✖ The 'sachetization' of music consumption
And: Facebook to feast on our ears; festival cancellations due to travel restrictions; Songcamp, NFTs, Web3; making the music industry more sustainable; what's your community mission?
Two things piqued my ears recently and got me thinking about a good way to expand the total number of paying music consumers that does so on their terms instead of the terms set by the major platforms.
The continuing battle between Apple and Spotify. Both in terms of per-stream rates and in terms of podcast subscriptions.
Continuing declining ARPU signalling that global expansion and things like family bundles are driving overall revenues down.
Sachetization can help us think about ways to bring more music consumers to pay for what they listen to.
TECH
🦻 Facebook has feasted on our eyes and are now looking to feast on our ears too. In a recent discussion with Casey Newton, Mark Zuckerberg talked about new features for Facebook: a short-form audio format; a long-form audio format; live audio rooms. In the Means of Creation newsletter we find a great analysis of what this means, how Facebook can utilize its strengths, and how it tries to involve the creators (in the broadest sense) to bring in the audiences and monetize them. The risk is that they try to do too much and won’t perfect either the features or how to deal with influencers’ wishes.
💰 If you’re interested in the Creator Economy you’ll love this resource by Famepick which shows all the funding rounds in the space since March 2020. Here’s the Google Doc and here’s the Airtable.
🥢 Some priceless advice from Anna Grigoryan about finding your community. I’ll give one part here: you need to find your community mission.
🔘 NFTs aren’t so hot anymore, but now we’ll start to see the interesting things happening. For example, Songcamp. It’s a collaboration between musicians, artists and developers creating unique new works. The project is heavily focused on Web3 capabilities and it’ll be worthwhile keeping an eye on their release strategies.
💳 The funding system in the music looks set to change. More and more companies are popping up that will provide loans against future revenues of IP. The Music Credit Fund is the latest to crop up.
X
✈️ CORONA: This is a local UK example, but I foresee more of this type of news in the next months. 2000trees festival has cancelled this summer’s edition because 20 of the biggest bands on the bill pulled out due to global travel restrictions.
😷 CORONA: We reported before about the trial concert with Love of Lesbian in Barcelona. We now know that there were no clear signs that transmission took place during this event. Tests like this one - where audience members test prior to attending - are being held across Europe. It appears that this method of rapid-testing allows for, at least, local events.
🗠 CORONA: It’s always interesting to check where investors are focusing on. Over at Investors Chronicle they took a look at who will benefit from the return of live. What piqued my interest is that they focused their attention on Focusrite, company specialised in recording equipment. The reason they think you should buy this stock? Their analysis shows a future that is hybrid and will include more investments in video and audio recording equipment.
🎫 GREEN: An excellent overview in The Guardian of initiatives surrounding sustainability in the music industry. It showcases what difficulties there are to achieve anything, but also shows the cultural clout of artists in pushing this agenda forward and setting about real change.
👩🎤 SOCIAL: Do we need to innovate to create more equal line-ups? Or do we simply need to take action?
“More and more, if you don’t make these positive changes then you will get left behind. Audiences aren’t just passive bodies of people, they’re dynamic. They care more and more about accountability and representation. If festivals don’t respond to that, then they will get left behind.”
Maxie Gedge, Project Manager of Keychange at the PRS Foundation talking to NME
MUSIC
I love techno and it doesn’t get much better than this set with Nina Kraviz and Helena Hauff playing back-to-back.