Music Industry Analysis
Music Biz curates a feed of music industry news articles, business statistics and trend analysis from a variety of media outlets, filtering out the noise to deliver you the actionable insights you need to succeed. Starting in 2024, these articles will be accessible exclusively from Music Biz’s social media feeds.
June 10, 2019 – Merch Madness: How Artists Are Using Designer Duds and Nutritional Supplements to Battle for No. 1
To sell music these days, artists and labels are in an arms race to sweeten the deal — with lots and lots of stuff. A few weeks before the release of Tyler, The Creator’s latest album, IGOR (Columbia Records), his team launched a campaign to drive first-week sales. It began with a bundle of goodies, the Vote IGOR Pack, that included a t-shirt, lawn sign, button, vinyl sticker and coupon for a digital album download, all for $40.... Read More
June 7, 2019 – Average US Time Spent with Mobile in 2019 Has Increased
For the first time ever, U.S. consumers will spend more time using their mobile devices than watching TV, with smartphone use dominating that time spent. Consumers’ use of smartphones will continue to make up the majority of their media consumption, but we predict that use will plateau by 2020, as consumers become increasingly uneasy about overuse of mobile devices. “We’ve expected that mobile would overtake TV for a while, but seeing it happen is still surprising,”... Read More
June 6, 2019 – Paid Music Subscriber Totals Will Reach 1 Billion By 2030, Says Updated Goldman Sachs Report
The U.S. recorded music market is still growing — faster than top researchers originally thought. Goldman Sachs analysts are raising previously-reported industry forecasts by an average of 4 percent over the next decade, now predicting the industry to grow into a $45 billion beast with a paid streaming population of 1.15 billion by 2030. In its 2017 dossier, the research team led by Lisa Yang originally projected the industry to pull in $44 billion annually by then,... Read More
June 5, 2019 – Sheet Happens: One of Music’s Oldest Businesses Is Growing in the Digital Age
Today — thanks to online stores like Musicnotes, digital subscription services and music-notation formats for tablets and phones — sheet-music sales are booming. They generated $240 million in global revenue in 2018, according to Musicnotes — a tiny fraction of the overall publishing business. But the sheet-music sector is growing quickly: The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) has said that sales were up 7 percent in 2017 compared with the previous year. “I don’t believe we have a ceiling,... Read More
June 4, 2019 – Third Annual Podcast Ad Revenue Study by IAB and PwC Reports Significant Growth
The third annual Podcast Revenue Report by IAB and PwC confirms solid and increasing growth in the U.S. podcast advertising marketplace. The report, which surveyed top US revenue producing podcast companies on various data points, reports continued growth trends at the individual publisher level. The report adds an independent market sizing element, which echoes the pattern of increasing marketwide revenues into 2021 and beyond. This year’s report finds marketers spent $479 million to advertise on podcasts in the U.S.,... Read More
June 4, 2019 – Will Listeners Switch to Music Services from Their Smart Speaker Brands?
Smart speakers present a potentially valuable new option for music services to reach listeners. The space poses a particular interest for tech firms operating in both hardware and software, since they can create brand loyalty within audiences who will buy their devices and then continue to provide revenue as subscription listeners. For instance, Amazon and Google, two of the market leaders in the United States and globally, have launched free or low-cost access to music on their smart speakers.... Read More
June 3, 2019 – 10 Trends You Should Know About Kids’ Licensed Products
Licensed products make up one quarter of U.S. unit sales for children age 14 and under, across 17 industries, shown by Q4 2017 findings from research firm the NPD Group’s U.S. Kids’ License Tracker. Whether it is backpacks, coloring books, t-shirts or games, kids love the company of Harry Potter and Dr. Seuss characters alike. This ten-point summary from NPD gives insight into what industries, categories, and products are doing well across the licensed product market.... Read More
May 31, 2019 – The Record Industry Expects a Windfall. Where Will the Money Go?
In recent years, several financial institutions have predicted record labels will soon be celebrating annual revenues that begin to approach, if not surpass, their late-1990s peaks: What was an inflation-adjusted $25 billion-per-year business before the millennium could bring in more than $41 billion annually by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs. Label revenue from sales and licensing of recorded music totaled $19.1 billion globally in 2018, marking a fourth straight year of increases. Much of the rise is thanks to people paying for subscriptions to streaming music services.... Read More
May 29, 2019 – Metadata is the Biggest Little Problem Plaguing the Music Industry
It’s possible to correct metadata errors afterward, but that’s reliant on someone catching that error and then correcting it in every database where it appears. Even if it does get fixed, that doesn’t mean an artist gets all the payments they’re due — every company and collection society has different rules about how long they hold on to unclaimed royalties. “We take it for granted that we can look up movie or TV credits on IMDb and see everything,... Read More
May 28, 2019 – The Concert Industry’s New Star Moneymaker: The Aisle Seat
The concert business has found a new cash cow right under its nose: the humble aisle seat. Taking cues from the travel industry, Live Nation has recently begun to offer aisle seats at select shows at a surcharge of between $5 and $30 a pop. Now labeled as “premium aisle seats,” the seat at the end of each row and as many as three additional seats further into the row are being promoted on Ticketmaster as an option for fans who are looking to “enjoy the convenience of easy access to refreshments,... Read More
