INDUSTRY: Smartphone Consumption

I did some research into smartphone consumption within the music industry, how smartphones are the means of consumption of music. I found an article on telegraph.co.uk. 

With the smartphone, you can download a song in seconds, purchase tickets to a concert and upload concert footage to social media. Ever since Thomas Edison played back the very first strains of recorded sound on the mechanical phonograph cylinder in 1877, people have been finding ways to make listening and consuming music more convenient. The smartphone was the solution. In less than 20 years, phones have firstly, replaced record shopping. Many years ago before streaming came about, people had to go to a shop and buy a piece of plastic with music on it. Even once the iPod came along, it was a case of "ripping" a CD onto your computer and then uploading it to your device. When the Itunes store came about, this removed the CD element - but you still needed to get onto a computer. But due to the smartphone evolution, this process of going on Itunes on a computer went away. Now, we can stream any track or song that exists using Spotify, YouTube and a 4G or Wi-Fi connection. And if we want to own these tracks, you can buy MP3s just as easily through Itunes or by ripping videos from YouTube using ripping sites. 

Secondly, smartphones have made us music geniuses. Now, when you hear a song anywhere you go which you like but don't know the name of or have never heard before, you can use Shazam to identify songs within seconds (as long as you have internet). All you have to do is hold your phone up so it can listen to the track playing and then it tells you the name of the track. 

Music apps such as Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music offer specially curated playlists to help you find songs which you really like. Some of these lists are created by algorithms, some by real people. 

You can also listen to music through Radio on your smartphone, for example you can download the app 'Capital Fm' on the app store. It helps you keep up to date with the latest chart hits. Also, the rise of podcasts has also allowed niche interests to flourish; there are podcasts for every imaginable genre of music.

Thirdly, smartphones have stopped us getting lost at festivals. Going to festivals and concerts is a much less stressful experience now ever since the evolution of the smartphone. There are apps that can help you find your tent, Twitter accounts to keep you posted on secret gigs, GPS to help you navigate the festival site and text messages to ask your friends where they are or where to meet. 

Though the digitisation of music makes it harder for some artists to make money selling songs, the live show has become very important. And with the smartphone, people no longer have to sit by a landline hitting redial every three seconds in the hope of getting gig tickets; now people can use apps such as Dice or Getty to buy tickets on the go. 

Many ticket sellers have replaced having a paper ticket when you go to gigs to just being able to flash a QR code on your smartphone to enter the gig. 

Also, after having personal experience of this myself, it is not unusual to watch the majority of a gig through the phone screen of the person in front of you. Some music fans  (majorly the younger generation - teens and children) are more invested in cataloguing the show for Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter than in actually watching the thing live. Not many arms are thrown in the air at gigs now without a phone clutched in them. 


Some artists really don’t agree to the number of phones being waved or held up during shows; the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Wilco are 2 examples of artist that have put up signs at venues asking the crowd to keep their camera phones in their pockets, while Alicia Keys and Guns N’ Roses have gone a step further and insisted on people having locked phone pouches that can only be unlocked when the show is over.

But other artists are a bit more up for this technological progression, by asking fans to hold up their phones with their flash on during emotional power ballads.

INDUSTRY: Merchandise

For my website I have to come up with ideas for my merchandise so, therefore I decided to look through the websites of different artists such as blackbear, Halsey, Dua Lipa, Metallica, Lorde, Katy Perry and of course the existing Astrid S to see what kind of merchandise they sell on their website. 

Nowadays, bands sell merchandise to gain extra income. They don't earn as much from concert tickets or CD sales anymore since it is easier for people to stream or pirate music due to digitisation and convergence (the blurring of once distinct boundaries).  

On Astrid S's official website, there is only some merchandise available to buy. These include hoodies, T-shirts, posters and bags. As you can see here:

Looking at Dua Lipa's store on her website I found things like chokers, T-shirts, silk dressing gowns, a lipstick case, a pocket mirror, hoodies, sweatshirts and ofcourse the latest album 'Dua Lipa'. 

Metallica had quite different merchandise from these two examples. Some of their merchandise included action figures, skateboard boards, backpacks, coolers, stickers, patches, leather cuffs, earrings, thermals, rings, necklaces, flags, phone cases etc. They even had clothing for toddlers and babies. They had the biggest variety of merchandise I have seen out of all the examples I looked at. On top of that they had all the usual items too such as the band's albums in vinyl and digital form, T-shirts, hoodies, jackets, sweatshirts etc. 

INDUSTRY: Monetising Brands

Due to digitisation, this has meant that artists and record labels have thought it beneficial to monetize other areas and I found a good artist example to note for how wide this move into branded merchandising is, Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden have set up a their own beer line called 'Trooper' (named after their 1983 single). They even set up a whole website dedicated to their beer line. This is an example of smart branding.

See ironmaidenbeer.com

Another example which does this same sort of thing is Marilyn Manson. He released his own signature brand of 'Absinthe Masinthe' in 2007.

See alandia.de/marilyn-manson-absinthe

In the supermarket 'Auchan', in Luxembourg, you can buy 'Slayer' beer, 'Motorhead' beer plus some other branded wine/spirits. I have discovered that this is now a common strategy, especially in the heavy metal genre. You can even simply google 'heavy metal beer' and lots of examples come up. 

INDUSTRY: Vinyl Revival

I did some research into vinyls and how they have been revived in the last 10 years. I first looked on wiki and found out that the vinyl revival is the renewed interest and increase in sales of vinyl records and that it has been taking place in the Western world since around 2007.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_revival

Vinyl records are in an anologue format and made of polyvinyl chloride. They were the main vehicle for the commercial distribution of pop music from the 1950s all the way until the 1980s-1990s when they were largely replaced by the Compact Disc (which were mainly in jewel cases - plastic casing). Since 2000, due to digitisation, CDs have been partially replaced by digital downloads. However, in 2007 vinyl sales made a sudden small increase. By early 2010 it was growing at a very fast rate. In some places, vinyl is now more popular than it has been since the late 1980s, though vinyl records still only make up a percentage of less than 6% of overall music sales.  

Along with the steadily increasing vinyl sales, the vinyl revival is also clear in how there is a renewed interest in record shops (evident through how there has been the creation of the annual worldwide Record Store Day), how music charts have been created solely to vinyl and to an increased output of films dedicated to vinyl records and their culture. 

Though many sales in vinyl are of modern artists with modern style or genres of music, the revival has also sometimes been considered to be part of a greater revival in retro style, since many vinyl buyers are too young to remember it being a primary music format. This can link into Simon Reynold's 'Retromania' theory. 

In June 2017, Sony Music announced that by March 2018 it would be producing vinyl records for the first time ever since stopping the production of them in 1989. After reporting the decision, the BBC stated that "Sony's move comes a few months after it equipped it's Tokyo studio with cutting lathe, used to produce master discs needed for manufacturing vinyl records" but added that "Sony is even struggling to find older engineers who know how to make records". 

INDUSTRY: Music Streaming

The definition of streaming, says Lifewire.com, "is a way of delivering sound - including music - without requiring you to download files from the internet". 


Before streaming, many people downloaded audio files in formats such as MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG or FLAC. However, when streaming came about, people no longer needed to download music, but instead were able to listen to music almost immediately.  

Streaming differs from downloads in that no copy of the music is saved to your hard drive. If you want to hear the track again all you have to do is easily stream it again, although, some streaming services allow you to both stream and download tracks - e.g. Spotify lets you download tracks so that you can listen to them when you don't have internet, since Spotify usually only lets you stream music when you have internet. 

The way the streaming process works is that the audio file is delivered in small packets so that the data is buffered on your computer and played practically straight away. As long as there is a steady stream of packets delivered to your computer, you will hear the sound without any interruptions. 

You can get streaming music subscriptions for example with Spotify or Apple Music. They have become very popular. Apple Music, which is available on Windows PCs and Mac Computers is a music streaming service subscription with more than 40 million songs that you can stream to your computer. 

Source - https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-streaming-music-2438445

Examples of Streaming sites:
Spotify
Deezer
Pandora
Soundcloud
Apple Music
Amazon Prime Music
Google Play Music
Bandcamp

Music Streaming Revenues
I looked at the theguardian.com and found an article which discussed the surge in music streaming via digital services such as Spotify and Apple Music. 


"Platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify plus the revival of vinyl records are helping to make the fastest annual growth in music consumption since 1998. UK consumers have bought more than 135m albums in the last year across all formats (CDs, vinyl, digital downloads and streams from subscription services such as Spotify, Apple Music). That was a 9.5% increase from 2016, which is the biggest annual rise since 1998 when the charts were dominated by artists such as Massive Attack, All Saints and the Verve. For the first time, more than half of the total number of albums bought and listened to were streamed, according to the latest figures from the UK music industry trade body, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) based on data from the Official Charts Company".

I looked at billboard.com and found an article which described a bit about the music streaming revenue report for 2017: "US digital revenue grew 15 percent in 2017 from $5.65 billion to $6.5 billion. In 2016, there was a 53 percent increase in music streaming from $2.2 billion to $3.4 billion". 

I also found a report called Global Music Report 2017: Annual State of The Industry by IFPI and I found the image that you can see on the right and the image that you can see below. I also discovered from this report that “in 2016, the global recorded music market grew by 5.9%, the fastest rate of growth since IFPI began tracking the market in 1997. This was a second consecutive year of global growth for the industry. Streaming has been the clear driver of this growth, with revenues surging by 60.4%. With more than 100 million users of paid subscriptions globally, streaming has passed a crucial milestone. It makes up the majority of digital revenue, which, in turn, now accounts for 50% of total recorded music revenues”.

"Streaming is now established as the most prevalent and significant format in the modern music industry, fuelling growth in almost all major markets and starting to unlock the phenomenal potential within developing territories. Physical sales remain significant in certain countries and for certain artists, and the vinyl revival has been a headline grabber, but streaming is the growth driver that is revolutionising the business. By the end of 2016, IFPI estimates that the number of paid subscription accounts reached 97 million worldwide. With the rapid growth of family plans, where several members of the same household can share a family subscription, IFPI estimates that there were approximately 112 million users worldwide of these 97 million paid subscription accounts".

YouTube Red

YouTube has had a subscription option for a while (launched Oct 2015), but it seems there will soon be either 2 options or a renewed, rebranded option.

YouTube Red is its current $9.99/month option, offering:

• no ads
• video downloads
• exclusive content (which they're expanding)
• the ability to continue playing YouTube when switching to other apps

INDUSTRY: Web 2.0

Web 2.0, simply, is what people call new ways of showing or using things on the internet (the current state of online technology). 

It's considered beneficial because it is easy for people to publish their work, connect with other people and share and exchange information. Web 2.0 is mainly about user-generated and interactive content. e.g. wikis, blogs, social media. 

Before Web 2.0, internet users could just read information on web pages. With Web 2.0, users can interact with the site and add information and also have greater collaboration among content providers, enterprises and other internet users. One of the most significant differences between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 (the traditional World Wide Web - WWW), the previous version, is that information on websites is not only written by the website author. Originally, data was posted on web sites and users simply viewed or downloaded content. Increasingly, users have more input into the nature of the web content and in some cases have real control over it.

The internet technology which is used for Web 2.0 is not different from the old internet technology, but the ways people use the web/internet has changed.

Examples of Web 2.0
Wikipedia
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter

There are many theorists which explore the concept of 'web 2.0' and 'convergence' such as Julian McDougall (2005), Tim O'Reilly (2005), Dan Gillmor, David Gauntlett and Henry Jenkins.