Music industry, 5 tech predictions from 2010

Has the music industry changed its ways?

It’s hard to believe that its been 6 years since 2010. If you’ve been attached to the music industry at all in that time the constant pace of technology might have felt like a whirlwind. I’ve been planning now for a while is to have a serious look back at a video about the industry I used to be in.

Back in 2010 i was a radio DJ at INDI 101, now The Hawk 101.5FM, in Hamilton Ontario. Before this I was studying at Mohawk College where I met and came to know a man named Alan Cross. At the time Alan was running the most successful radio station in Canada, 102.1 The Edge, and considered one of the best in the industry. In July of 2010 Alan spoke at a TEDx in Toronto on what he called The Slow-Motion Music Revolution. In it he made 5 predictions of the music industry and how technology was posed to radically change the face of it. Lets see how they stack up to 2016.

1. The Mobile-ization of Music

The number of music downloads is increasing with the number of smartphones that we’re seeing in the marketplace

It might be hard to imagine when not everyone had a iPhone or an Android device but back in 2010 only 298 million “smartphones” were sold world wide. Compare that with today and some 1.4 billion smartphones were shipped by the end of 2015. Even I was rocking a LG Neon in 2010.

True to Alan’s prediction though as soon as smartphones beat feature phones in market share on demand music became more of a expectation for the music industry. In 2011 when this happened the Digital music sector was worth 4.3 Billion USD world wide.

2. Access vs Possession

If you’re old the way you got music the way you enjoy music was you had to possess it … that is no longer a value proposition

In the talk Alan alludes to this small UK company, Spotify, how it was changing the very nature of how we buy music, or rather the access to it. In May 2013 Google made one of the first steps by launching a streaming service to their Google Music app. For those who paid $9.99 a month would have an all access pass for music. In December 2013 Spotify came out with a free streaming teir to it’s service.

Today the Digital Music sector is projected to be worth around 7.2 billion USD. The music industry largely attributed its growth to streaming music sites like Spotify.

3. The Rise of the Curators

Used to be that the only people that you got your music information from were your friends, the guy at the record store, the guy on the radio or maybe the VJ on TV… those were the people who provided you with the music the they thought you needed to listen to

May 8th 2014 Apple announced that it had purchased Beats for US$3.2 billion, effectively making Dr.Dre the first billionaire in hip hop in the music industry. Apple however did not buy Beats by Dre because of their high quality, or Beats music for their technolgical advances. Apple bought Beats because the Beats brand were the makers of “cool”, and perfect for the music curation station of Beats1.

Others like Google, Spotify and Youtube also started to go down the curated music route. Offering a variety of both human and computer picked music lists.

4. The Decline of Sound

Because this digital generation grew up listening to compressed music on your ear buds their perception of beauty has changed

It’s hard to tell if this one has come to pass, at least for me. I grew up in the 90’s and my formative music listing came in the era of the .mp3. However there are lots of services out there fighting to bring back a higher standard for music quality in the music industry. Both Spotify and Apple music boast about streaming music at higher quality then .mp3.

Maybe one of the better funded Kickstarter campaigns of the past 5 years was Neil Dimond’s Pono player. Raising roughly 6 million dollars on the promise of a lossless audio ecosystem. However it so far has not turned out to be the runaway hit it was hyped up for.

5. Independent Free Agents vs Indentured Servants

Undoubtedly there has been a large rise on the independent free agents over the past 5 years in the music industry. Even 360 deals that Cross describes are becoming more friendly to the artist because of the flattening of the music landscape.

Now artists can bring their fans on to services like Patreon and gain monthly revenue to help them continue their work. While services like Bandcamp, Shopify, EventBrite and others allow for easy sale of band merch, music, and tickets.

this is a cross post from my personal blog