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.
February 26, 2019 – Holiday Shopping on Smartphones Led to Strong Ecommerce Growth
The 2018 retail holiday season was exceptionally strong, with the highest growth rates for brick-and-mortar and ecommerce sales since 2011. Online spending performed noticeably better than the industry’s already optimistic expectations. Gains in ecommerce this season were fueled largely by the increase in mobile shopping and buying, particularly on smartphones. Mobile accounted for 60% of online shopping traffic and 40% of sales, with smartphones accounting for 51% and 31%, respectively, according to Adobe. Compared with last year,... Read More
February 25, 2019 – Why We’re Entering the Golden Age of Podcasts
Since Apple included the Apple Podcasts app on every iPhone back in 2014, Edison Research’s Share of Ear report has shown slow but steady growth. But 2018 looks like it was an exceptional year. CBS News conducted a survey of US listeners in January 2019 showing an increase of people listening to podcasts daily or a few times a week from 15% to 23%. That represents 20 million more frequent podcast listeners in the US alone — a 50% relative jump over the previous year.... Read More
February 21, 2019 – The Live Music Building Boom In New and Renewed Venues
With the renovation of historic halls in markets large and small, and new arenas under discussion or construction everywhere from the New York suburbs to San Francisco, a building boom is reshaping the live-music landscape. The total investment is difficult to estimate, but individual projects in North America tracked by Billboard, like The Met Philadelphia, have cost millions — and, collectively, billions. What’s driving and guiding all this spending? Executives from four of the live-music industry’s top firms involved with venue operation and development — AEG Worldwide,... Read More
February 20, 2019 – Smart Speaker Sales Estimated to Exceed 64 Million in 2022
Parks Associates research estimates US households will buy more than 64 million smart speakers with voice assistants in 2022, part of the smart home trend driving widespread adoption of voice control. Strategies for Integrating Voice in the Smart Home finds adoption of these devices increased by 800% from 2016 to 2018, reaching nearly one-third of U.S. broadband households by the end of 2018. Use of voice in conjunction with smart home devices is increasing. With voice popularity and use cases expanding,... Read More
February 19, 2019 – Video Gamers and the Music Business: Time to Level Up
To the tune of 10 million concurrent viewers, American producer/DJ Marshmello played a live DJ set on February 2 to Fortnite players in Pleasant Park, a virtual location in the massive multiplayer game that took 2018 by storm. Gamers tuned in, showed up with their customized avatars, and danced on the virtual floor and on the DJ stage with Marshmello. Accumulating more than $3 billion in revenue last year alone, Epic Games’ latest venture into live music seemed natural,... Read More
February 15, 2019 – Streaming Hits Feature Shorter Intros, Fewer Choruses, Shorter Lengths
At the GRAMMYs this Sunday, the top-nominated artists also happen to be the most-streamed artists in the world. Drake, Post Malone and Kendrick Lamar have cracked the formula for a streaming-platform hit, in an era when streaming is quickly becoming the most important measure of an artist’s popularity. Researchers and people in the music industry say that the importance of having a song do well on Spotify or Apple Music is changing the way songs are written. ... Read More
February 14, 2019 – How Do Gen Z Kids Discover New Music?
Discovering music used to be simple, like picking up apples from the grocery store. You’d head to HMV or Tower Records or whatever big conglomerate stood tall upon your town and then grab the newest record from the chart section. Or perhaps you’d dive deeper, scouring the alternative racks or bookish vinyl shops in search of a suggestion from a sibling. Maybe, once in a while, you’d opt for something rogue because the cover art looked good.... Read More
February 13, 2019 – Thanksgiving Day Is Now the No. 3 Online Shopping Holiday
Cyber Monday first entered the public consciousness back in 2005, when it was coined by Shop.org to describe the day where online spending spiked as holiday shoppers got back in front of their computers at work after the holiday weekend. In 2012, Black Friday rose in prominence for online retailers as it surged to more than $1 billion in sales for the first time. The 2018 holiday season may be remembered as the year that Thanksgiving Day cemented its status as its own online shopping phenomenon.... Read More
February 12, 2019 – Three Ways AI is Reshaping the Music Business
The role of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in business and the global economy is a hot topic across industries. This is not surprising given the fact that AI has the capacity to effect tremendous transformations in the way businesses interact with their respective consumers. This future of a business landscape reshaped by technology is no longer something organizations can ignore. The fourth industrial revolution is in full effect, and companies, particularly in the music business, need to prepare a new set of strategies if they are to adapt and take full advantage of AI’s wave of change.... Read More
February 8, 2019 – Smartphone Ownership Is Growing Rapidly Around the World, but Not Always Equally
Mobile technology has spread rapidly around the globe. Today, it is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones. But the growth in mobile technology to date has not been equal, either across nations or within them. People in advanced economies are more likely to have mobile phones – smartphones in particular – and are more likely to use the internet and social media than people in emerging economies.... Read More
