How the Pandemic has Increased Online Music Streaming for Only 1% of the music business
It looks like the Pandemic has brought a huge surge in online music listening. The music industry is reporting a significant increase in streaming subscriptions and online instrument sales.
Although the actual retail music sales and digital downloads are on the decline by 23% and CD Sales by 50%, streaming is rising more quickly than predicted.
Vinyl sales are included in this decline except for pre-owned record sales which are surging.
It makes sense as more people are forced to stay indoors due to COVID social distancing and self-quarantine warnings.
As we move into the Fall 2020 flu season and COVID numbers rise, there’s no doubt music streaming will maintain it’s steady growth.
Fender Is Selling More Guitars In 2020 Than Any Year In Its History
Guitar sales have risen exponentially amid the COVID-19 pandemic — so much so that Fender is positioned to move an all-time-high number of instruments on the year.
SiriusXM Subscribers Are Surging During the Pandemic — Up 40% From Earlier Projections
SiriusXM has signaled that it expects to add more subscribers than anticipated after tracking a 40% rise from earlier projections. This would increase the net subscribers’ projections from 500,000 to 700,000 new self-pay subscribers.
The company is also moving that it’s anticipated total revenue will increase to $7.7 billion through 2020 with a free cash flow increase at around $1.6 billion.
Only 1% of Music Artist account for 90% of the music streams today.
A shocking survey was released by Analytics firm Alpha Data recently revealing that the contemporary streaming landscape is significantly dominated by only 1% of the artists in the marketplace.
Out of 1.6 million artists uploading music available across all streaming platforms in the last year, only 1% (16,000 musicians) account for 90% of the music streaming.
Approximately 40,000 new tracks are launched on the platform daily most never seeing any love as being part of that drowning 90% of artists not being heard.
This is especially disappointing for indie artists who are striving to boost their music streams and increase their fan base.
What it does show, in my opinion, is the lack of active indie promotion happening across the new artist community.
To often musicians load up their music to streaming platforms, share it once and then start working on their next song.
This information might be encouraging to those artist who spend time and budget working with a publicist to promote current releases.
But most Indie artists take much longer to subscribe to the business models traditionally used by music mainstream.
Instead of spending their music budget on the promotion of their music, the small indie budget is spent on instruments, software, and studio updates.
It’s also still a common practice for indie artists to spend the majority of their time focused on unfocused social platform scrolling and creating music rather than hiring team members to promote their current music library.
Currently, Spotify’s royalty rate is roughly between $.003 and $.005 per stream for most musicians, coupled with the lack of streams indie artists are receiving, this rate makes it obvious why it’s so difficult to make a living as a musician if you are only focused on streaming for income.
This business model just doesn’t make sense at the current streaming rates.
A better goal for the indie artist of today is to focus on education and fan base building with the intention of direct to fan marketing.
Recommended article: How to Make 100k a year with 1k True Music fans
Here are some ideas for building a career as a musician in 2020.
- Educate yourself on music marketing and promotion by reading marketing blogs and learning through online courses like this one.. (Udemy Course) Then use the information to build your fan base and hire a team to promote your music on a larger scale. How to get 50,000 Spotify streams on your music (Article)
- Hire a marketing team and publicist to work with you on developing a goal and strategy for building a career long term in music.
- Establish a product line that fills a need within your niche. Think of things to sell that people regularly purchase to fill a need. Research popular selling tee shirt styles of the season, hoodies for fall, popular color scheme, and meme themes to align your products with popular culture in your niche.
- Consider teaching your skills: Songwriting, music theory, production, instrument lessons, voice.. Classes can easily be taught online through your website, a social page, or a course site like udemy or Skillshare. The average music teacher earns $30 per hour teaching online or in person.
- Discover the world of synch licensing your music to commercial advertisers, movies, and other outlets.
- Consider making music for movies and film scores. The average salary for a film composer is $50k-120k
- Sell beats online using an Instagram account and a website like beatstars or soundclick.
- Create music for video games. Video game sound designer. Salary: $40,000 — $120,000+
- Become a session musician: Session musicians earn $100 — $2500 per day for adding their skills to music projects.
Written by Jacqueline Jax
Connect with the writter: https://linktr.ee/jacquelinejax
NEW ARTICLES & RESOURCES:
How to Make 100k a year with 1k True Music fans https://link.medium.com/oj7FB4w6G9
Online Music Marketing Course by Jacqueline Jax (here)
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