Every year, new trends and features appear in the music industry. In recent times, the development of digital technologies has had the greatest impact on the music business. Plus, the coronavirus pandemic has made its adjustments.
In addition, in recent years, music fans from all over the world have noticed an increase in interest in vinyl platters and a revival of the concert industry trend. However, along with this, there was an increasing demand for virtual performances that could be joined by thousands of people, regardless of their location. The demand for streaming music services and resources is also steadily increasing.
Despite the pandemic restrictions, many large and independent labels, distributors, and aggregators have decided to go digital to offer and promote their products on streaming services and reach a larger audience worldwide.
Overview of the Trends that Shaped the Industry
Anticipating events, we can say that there won’t be critical or absolutely revolutionary decisions in the future. At the same time, the development of content digitalization and the expansion of remote content delivery options will continue to grow. Below you can see the main trends that are expected in the near future.
Increasing revenue from the digital music industry
It is not surprising that, according to the current situation, the digital music industry sector will сщтештгу ещ grow in the future. Currently, there is a huge number of new subscribers who register on music streaming sites or download music to their devices from the Internet.
Undoubtedly, this trend will gain momentum in the coming year. Estimated revenue from streaming services in the USA alone will pass the $10 billion mark and grow to $12.5 billion by 2025.
Increasing the value of user-generated content
This trend gained popularity last year, and there is every reason to believe this situation will continue. More and more people worldwide are gaining access to the ability to create their own digital content using various applications, services, social networks, and more.
It is worth saying that among the technology leaders who helped this trend, the first three places are taken by TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch. Using them, anyone can create content of high quality and publish it on the Internet. It has become a frequent practice to add licensed music to the content made by industry activists.
The popularity of this trend lies in less commercialization of content. People tend to believe more in such creators than big brands. In addition, various online platforms offer a variety of tools for promoting musical content, opting for advertising, setting up a donation program, and more.
Short videos with music
This format of presentation of musical content has both its followers and obvious critics. However, it should be given credit – it drives the industry in modern realities. In this category, TikTok is the first non-gaming service with a large audience in the US and UK. In addition, this platform has broken all records for downloadability on mobile devices.
In many ways, such popularity explains the relatively simple use of these services: you can master them in just a few minutes. The use of licensed music has recently become more frequent on Tik Tok as well as similar platforms. Likely that this trend will continue to grow in the future. Given the peculiarities of technological development, people are increasingly switching to fast, easy, and dynamic content, which you can quickly get and understand.
That is why YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are not far behind Tik Tok. Big music companies are changing their strategies and increasingly focusing on short videos to promote their artists. According to statistics, such short videos can attract 49% more viewers than traditional ones. This figure is expected to exceed 80% in the near future.
The influence of social networks and gaming platforms
The fact remains that for generation Z, the sources mentioned in the title of this section will remain a priority for finding musical content. In parallel with these, slightly older people continue to use music streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music.
With their help, music lovers can search for new releases of their favorite artists and bands and discover new content. In addition, newcomer artists will continue to benefit from curated playlists through the same social platforms like Instagram or TikTok.
According to a recent study, about 80% of TikTok users indicate the resource of the same name as the only source for finding new music. As for Millennials and Generation Z, they use mostly (about 60%) Instagram. It is worth noting that this study was conducted among users of this network in the United States.
The influence of video games is also noteworthy. So, for example, when conducting a study among the age category of 13 years and older, it was found that they mainly use game content to search for music. No wonder Twitch soundtracks are so popular among the younger generation.
Conclusions
Music is undeniably a key part of people’s lives. The same situation was earlier and will be the same in the future. One of the peculiarities of the musical sphere is that it actively reacts to changes. There has been a recent trend towards increasing the popularity of short and low-commercial music videos that you can find on platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram, or YouTube. Such platforms are in high demand, mostly among teenagers. At the same time, older people prefer to use various streaming music services. Among them, the most popular ones are Spotify Qobuz, Apple Music, and others. With their help, you can find almost any content to your taste.
There is a certain probability that there will be new options for delivering music content in the future, including a deeper development of virtual reality technologies. At the same time, I am confident that no revolutionary and abrupt changes are observed.