Hello Steemians, today I thought I would take a 'deep dive' into the state of the music industry in 2018.
If we think back 15 years ago, the music industry was pretty simple - with limited revenue streams. Most artists would make their money from CDS, merchandise and live shows. With the adaptation of faster internet there are now numerous ways in which musicians can make money - some of which include: Youtube, Spotify, Itunes and Google music (I'm sure there are more!)
To see how far we have come only need to go back to the year 2000 when thrash metal band Metallica sued Napster for sharing illegal MP3s. At this time if you wanted to listen to music you basically had to buy the album or download it illegally through file sharing sites. Today there are many ways you can listen to music legally for free (e.g. Youtube or Spotify), although you have to listen to an ever increasing amount of ads. Alternatively you can pay for a subscription for Spotify for $9.99 per month for access to pretty much unlimited music (pretty cheap considering one CD costs around $20).
The state of music consumption in 2017
The latest data on music consumption patterns is for the year 2017 by Variety, released on January 2, 2018. This report showed that in 2017 there were 377 billion music streams, a more than 50% increase from 2016! Along with 14% decrease in physical record sales, music downloads appear to be on the way out, with only 563 million music downloads in 2017.
Although physical copies of music have been on the decline for the last decade the decline appears to be ‘flatlining’ - there is nothing quite like owning a physical copy of music. Records are also continuing to see a resurgence among music connaisseurs.
I personally grew up in the 90s and can remember having boxes and boxes of CDs. After dragging them from house to house and never listening to them I decided a couple of years back to sell them all. Although there is something special about listening to physical copies of music, it has become much more convenient to have an entire record collection on a device that fits in your pocket. Maybe one day those CDs I sold will have a resurgence like records have and be worth something again. For the record, my the first CD i bought was The Offspring - Americana, what was yours? I'd love to hear in the comments!
Over the last few years there have been multiple musicians complaining and debating about whether they are getting compensated enough for their music. Most notably Taylor Swift who decided to take all her music off Spotify stating "I'm not willing to contribute my life's work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music". However last year Taylor Swift ended her boycott of Spotify and now her complete back catalogue are on Spotify.
How much do musicians actually make from their music?
There have been varying estimates of how much artists earn per stream on Spotify and Youtube, but a recent report by DigitalMusicNews, suggests that artists can earn a little as 0.0038 per stream on Spotify and 0.0006 per stream on Youtube.
Let's stick with the example of Taylor Swift and estimate how much she is earning on Spotify and Youtube for some of her music.
According to Billboard Taylor Swift set a new Spotify record when her new song ‘Look’ received 8,000,000 streams in one day!
- So, 8,000,000 x 0.0038 = $30,400
Now for an example from Youtube - Taylor Swift's most popular song ‘Shake it off’ has had 2.5 Billion views!
- So, 2.5 Billion x 0.0006 = $1,500,000
So you can see from these examples, there is definetly good money being made by top musicians through online streaming of music.
Conclusion
The music industry has gone through many changes and challenged over the last decade as it moves towards a major online presence. Although downloading illegal music had threatened to lead to major losses and changes, the future appears bright, with services such as Youtube, and Spotify offering musicians a way to monetise their content online, which many people are willing to pay for.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/16/streaming-music-services-pay-2018/
http://variety.com/2018/music/news/taylor-swift-reputation-top-selling-album-streaming-1202651281/