The recorded music industry posted its fifth straight year of revenue growth in 2019, reaching $20.2 billion according to IFPI’s latest Global Music Report, powered by the continued growth in streaming, which accounted for 56% of that total.
For many artists and songwriters, however, streaming has been very much a mixed blessing. Global streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Prime make it possible to reach a global audience for their music, but many have seen their incomes fall precipitously since the heyday of CDs sales.
Many artists blame the streaming services for the the vanishingly small per-stream royalties they receive, although the digital service providers (DSPs) pay royalties under licenses largely devised by the record companies and publishers, not by the DSPs.
The Covid-19 pandemic has delivered another significant blow to artists’ earnings by shutting down touring and live music festivals, which many artists depend on to make up for the paltry income they receive from streaming.
In response, many artists have turned to live video streaming to maintain contact with their fans and, to the extent possible, eke out some income.
Many of those efforts have relied on video streaming platforms that are already enmeshed in the music business economy, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Stageit. But some artists have begun to turn to live gaming platforms that such a Twitch, and to cloud-based multiplayer games like Minecraft and Fortnite to host their live performances.
There long been an affinity between the worlds of gaming and of music. There is significant overlap between the core audiences of each, and video games have been a robust source of sync revenue for the music business.
Many artists today also grew up playing, and to some extent being influenced by games, and they’re familiar with the rhythms, aesthetics, traditions and social mores of the gaming world. Integrating with those platforms comes somewhat naturally to many artists.
The sheer scale of gaming platforms is also attractive to many artists. Twitch hosted a monthly average of 3.64 million unique broadcasters in 2019, reaching hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. Epic Games announced last week that its massive battle royale online game Fortnite now has 350 million registered players worldwide, and the recent live performance inside Fortnite by rapper Travis Scott drew nearly 28 million viewers.
Apart from the scale, however, engaging with live music on gaming platforms is also a qualitatively different experience than on traditional social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook — one built around community, interactivity and immediacy.
For non-gamers such as myself, immersing yourself in a video game to hear live music can be disorienting — like watching a concert while jacked into the Matrix.
The experience is also likely to be disorienting for the music business. The rhythms, traditions and mores of the gaming world do not fit neatly into the established use cases and economic categories of the industry.
That could leave room for a new set of business and economic arrangements to emerge — one that is more artist and audience-centric than the current label/DSP/touring-centric model.
And that could be a game worth playing.
RightsTech Roundtable
This week’s RightsTech Roundtable featured Jeff King, chairman of the music industry data standards organization DDEX, and Dick Huey, head of partnerships for Jaxsta, the IMDb for the music business. Great discussion on the need for reliable and comprehensive metadata to power new digital services.
Outtakes
Drive by showings
With cineplexes closed around the country due to social distancing requirements, the old fashioned drive-in theater is experiencing a mini renaissance. According to comScore, of the 360 drive-ins still dotting the landscape in the U.S., only 50 are currently operating. But a new partnership among Tribeca Enterprises, IMAX and AT&T is hoping to dust off several more for the summer, with IMAX doing the sound and picture remastering. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, a group of concert promoters are rolling live shows, movies and other events into drive-in cultural festivals. Drivers, start your engines.
Out of luck
Broadcasters and cable networks fought for years to get out-of-home viewing counted in their Nielsen ratings, but all that work may now be for naught. With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing bars, restaurants, hotels and other commercial establishments to close, the Wall Street Journal reports that establishments around the country have stopped paying their cable and satellite bills, creating a de facto out-of-home cord-cutting wave on top of the tsunami already ravaging the in-home market.
Getting desparate
With movie and TV production shut down, recording studios quiet and live music and theater off the boards due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a coalition of nearly four dozen media and entertainment organizations has written to the leaders of congress in both parties pleading for reforms to the way the federal government is allocating relief funds meant to aid businesses through the shutdown. “For those of us in the creative field to survive – and recover – after this crisis, we must be able to access the full support intended by Congress,” the letter said. “[M]any in our profession work from project to project and gig to gig, not only in multiple jobs but in various capacities. As a result, creators often find themselves working as employees receiving W-2 wages and as independent contractors…receiving 1099 income for performances, royalties, and other services. Unfortunately, implementation of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program has overlooked workers with mixed income.”