The pandemic-defined 2020 was an outlier year across digital entertainment, with the extra 12% of time consumers spent with entertainment boosting everything, including music. One of the effects was that streaming grew more than it would have otherwise, delaying the inevitable slowdown in streaming revenue growth. This artificial 2020 boost meant that the slowdown impact was felt even more strongly when it arrived in Q1 2021.
The major labels saw streaming revenue grow by just 0.8% between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021, while Spotify saw revenues fall by 1%. Seasonality plays a major role here (a similar trend was seen last year) and year-on-year revenues were up by around a quarter. Nonetheless it reflects a maturing market.
Back in 2019 Spotify’s revenues grew 15.7% from Q4 2018 to Q1 2019, while the majors’ streaming revenue was up 3% between Q4 2017–Q1 2018. In short, when the market was growing faster, seasonality did not result in flat / negative growth. Streaming is still in good shape and is going to remain the core of recorded music revenues for the foreseeable future, and Spotify’s price increases will bring a little extra revenue in 2021, but it is clearly time to start thinking about what comes next.
There is an argument that in today’s post-format world, we should not even be thinking about the next thing. So, it is better to think about what new business models and user experiences can grow alongside streaming, to diversify the music industry’s income mix.
Music businesses, labels in particular, are busy exploring where future growth will come from. The more pessimistic argue that this is largely as good as it gets, that there will not be a ‘next streaming’. That might be right in terms of a single revenue source, but the early signs are that there is enough potential in a range of sources to collectively drive growth. Here are a few of the music industry’s potential growth drivers:
To reiterate, streaming is, and will remain for many years, the beating heart of recorded music revenue. In fact, more than that, most of these new opportunities exist at such scale because of streaming. Until now, streaming enabled revenue growth in its own right, now it will enable growth in new adjacent markets.
This was a nice insight and a genuine good read from yourself sir. Appreciate the effort you went into streaming news.
Pingback: Growth drivers – what comes after streaming | Dance Hall
Good article. Can I get your permission to repost?
Shame - of course!
I hope you meant “Shomee” and are giving permission 🙂
Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:
You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )
You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )
You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )
Connecting to %s
document.getElementById( “ak_js_1” ).setAttribute( “value”, ( new Date() ).getTime() );
