What Does the Future Hold? Music Trends & Predictions!
The music industry is evolving faster than ever. Each year new platforms and mediums skyrocket to prominence…
Predicting the future of the music industry in this rapidly-evolving landscape. This article offers a series of viewpoints and perspectives to give you a collective outlook on the future of the music industry today and the future.
1. How A. I will shape aspects of the Music Industry…
The development of A.I. will automate a whole host of expensive, time-consuming, and complicated processes across music creation and advertising, cutting out the middlemen.
A.I. tools like A.I-mediated composition and voice synthesis will change the way music distribution works and make it easier and more affordable for thousands of musicians all over the globe to create high-quality music.
Automation will reshape music marketing as the market grows…
Even today, artists have to compete with an enormous amount of other artists. As of 2019, over 40,000 tracks are added to Spotify every single day — and there’s every reason to believe that this figure will continue to grow.
AI-enabled music creation will open up the gates even further — but as the number of songs continues to grow, the audience's attention will remain a finite resource.
That is a massive challenge — especially for record labels that have to make the right bets, while the music market grows increasingly saturated.
More income and better ads for artists…
A.I. will also make it easier to create and deliver the right messages to the right audience at the right time. On the music business side, it will help artists reach their audience more efficiently, and thus, drive more income.
2. How the way we consume music will change…
Voice queries will allow listeners to effortlessly listen to music that suits their immediate mood or preference without having to interact with text interfaces and toggle through playlists.
The album will continue to decline, and the post-album era will take hold…
Now, that’s not news to anyone — the streaming economy has unbundled music, and the album format has been in decline for many years.
Now, I'm not one to proclaim “the death of an album” — that’s an exaggeration.
The album is not going anywhere — even the millennial demographics are still engaging with the format, as the recent Deezer study revealed.
However, music listeners increasingly discover new music through recommendation algorithms and playlists across streaming platforms.
In the coming years, traditional albums will play a supporting role — while the song will take centre stage, and become the staple of music creation.
3. How different areas of media will start to converge…
Barriers that once existed between various media and creative industries like music, fashion, and film are now melting down, and this trend will only quicken in the future.
Platforms like Amazon and Apple not only stream music, but finance and stream television shows and films (along with Netflix, are beginning to displace the traditional film studio).
4. How the financial aspect of the music industry will increasingly detach from the artistic side…
Labels and producers traditionally held the power to make (or at least influence) artistic decisions.
However, social media has empowered artists to create a personal brand and connect with fans directly.
This will lead to labels taking more of a VC approach, handling the financials — while the artist (and their manager) focuses on the artistic direction.
As artists grow more powerful, so will the music manager…
Social media and music streaming services like Spotify and Pandora have skewed the balance of power away from labels and back towards artists.
In turn, music managers will begin running more and more aspects of an artist’s career.
In the new music ecosystem, managers will increase their share of the work in artist development, both as promoters (rather than just promoting the interests of the artist).
Conclusion…
In just 20 years or so the internet has completely reshaped the music business, and we’re still only in the early stages of this transformation.
Democratization and collaboration will become the order of the day artists will be able to create professional-quality music on the spot.
Streaming will conquer new markets, giving millions of people unlimited access to music.
The trend of democratization will be powered by emerging markets, rather than the traditional ones, that rule over the industry today. Artists will connect with new audiences.
Old barriers between media will break down.
All of these processes are already well underway. Getting a peek into the future is just a matter of understanding the shifts that are happening now in the music industry…
By Pete Moore — Seamless Entertainment
