The Music Industry Reset

COVID greatly affected the music industry. With prescheduled tours and festivals in 2020 postponed to cancelled and rescheduled there was a noticeably different strategy in music distribution.  Social media and Tik Tok seem to be the main priority even now in 2023 when 2020 was the height of the Tik Tok influencers game.

Touring was canceled in 2020, then the masked mandated day of testing, and higher insurance policies, lead to more stadium tours being outdoors leading to smaller scaled production and cutting extra costs. Here is 2020 cancelations and even to 2022 Billboard had a list of artists who postponed or canceled tours citing COVID.  Forbes cited more than 83 million people affected by cancelations and postponing. This shows the market size is around $65 billion, which looks to be on trend according to the graphs, but as a consumer, fees and ticket prices seem to be more of a conversation piece so that might be where businesses are picking up the costs. 

Crew sizes and production sizes seem to be less extravagant than before the shut down but companies seem to be doing well. According to their investor reports for 2019 to 2022 Live Nation went from 2019 $2,296 million to 2020 $178 million to 2021 $2,044 million to 2022 $3,396 million. Seems to be back on trend but I'm sure they are still trying to make up for the 2020 deficit. 

TikTok might be where music labels are making up for their losses in revenue with partnering with the 2020 influencers launching careers of artists who really have not stood the test of time in terms of touring but maybe merch and a growing social media audience but brand deals and collaborations. While larger artists really laid low social brought out midlevel artists The Kid LAROI and Megan the Stallion and Doja Cat and brought to popularity a bunch of one hit wonders that rose to fame with viral dancers and influencers. Billboard now though states Tik Tok songs are not as viral as they used to be. 

Selling Catalogs : Justin Bieber and Phil Collins have both been in the news in the past year with selling their personal catalogs such as Concord Music Publishing and BMI even younger artists like Calvin Harris and Skrillex have sold their catalog as well according to Loudwire. Phil Collins and Genesis got a whopping $300 million for their catalog so it's under stably lucrative. Justin Bieber was $200 million, probably a low price for how young and popular he is where advertising and royalties would still come in for a while. Talks for Michael Jackson's estate was around $800 to $900 million but no deal was closed. Catalogs seem to be the way for artists to step away from music with little strings attached. 

In the news lately AI has been all the rage lately with people going to twitter about users ripping off artists for using their favor artists to create artificial songs and covers. AI capability people are just beginning to understand. College professors are "banning" chatGPT for writing essays and even people are using them to write resumes and reports although companies are blocking the sites because of breach of privacy with confidential information. 

This might be what investment firms are doing with their purchased catalogs, along with ads and royalties, using the likeness and voice of an artist can bring an interesting business opportunity with creative ventures such as ads, music videos, covers, new production mixes, new video wall concert visuals, and what else AI can make. That can even expand to festivals and other creative artistic projects. 

We definitely have only scratched the surface of what AI can do for the music industry. I believe the future of music festivals will soon be mainly focused on music producers (Metro Boomin was huge at Coachella). I believe the future of music production is AI and the future music advertising will be all influencer focused and streaming focused. Revenue will always be merchandise but with runaway concert merch costs maybe there will be a focus more on physical music and experiential meet and greet or ad deal for fans because digital is so saturated. 

Listen to this AI generated song featuring Drake & The Weeknd.

It goes so damn hard.

It's by "Ghostwriter977" on TikTok and it's blowing up on socials + streaming platforms.

UMG, which controls around 1/3 of the global music market, has already asked streaming platforms to ban… pic.twitter.com/roz2EfI48M

— Roberto Nickson (@rpnickson) April 16, 2023

the way arianators are the ones that are using the ai thing like CRAZY to make ariana sing other songs cause we NEED new music from her like now https://t.co/aExFVYnckt

— ☆ (@starrymariana) January 23, 2023

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I think this years Coachella has definitely not had the influencer reputation that it had rapidly built a the past few years. Revolve and other brands have even hosted their own parties and events that coincide with Coachella that have gained popularity and even last year created drama and safety concern outrage. It has become less about the music and more about the brand deals. Which helps Coachella and AEG with profits from sponsorships and lots of vendors and influencer partnership visibility. 

This year the music lineup was less about huge powerhouses and more about up and coming artists besides the headliners. I enjoyed that the festival went back to its roots and focused this festival on the music. Whether this was true or the publicity was focused more on this then the fashion trend setters and everyone in hollywood in attendance. I do not care for the sponsorships but I do enjoy the outfits and love looking forward to see what people like Vanessa Hudgens wear. This years influencers were still wearing 90s outfits where people used to elevate their style and be more daring and edgy with their outfits rather than trendy.  I love that this year discovering new artists instead of the overplayed popular radio hits. Either that or I am aging out of the festival Coachella lineups which also can be true...