from zero in 2007 to £76.7m in 2013.

Additionally, thanks to the explosion of YouTube, music labels are raking up millions of extra dollars a month thanks to YouTube advertising. So this additional money being pumped back into the music industry can make up for lack of music sales for the time being. This is why mainstream artists will release, 4, 5 or even 6 singles form each of their albums, each with their own music video. This is good news for video production companies, and for the artists who feel that Spotify and other online streaming platforms are ‘ruining their lives’.

As it turns out, the music industry has been thrown more than one lifeline. As a result of the cost of fuel decreasing, it now costs less to tour, which of course means more profit on ticket sales. The 12 January has marked a five-year low, which is great news for us all, including the touring industry, artists can add more dates to their tour, at a lower cost.

 by Chloe Hashemi

English

What Happened To Midem? – “Things aren’t what they used to be”

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Virtual Conferences for the world’s largest music market Midem was unusually quiet. I remember the organized madness that Midem once shared. The LIVE performers scheduled hourly at selected spots within the exhibition hall, the continuous playing of music at a multitude of visitor stands. The Midem sponsored nightly concerts at multiple hotel ballrooms, parties held by different governments just to showcase their best music and musicians. Gone are the days of leaving one fabulous concert, just to walk next door or down the block to another. I miss the abundance of free music given out to attendees just so they may eventually listen, talk about and ultimately purchase quantities for sale in their respective markets.

The experience of discovery is lacking while digital media is supposed to bring the industry closer. Things aren’t what they used to be. Executives at this year’s Midem conference have come up with a unique usage of today’s technology. VIRTUAL CONFERENCING Oh, you say it’s not a NEW idea, well imagine this scenario. You register for the conference online, paying your registration fee digitally. You then troll the online database of the conference attendees and schedule your appointment for a private online meeting time. At your designated time you connect visually and have a one on one meeting digitally with the person you have chosen. During the meeting you share music or video file that be saved or seen and you get immediate feedback.

What I heard during Midem were facts and figures, “My song has 600,000 YouTube views, My Sound cloud has been downloaded 800,000 times, I now have over a million followers on Twitter. What I didn’t hear was the music itself. Sure a few people had MP3 players, jump drives, iPhone with a cloud file, one meeting I took from the UK even had a portable CD player with ear buds. Yet this was the exception NOT the norm. The numbers game was what ruled this conference. Most companies were interested in having 5,000,000 songs on file where anyone could research for the song they wanted or needed. I’m predicting that there will be a change in how the Business of Music selling works very soon. Most people are lazy yet want instant gratification while the successful industry executive works daily in developing lasting relationships and NOT online hype. The day of the Song Plugger is fast approaching, the need for personalize service for publishers, writers, musicians and labels is mandatory.

 

Will this happen virtually? Only time will tell…

by Allen Johnston

English · This & That

Myth #1: Selling Out!

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We’ve all heard it before. Don’t be a sell out! Be true to the art form, be true to yourself. Don’t sacrifice that for fame and fortune. Bla bla bla. Noble words coming from people who usually (a) aren’t in the music business or (b) are in the music business but need to hold another 2 jobs to stay afloat. Good for them! Let them make the “noble” choice but don’t let their choices influence you. Selling out is not copping out and I will explain exactly why in a minute.

The music industry is like any other industry, right? Your music is a business. You are a brand. But too often we don’t treat it like that. For some reason we think it should abide by its own laws – that those that have a true love for the artform, those that are the most gifted/talented, those that have the best songs should come out top, and those that approach it as a business should not. Wrong. Music is like any other industry, and the reason we make it so hard for ourselves, the reason we think the industry is inherently “tough” is because we don’t approach it this way.

Anything in life is about supply and demand. If there is no demand, there is no exchange. Feel free to follow the art-form and make music that you love, just remember that that does not necessarily mean that everyone else will love it or that it will be popular. If you are happy with writing, recording or performing music that is not well received commercially just remember that from a label/promoter’s point of view you’re not marketable and don’t expect to get rid of your day job.

Please note this is not coming from a place of greed, it’s simply the reality. If anyone wants to make music a career you have to treat it like a business, and with a business comes much needed research and product/service customisation to meet a need/want in the market. If you’re looking at earning your wage through being an artist, i.e. through record sales, performances and related merchandise, you might have to do what some people refer to as “selling out”. All that it means is that you’ve listened to the world’s music-taste and you’ve adapted your art to meet it so that an exchange can happen.

I say selling out is not copping out because its simply understanding the industry and giving it the respect it deserves. The music industry is far from saturated. Music listeners do not select their favourite artist and simply move on with their lives like they would with a brand of toothpaste or their favourite soft drink. There is always space to invite a new artist into their collection. The thing that makes the industry so fresh is that music gets old. Isn’t that ironic! Sure its great to listen to the classics but you can’t spend your whole life listening to the same CD over and over. You need to make room for the new, i.e. there is always demand.

Finding that demand is key to staying alive in the industry and to be able to do what you love for a living. Yes, “what you love”! Sure I write soft-rock because it comes naturally to me, but if you told me that if I had to make orchestral music or pop music in order to have a profitable music business therefore negate the need for the potentially unfulfilling day-job, hell yeah I’d do it! You mean that I’d be able to spend my working days creatively, pursuing something that has my name directly attached to it! Sign me up!

You see for me, and I’m sure for a lot of you, being creative is number one. Take away my guitar and I’ll make the best piano-ballads this year. Take away the piano and I’ll play drums in the most brilliant accompanying rhythm section to come out this summer. Whatever I have, I’ll pour my soul into it. I’ll give my all. Why? Because I LOVE music. I truly love the art-form and appreciate all aspects of it. Restrictions don’t stunt creativity, they stimulate it! A good musician can express him/herself with any instrument/any genre. Isn’t that the music ethos. The code?

Selling out is an excuse that unsuccessful people use. We are all scared of putting our heart and soul into something only for it to fail. It’s natural to use excuses to prevent us from getting hurt, to maintain that comfort zone. Please just don’t impart that disease in someone else’s head because you were too afraid to follow your own dreams. And please please don’t look at them with regret when they’re getting all the attention and living the life you’ve always wanted playing music that you could play in your sleep!

Remove the “Sell out” myth from your vocabulary. Love the artform, love all aspects of it.

Sean David is a singer/songwriter, music entrepreneur and journalist from Port Elizabeth, South Africa. For more info on what he’s been up to click here.