Nowadays, music consumption has become more digital than ever – think YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and many more. As seen in IFPI Global Music Report 2019, last year streaming revenue grew by 34.0% and accounted for almost half of global revenue, driven by a 32.9% increase in paid subscription streaming. Actually, by the end of 2018, there were 255 million users of paid streaming services accounting for 37% of the total recorded music revenue.

As we have mentioned in a previous article, due to music’s ‘digitalization’, there is an increasing amount of accessible data, which if ‘translated’ properly, can help to better understand an audience, future music trends and ultimately make highly informed business decisions.

In a very interesting blog post on Digital Music News, Gabe Yont analysed how predictive music analytics work in the music industry and how are going to shape its future. In particular, he points out that when talk about analytics and how they operate in ‘building music as a product’, we are referring to three things:

1. Receiving direct signals: Someone can start a band, create social media accounts, build a following and then watch as engagement within these platforms (likes, shares, comments) raises or lowers their visibility.
2. Receiving indirect signals: Other people sharing others’ people music on their social media accounts, on video/audio sharing sites, on torrents and then other people sharing these shared posts and so on.
3. Future projections: As data grows, it starts releveling what works and what doesn’t. In order to have an accurate picture of this, professionals must study both the direct and the indirect signals mentioned above.

The big question now is; what music analytics will mean to the immediate future of the music industry?

• Artists can have more power before landing on a label’s radar. In specific, artists can build buzz, make direct sales, and grow their influence by growing their digital reach. The challenge here is to maintain presence everywhere their audience might be.​
• Record labels depend on data before spending money. Here Gabe Yont mentions Justin Bieber’s case, who was discovered by the mainstream and today is one of the bestselling artists worldwide. Record labels must invest in big data innovation in order to monitor signals across every conceivable platform in order to get a bigger picture of who’s about to break out and who isn’t.
•  Music will be more democratized. As Gabe Yont describes, this means that people will enjoy the rise of subgenres, having ‘more eclectic music that crosses boundaries and appeals to a more diverse niche of people’.

Music analytics are changing the music industry; and the challenge is how professionals can make the best use of all the deriving music data to understand their audiences and make music distribution more effective and profitable. Here is where our project, FuturePulse comes, helping music professionals leverage the variety of these music data, ranging from broadcasters (TV, radio) and music streaming data, to sales statistics and streams of music-focused social media discussions, interactions and content, through sophisticated analytics and predictive modelling services.

You can read more on FuturePulse Use Cases and Business Scenarios here.

 
Source: digitalnews.com , IFPI Global Music Report 2019

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