Recorded music market 2022 | Reality bites

Following a spectacular year of growth in 2021, global recorded music revenue growth slowed significantly in 2022 due to the combined impact of global economic headwinds and growth slowdown in mature streaming markets. Context, though, is everything – not many industries can deliver solid growth while the global economy is in turmoil, ad markets are falling and many emerging tech sectors are in crisis.

Global recorded music growth has oscillated in recent years, slowing in the pandemic, booming in 2021, and then returning to more modest growth in 2022.

2022 was a year of realignment for much of the global economy, and the music business had to contend not only with the wider trend of the cost-of-living-crisis, but also rising interest rates softening music catalogue M+A demand and the long expected streaming slowdown kicking in. It is testament to the solidity of the recorded music market that, despite these multiple headwinds, global revenues grew by 6.7% to reach $31.2 billion in 2022. While this was significantly down on the 24.8% registered in 2021, it illustrates the strong role music plays in consumers’ lives, especially in uncertain times when escapism and identity are more important than ever. The persistent value of music was even more strongly illustrated by music publishing, which grew by 16.6% in 2022.

Streaming was again the main driver of industry growth, with revenues up by $1.5 billion in 2022 (8.3% growth), though this was less than half the $4.2 billion added in 2021.  The slowdown was underpinned by a) slowing subscriptions growth in mature markets; b) a slowdown in ad-supported revenues, reflecting wider advertising market dynamics. Music subscriber growth was markedly stronger, up by 13.7% to 652 million, however, the more mature North America and Europe regions accounted for just a third of the growth. Emerging markets will become a progressively larger part of global streaming growth, but due to lower ARPU and low shares of Anglo repertoire, the divergence between growth revenue and subscriber growth rates seen in 2022 will become a long-term market characteristic.

Independent labels and artists direct both strongly out-performed the wider streaming market, growing streaming revenues by 13.9% and 17.9% respectively. In terms of total recorded music revenues, 

UMG added more recorded music revenue in 2022 than the other two majors, adding $0.5 billion to reach $9.2 billion, giving it a 29.5% share of the global recorded music market. UMG’s percentage growth (6.2%), though, was slower than SMG’s (8.7%), with SMG gaining 0.4 points of market share.

Artists direct (i.e., artists who release without labels, directly via a distributor) were the big success story once again, growing by 16.6% in 2022 to generate $1.7 billion of recorded music revenue, giving it a 5.7% market share, up from 5.2% in 2021. 

Independent labels also outgrew the wider market (up by 7.1%), and the combined market share of artists direct and independent labels reached 34.6% in 2022, up from 34.0% in 2021. Though it is worth noting that this does not include the additional revenue from independent labels distributed by major labels.

Combined, independent labels and artists direct, were the largest single market segment with $10.8 billion.

Though overall market growth was down in 2022 compared to 2021, 2021 was in many respects a year of artificially accentuated, post-Covid growth, while 2022 was at the opposite end of the scale, with a host of economic headwinds. In this context, 6.7% growth for 2022 could be considered even more of an achievement than the 24.8% achieved in 2021.

The full report and dataset (with quarterly revenue by segment and format going back to Q1 2015) will be shortly available to MIDiA clients. If you are not a MIDiA client and would like to learn how to get access to our research, data and analysis, email stephen@midiaresearch.com

The coming long-tail cull

When governments plan to introduce controversial new policies, they prepare the ground in advance (dropping hints in speeches, privately briefing journalists, etc.), so that by the time the new policy finally arrives, it does not feel quite so controversial. A similar process is currently playing out in the music business. The biggest major label executives are starting to seed a narrative into the marketplace about the potentially corrosive effect that the rapidly-growing long-tail of music and creators is having on consumers’ music-streaming experiences. Of course, it also happens to dent major label market share too, but the issue is not quite as clear cut as it might first appear.

There are three main industry constituents that are at risk from the fattening of the long tail:

1. Major labels and their artists
2. Consumers
3. Long-tail creators

Let’s look at each of those in turn:

1 – Major labels

The first on the list is the most obvious, and also the easiest, to demonstrate. Over the course of the five years from 2016 to 2021, the majors grew recorded music revenue by 71%, which is impressive enough, except that artists direct (i.e., artists who distribute without record labels) grew revenues by 318% over the same period. Consequently, artists direct increased global market share from 2.3% to 5.3% while majors went from 68.8% to 65.5%. Meanwhile, the top 10 and top 100 tracks continue to represent an ever smaller share of all streaming. The very least that can be said is that majors and their artists have collectively grown more slowly than long-tail creators, and at the most, the case could be made that long-tail creators have eaten into major’s growth.

2 – Consumers

This one is far harder to make a definitive case either for or against. Consumers tend not to categorise music anywhere near as precisely as the music business. For example, only a third of consumers say they mainly listen to older music, despite industry stats showing that catalogue consumption dominates. Most consumers do not consider music to be ‘old’ as soon as the music business does. So, imagine how difficult it would be for consumers to delineate ‘what is long tail?’ They may say in surveys ‘music isn’t as good as it used to be’, but they could equally be referring to majors’ music as the long tail. So we are in the realms of measuring second-order effects (are consumers disengaging from streaming? Not yet, but they might) and of making logical assumptions. If consumers consistently hear poorer quality music, then it is reasonable to assume that their satisfaction would decline. However, DSP algorithms push music that matches users’ tastes, and there is so much high quality in the long tail that there is no particular reason to assume that more long-tail consumption should inherently equate to an increase in consumption of poorer-quality music. And do not forget, consumers have demonstrated plenty of tolerance for ‘average’ music in mood and activity playlists.

3 – Long-tail creators

It may sound oxymoronic to suggest that long-tail creators could be hurt by the rise of the long tail. But, as Will Page put it, the rise of the long tail means that “there are more mouths to feed”. The fractionalised nature of streaming royalties means that the more long-tail creators there are, the lower per-stream counts there are and, even more important, the harder it is to cut through. The irony is that it is easier to make the case that the long tail is eating itself than it is to establish causality between its rise and majors’ loss of share.

Divide and conquer

Of course, the missing constituency is the DSPs themselves, but they do not warrant a place here, because they are the ones with the power to scale up or down long-tail consumption via their algorithms. It serves DSPs to have listening fragment to a degree as it lessens the share and, therefore, the power of any individual label. But if DSPs ever thought they were pushing too far, then they would rein in the algorithms.

Where next?

So where does all this leave us? In the ‘do nothing’ scenario, listening continues to splinter, majors lose more share, long-tail creators find it harder to cut through and earn while consumers may (or may not) see any meaningful change to their listening experiences. In short, the head loses out, as does the long tail, while the market further consolidates around the ‘body’ of streaming catalogue (which, by the way, the majors are already key players in and could easily ramp up their focus – as WMG is already doing). 

The ‘do something’ options fall into two key groups:

1. Gate / limit consumer access to catalogue
2. Gate / limit creator access to royalties

There are many ways to achieve the first (preventing long-tail music getting onto DSP catalogues; lowering long-tail priority in algorithms; creating a separate tier of catalogue; deprioritising / blocking it from search and discovery, etc.). All of this risks looking very much like the establishment trying to prevent the next generation of creator and industry breaking through. That is without even considering the moral dilemmas of choosing who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’.

Option two, however, could be more altruistic than it looks. For an enthusiast hobbyist with a few hundred streams, royalties are going to be little more than a novelty. But for a hard-working, self-releasing singer / songwriter with tens of thousands of streams, the hundreds of dollars are already important. Let’s consider that there was a pay-out threshold, where 1,000 annual streams are the point at which royalties are paid, with all the royalties associated with the sub-1,000 stream artists being distributed between all other artists. Suddenly, those slightly more established long-tail artists can earn more income. 

None of these options are without challenges and moral dilemmas. But the direction of travel appears to be towards something being ‘done’ about the long tail. If that really does end up having to happen, then let us at least try to ensure that the changes benefit long-tail artists too, not just the superstars.

The creator economy’s post-lockdown growth

The Covid pandemic created a unique catalyst for the music creator economy. More time on hands and more cash in pockets gave novices and veterans alike the opportunity to spend both more time and money making music. Though the pandemic was a peak, it also marked the start of a new era for the music creator economy across every one of its aspects, from revenue to creation to remuneration. In MIDiA’s new landmark report ‘State of the music creator economy’ we provide the definitive assessment of this exciting marketplace, covering everything from creator behaviours, creator personas, all the way through to workflows, market sizes, and growth forecasts. The full report and datasets are available to MIDiA clients here. Here is an overview of some of the key themes explored in the report.

A new generation of music makers

The music creator tools space is being transformed by the increasing availability of simple, affordable music-making tools, plus a new generation of consumers that is steeped in creator culture. We are entering a new era for the music creator economy. Yet, despite all the dramatic changes, underpinning this new era of creator behaviour are suites of complex software that arose over two decades ago and, at their core, have seen little substantial change. The digital audio workstation (DAW) is the foundation of modern music making, but was not designed for the modern music maker. This presents fertile soils for seeds of disruption as more casual music making, centred around mobile devices and sharing music online, becomes the new top of funnel for the music creation space, and the music industry as a whole. 

Having grown up as social media mainstreamed creativity, the new generation of music makers expects to achieve professional results quickly. However, as their aspirations clash with the harsh reality of streaming economics, more creators are seeking out a diversity of income streams — from selling beats to mixing and engineering — underscoring the need for creator tools companies to help drive creator remuneration. Combined with the growth of casual creators, catalysed by embedded tools on social platforms, like TikTok and BandLab, the result is a newfound fluidity in defining what it means to be a music creator. 

Though much of that generational shift will take time to permeate through to the current market, seismic change is already manifesting. Nowhere is this better seen than in the that hardware music creators use. As recently as five years ago, music creators would have invested in hardware mixing desks, synthesisers, and outboard effects. But today, the most widely owned hardware is devices that plug into computers, such as controller keyboards and audio interfaces. These affordable devices free up creators to spend on the software and sounds on their computers, relying on the hardware to control sound making, rather than actually making the sound.

And it is the spending on software, sounds and services that is currently propelling the market. With an average creator spending more than $600 a year on music creation, promotion, distribution, and commercial tools. For beginners this can mean spending three and half times more than they earn from music, while for advanced creators it is a little over one tenth. In total, the music creator tools market was worth $4.1 billion in 2022, across learning, collaboration, production software, sounds, funding, commerce, distribution, marketing and commercial, with distribution and production software being the two largest segments.

In 2021, the cumulative number of creators paying for software, sounds, skills sharing, and learning was under 30 million – by 2030 there will be nearly 100 million with learning and skills sharing becoming the largest single group of buyers. Learning and skill sharing were among the fastest growing components of the music creator economy in 2021, with strong rise in both formal and informal learning as well as in skills sharing. Just under half of the learning revenue was from companies that were largely or entirely focused on music production learning. With 83% of creators feeling that they still have much to learn and improve upon, the opportunity for learning is pronounced and will become even more so because of the fast-changing nature of the sector.

However, much of all this may seem like a separate and parallel industry to those in the traditional music business (labels, publishers, streaming services, etc.), the creator tools market that commands much of the attention, time and spend of artists and songwriters. Streaming is only around a fifth of the income of the average creator, with many aspects of the creator tools marketplace representing new ways that they can earn meaningful income, whether that is selling singing sessions on skills marketplaces, writing soundpacks for sounds platforms or producing tracks for other creators. Furthermore, clear connections are being made across the two industries, such as Avid and LANDR both offering distribution, Sony Music Publishing striking a partnership with BeatStars and Spotify launching a bundle subscription for its Cloud DAW Soundtrap. The most impactful synergies, however, will come from audience platforms, like TikTok and Shorts, that are already home to music creators and already provide their own creator tools. But what they have that rightsholders and most creator tools companies do not, is audience. As the culture of creation spreads towards audiences themselves, it is these sorts of companies that have the ability to play the most transformative role in the future of music creation.

If you are interested in learning more about MIDiA’s state of the music creator economy report, email stephen@midiaresearch.com

Recorded music market shares 2021 – Red letter year

We suggested back in 2020, that 2021 was going to be a strong year for the recorded music market. As it turns out, 2021 was the fastest growing year in living memory, with growth across most formats, contrasting strongly with 2020 when streaming was the only growth segment. 

After 2020 was constrained by the global pandemic, the global recorded music market rocketed into stellar growth in 2021, growing by 24.7% to reach $28.8 billion (the largest annual growth in modern times). 2020 growth was a much more modest (7%), but this reflected the suppressing effect of the global pandemic in the first half of the year.

2021 was a big year for the music business, with a record amount spent on music catalogue acquisitions and IPOs for Warner Music Group (WMG), Universal Music Group (UMG) and Believe Digital. These developments turned out to be the symptoms of a surge in global market growth, with recorded music revenues. 

Streaming revenues reached $18.5 billion, up by 29.3% from 2020, adding $4.2 billion – also a record increase. One of the key drivers of streaming growth was non-DSP revenue, representing deals with the likes of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Peloton and Twitch. Non-DSP streaming recorded music revenue totalled $1.5 billion in 2021, a massive uplift from 2020. DSP streaming (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, etc.) also grew strongly too, reaching $17 billion. 

UMG remained the biggest label, with $8.2 billion, giving it a market share of just under 29%. However, for the second successive year, Sony Music Group (SMG) was the fastest growing major, and it increased its market share by growing significantly faster than the total market. For the first time since 2017, the major labels did not see their collective market share decrease.

Independents also had a good year, with strong growth across both larger and smaller labels. But it was, once again, artists direct (i.e., self-releasing artists) who were the big winners, driving $1.5 billion of revenue and increasing market share to 5.3%. They also added more revenue than in the prior year, something the segment has done every year since 2015. However, because 2021 was characterised by all segments performing strongly, artists direct’s increase in market share was smaller than in previous years.

The concept of evenly distributed growth was also reflected across geographies and formats, with physical and other (i.e., performance and sync) all growing strongly. Physical growth was so strong that revenues surpassed 2018 levels.

The recorded music market looked vulnerable in 2020, relying entirely on streaming for growth, with the outlook inextricably tied to that of DSPs. 2021 was a very different story, with growth on most fronts, but, most importantly, the rise of non-DSP revenue, reflecting an increasingly diversified future in which labels can fret a little less about the prospect of slowing subscriber growth in mature markets. When coupled with longer-term growth opportunities (NFTs, the metaverse, etc), the outlook is positively rosy. Although 2021 was boosted by exceptional circumstances (e.g., the wider economy rebalancing after the Covid-depressed 2020, and much of the non-DSP income being in the form of one-off payments), annual growth of 24.7%, points to the emergence of a new era for an increasingly diversified recorded music business.

The full report and dataset (with quarterly revenue by segment and format going back to Q1 2015) is available here. If you are not a MIDiA client and would like to learn how to get access to our research, data and analysis, email stephen@midiaresearch.com

The paradox of small

When the history books are written about our current times, the rise of creator culture will likely go down as one of the most impactful paradigm shifts. It is a dynamic that extends far beyond music, but it is impacting the music industry more directly than it is other entertainment industries – in large part because the music business is not yet set up for the economies of micro audiences. Until it is, artist royalty woes will remain a festering wound that risks infecting the entire business. The solutions will require a combination of a new approach to monetisation and a realistic understanding of what streaming can truly deliver to an artist community that is continuing to grow faster than streaming revenues.

More mouths to feed

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, streaming revenues grew by 20% in 2020, with subscriber numbers growing even faster. Over the same period, the number of releasing artists grew by more than a third. The arithmetic is brutally simple: more new artists than more new music revenue meant lower average income per artist. As economist Will Page puts it, there are more mouths to feed. Even within the fast-growing artists direct segment, where revenues grew dramatically faster than the overall market (34%), the average income per artist grew by just 2% to $234 a year – that’s right, just $234 a year, across all recorded music formats. And of course, that figure is heavily skewed up by a few thousand ‘superstar’ independent artists, with the vast majority earning far, far less.

Big numbers, small income

With artists direct numbering five million in 2020, never have there been so many people releasing their music to the global public. This creator revolution is unprecedented and represents five million dreams being chased. But with just $234 of annual income up for grabs, the reality is that nearly all of those dreams will be unfulfilled. It has always been thus with music, but the difference now is that expectations have been raised, with matters compounded by the fact that streaming numbers can appear big but deliver only small revenues. For example, a self-releasing artist that racks up 100,000 streams might only take home $500, which could easily feel like a very modest return to an artist that does not have a comprehensive grasp of how streaming royalties work.

The 0.05%

This is the paradox of small: more artists can reach global audiences and drive sizeable streaming metrics but have little or no realistic prospect of meaningful income. Much of the streaming income debate has revolved around the plight of the middle class artist but the bigger dynamic at play is the creation of the amateur enthusiast class. In the old music business, these artists lived in a different world from professional artists. They played in local bars and sold a handful of CDs there that they recorded in a local studio. Now they use the same creator tools as the pros and have their music on the same platforms. This can give the impression of playing in the same league as the pros, but they’re not. If they are good enough, do the right things and get the breaks then they can get into that league, but that will only happen for 0.05% of them.

Dreams just out of reach

Having dreams appear to be within touching distance but somehow never quite within grasp is fertile ground for breeding discontent and resentment. The parts of the music business that trade on this segment (artist platforms, digital distributors, streaming services, creator tools) have a duty of care that must move beyond its current remit of trading on artists’ dreams.

Fixing streaming royalties will not change things. Even if you doubled royalty rates, 100,000 streams would still only generate $1,000 for an independent artist. Meanwhile, it would result in streaming services losing 40 cents on every dollar earned, and that’s just to cover the royalty rates, i.e., not even considering things like having a product, staff, offices, marketing or operations.

Looking elsewhere for income

Streaming royalties are never going to add up for most independent artists, in the same way radio would never do so. And this is not just a self-released artist problem: most artists will never get paid ‘enough’ money from streaming, and trying to make streaming royalty mechanisms do so is tilting at windmills. As I have previously written about, the music business needs to build out its ancillary revenue streams for music creators. There are already lots of options, such as:

• Selling song writing services on Soundbetter
• Selling beats on Splice
• Selling merch on Bandcamp
• Selling subscriptions on Twitch
• Selling royalty free music on Artlist
• Sell live stream concert tickets with Driift
• Selling artist subscriptions on Fan Circles
• Selling digital collectibles on Fanaply

Record labels, management, distributors, streaming services, and creator tools companies all need to invest in helping their artists build their fan bases and income on such platforms. This investment in their creators’ incomes will ensure that they are better able to continue to make the music that fuels the business models that all those other entities have learned to make work in a way most individual creators have not and cannot.

Streaming services must fix the problem… or someone else will

Nevertheless, the market also needs something more – a platform glue that binds together creation, audience and consumption. Contrast a music artist with a games streamer. A games streamer creates, streams, finds and monetises their audience all within one platform (e.g., YouTube or Twitch). A music artist, however, creates music in one platform, takes it to another for distribution which then feeds it into streaming platforms where the artist has no direct relationship with their audience. There are exceptions to the rule (Bandlab, Soundcloud and YouTube especially) but they are just that: exceptions, not the rule.

Either streaming services need to start backing up their creator-first language with creator-first tools, or instead watch from the side lines as someone else does it for them. Whoever leads the charge, the paradox of small will finally become slightly less of a paradox.

Recorded music revenues hit $23.1 billion in 2020, with artists direct the winners – again

The global pandemic caused widespread disruption to the music business, in particular decimating the live business and impacting publisher public performance royalties. Although the recorded music business experienced a dip in the earlier months of the pandemic, the remainder of the year saw industry revenue rebound, making it the sixth successive year of growth. Global recorded music revenues grew 7% in 2020 to reach $23.1 billion in record label trade revenue terms. The growth rate was significantly below the 11% increases seen in both 2018 and 2019, and the annual revenue increase was just $1.5 billion, compared to $2.1 billion in 2019. These metrics reflect the dampening effect of the pandemic. Global revenue was down 3% in Q2 2020 compared to one year earlier, but up to 15% growth in Q4 2020, suggesting a strong 2021 may lie ahead if that momentum continues.

Streaming growth driven by independents (labels and artists)

Streaming revenues reached $14.2 billion, up 19.6% from 2019, adding $2.3 billion, up from the $2.2 billion added in 2019. So, 2020 was another year of accelerating streaming growth and, given that Spotify’s revenue growth increased by less in 2020 than 2019, this indicates that it is for the first time meaningfully under-performing in the market, due to the rise of local players in emerging markets and strong growth for YouTube. For the first time, the major labels under-performed in the streaming market – but not all majors were affected in the same way. Sony Music Entertainment (SME) was entirely in line with streaming market growth, Universal Music Group (UMG) slightly below and Warner Music Group (WMG) markedly below. Independent labels and artists direct both strongly overperformed in the market, collectively growing at 27% and thus increasing their combined streaming market share to 31.5%.

Market share shifts

The major record labels saw collective market share fall from 66.5% in 2019 to 65.5% in 2020. While this shift is part of a long-term market dynamic, most of the dip was down to WMG reporting flat revenues for the year. SME gained share and UMG remained the largest record label with 29.2% market share. Independent labels also saw a 0.1 point drop in market share, but there was a very mixed story for independents. MIDiA fielded a global survey of independent labels and the data from that helped us track the contribution of independents. Independent labels as a whole grew by 6.7% (i.e. slightly below the market), but within the sector there was a massive diversity of growth rates, with smaller, newer indies tending to grow faster than the market (some dramatically so) and larger, more established indies growing below the market rate. There were also many independents (of all sizes) that saw revenues fall in 2020.

The unstoppable rise of independent artists

In 2019, artists direct were the stand-out success story, massively outperforming the market. History repeated itself in 2020 with artists direct growing by a staggering 34.1% to break the billion-dollar market for the first time, ending the year on $1.2 billion and in the process increasing market share by more than a whole point, up to 5.1% in 2020. The continued rise of independent artists reflects the clear and pronounced market shift towards this new, emerging generation of artists. With lots of private equity money now pouring into creator tools companies like Native Instruments, expect this space to heat up even further in 2021. The recorded music business is changing, and it is changing fast.

Creator tools: The music industry’s new top of funnel

For most of 2020, MIDiA has been working on a major piece of work around the fast-growing creator tools space. The themes we had already started working on became rocket propelled with the onset of the pandemic, with an unprecedented volume of artists starting to engage with music production tools, services and hardware. Even before COVID-19, the creator tools space was set to transform the entire music business; now that future has become the present. This landmark report ‘Creator Tools – The Music Industry’s New Top of Funnel’ is immediately available to MIDiA Research clients here (more details of the report can be found at the bottom of this post).

Music production used to be a siloed segment of the music industry that revolved around studios, hardware and packaged software – at best a cost centre for labels. Now that is all changing. A new wave of creator tools companies are meeting the needs of a new generation of artists with innovative and intuitive music production solutions. Adding to an already vibrant marketplace, this new breed of production tools and services, often subscription-based, are reinventing the creative process and will reshape the long-term view of what a music company is. 

This is set to be the most dramatic product strategy shift the music industry has experienced in decades catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic. 68% of independent artists reported making more music and 36% doing more online collaborations during lockdowns.

There are 14.6 million digital music creators globally, of which 4.7 million are self-releasing ‘artists direct’, up 31% from 3.6 million in 2019.

The emergence of a subscription economy

In the same year, music software, sounds and services generated $884 million, with plugins and VSTs the largest single segment at 43%. Building on this ‘COVID bounce’ total revenues will reach $1.86 billion by 2027. Though music software is the most widely-adopted creator tools category among independent artists, sounds and services will be the two largest drivers of future growth. 

Subscriptions models will also be key, with new models, more self-sufficient tools and the rise of SAAS services making the market majority subscription by 2026, with subscription services reaching $870 million by 2027, up 477% from $151 million in 2019. The shift from software sales to SAAS models means these companies are collecting crucial creator data before they even get to the distribution or release stage, giving these companies the ability to identify the likely hits before they even get into streaming services. This is the music industry’s new top of funnel. Meanwhile at the other end of the funnel, Apple (Garage Band, Logic) and Spotify (SoundBetter, Soundtrap) are well placed to push up the funnel, with the foundations of what tomorrow’s record label will be. Sony Music’s move to invest in creation app Tully is the start of what will rapidly become a creator tools arms race. Expect Splice and LANDR to become sought after by both labels and streaming services. 

Creative feedback loops

The new breed of creator tools is also fostering creative feedback loops between other creators and in some cases with audiences—a dynamic MIDiA expects to become a mainstay of the future production landscape as digitally-native Gen Z and younger millennials mature in their production capabilities. The creator tools that build around such creative feedback loops will be those that resonate most with the young generation who will be the creators and fans of tomorrow’s music business. 

Snap’s acquisition of collaboration app Voisey illustrates how this is so much more than just a music tech play. We are on the cusp of a consumer revolution also. Just like TikTok made amateur video making a mainstream consumer activity as Instagram did photography, so this new generation of apps and games are aiming to do the same with music. Warner Music’s Tones and I making a soundpack available for fans to create music with inside Roblox’s Splash is an early indication of how music making is about to go mainstream.

Just as samplers and DAWs transformed music making, so this new approach to production will change the future of how music is made and in turn, how it sounds. Music production product strategy is at a pivot point, where a new breed of user experience-led propositions will rise to prominence. The smart services that have already empowered their users to go from zero to 100 more quickly than ever before, will grow their offerings in line with their user base’s growing capabilities. The business of music has always shaped the culture of music, but perhaps never more so than how the creator tools revolution will reshape the future of what it means to be a fan, an artist and a music company.

If you are not yet a MIDiA client and would like to learn more about how to get access to the ‘Creator Tools – The Music Industry’s New Top of Funnel’ then email stephen@midiaresearch.com

Report details

Pages: 48

Figures: 15

Words: 7,500

Vendor profiles: 12

Products tracked: c.2,000

Excel includes:

Music Software, Sounds and Services Revenue

Creator Tools Value Chain

Software Tracker Summary

Software Tracker – Plugins

Software Tracker – VSTs

Software Tracker DAWs

Software Tracker – Rent-to-own

Software Tracker – Platforms

Software Tracker – DJ Tools

Creator Tools Company Directory

Methodology Statement

COVID-19 hit major labels much harder than it did Spotify

COVID-19 was always going to have a significant impact on the music business, and with the Q2 results for all of the major music companies now in we can start to look at just how big that impact has been so far. Year-on-year (YoY), combined major label recorded music revenues fell by 7.8% on a current currency basis while major publisher revenue fell by 1.6% over the same period (though slow reporting for income such public performance means that the full impact on publishing is yet to be seen). The figures in themselves are disappointing for an industry that has grown acclimatised to growth but the factors driving this are global economic and health policy ones. As we identified back at the start of June, income streams such as physical, public performance and ad supported are all vulnerable to lockdown impact. The only truly resilient revenue source so far is paid subscriptions. The dependency on streaming has never been higher but there are questions here too.

Major label streaming revenue fell by 0.6% in Q2 2020 compared to the previous quarter. Although it was up YoY by 6.3%, (and even allowing for seasonality), there was already a clear slowdown in growth before COVID-19 kicked it into reverse. When markets mature, the margins between growth and decline are small. So, factors such as the weakening digital ad market pushing down ad-supported revenues can be the difference between being in the red or in the black. The music business is going to have to get used to ad-supported under-performing because advertising is always an early victim of recessions.

Despite all of this gloom, the likelihood is that by the end of the year, there will have been sufficient return to growth in many sectors and regions, meaning global recorded music revenues will be higher in 2020 than 2019 – not by much, but up nonetheless.

However, the streaming slowdown emphasises just how important it is for the industry to establish a series of potential plan Bs to streaming’s plan A, and fast.

Q2 2020 wasn’t bad news for everyone in streaming. In fact, Spotify actually increased its revenues both quarter-on-quarter (2.2%) and annually by 13%, i.e. double the rate the majors grew their streaming revenue. The result is that by Q2 2020, Spotify’s total revenue was only 5% smaller than the entire major labels’ streaming revenue combined. All this was despite Spotify’s ad-supported revenue falling by 11%. Spotify’s revenues are slowly but surely becoming uncoupled from that of the majors. Although factors such as timing of revenue recognition and payments to rightsholders will play a role, the key inference is that independents grew faster than majors on Spotify in Q2, continuing the 2019 trend. Although, the term ‘independent’ is becoming progressively less useful as the market internationalizes; in addition to independent labels and artists we are seeing growing impact from regional, non-western ‘majors’ e.g. T-Series, India; Avex, Japan; YG Entertainment, South Korea.

The three key takeaways from all this are:

1. Streaming revenue growth was already slowing. COVID-19 shows us just how important it is to push new growth drivers
2. Spotify is already working on its new growth driver (i.e. podcasts) and though the slowdown in the digital ad market will dent momentum, podcasts will further decouple Spotify revenue from that of the majors
3. The more likely scenario remains that streaming and label revenues will pick up before year end, but if the recession deepens and swathes of millennials lose their jobs, then subscription revenue could be hit, which brings us back to takeaway #1

The IFPI Confirms 2019 was the Independents’ Year for Streaming

UPDATE: this post has been updated to correct an erroneous data point. Previously it stated that independent market share was 41%. It has been corrected to 29%

Recently I wrote about how a little-known Spotify statistic revealed that independents (labels and artists) outperformed the majors on its platform in 2019. The IFPI’s latest global revenue estimates provide further evidence of 2019 being a stellar streaming year for independents. As we have two sets of fixed reported figures (major label reports, and the artists direct sector reported by MIDiA) we can simply deduct these figures from the IFPI’s streaming figures to reveal what the IFPI estimates independent label revenues to be. The tl;dr: Independents grew by 39% while majors grew by 22%, which means that the independents’ global share of streaming revenue increased by two whole points from 27% to 29%.

The IFPI reported global streaming revenues of $11.2 billion, however these figures include YouTube but not Pandora ad supported revenues. So, to match up the IFPI’s definition with how the record labels report the revenue we need to add in Pandora ad revenue which takes us to $11.9 billion which is almost exactly what MIDiA reported two months ago.

Although independent labels and artists grew fastest in relative terms in 2019, the majors grew most in absolute terms, adding nearly twice as much net new revenue ($1.5 billion compared to $0.8 billion). The majors remain the powerhouse of the streaming economy but independents are rapidly making this space their own. If they were to add another four or five points of share across 2020 and in 2021, then independents would be represent a third of the entire streaming market. But a crucial consideration is that these figures are on a distribution basis, so the major revenue includes independents they distribute. According to the last WIN study, the independent market share went up another c12%. On that basis, by 2021, the independent label share of streaming could be approaching 50%. That would be a genuine paradigm shift, the clear announcement of a newly aligned music business.

Soon we’ll be writing on how the majors can turn this around. Watch this space.

Independents Grew Fastest on Spotify in 2019, But There’s a Twist

Tomorrow (Wednesday 29^th April) Spotify announces its Q1 2020 results, at which point we will find out whether it had a COVID-bounce like Netflix did (adding 15.8 million subscribers in Q1) or whether growth slowed. But before that, there is one little detail from Spotify’s 2019 Annual Report which warrants a closer look. Hidden away in the commentary there is this innocuous looking line:

“For the year ended December 31, 2019 [Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and Merlin] accounted for approximately 82% of music streams.”

The same line is in Spotify’s 2018 Annual Report with the figure at 85%. So, the majors and Merlin indies saw their share of Spotify streams decline by three percentage points in 2019. That in itself is interesting and builds on the narrative of the streaming tail getting longer and fatter, with the superstars losing share. But with a little creative thinking we can do a lot more with this three percentage points shift.

Using MIDiA’s label market shares data for FY 2019 we can do a full breakdown of Spotify’s streaming revenue. Applying shares for streaming volumes to streaming revenue, and shares for the total streaming market to Spotify is not methodologically pure and has margins of error, but it is a broadly sound approach and lets us do the following:

• First we apply the percentage share to Spotify’s annual revenue
• Next, we take the majors’ share of streaming revenues for 2019 and apply them to Spotify’s streaming revenue
• We can then deduct the majors from the majors + Merlin total to leave us with Merlin’s revenue
• Then we apply the independent artists streaming share to the Spotify revenue which leaves us with one remaining segment: ‘other independent labels’

What emerges is a hierarchy of dramatically different growth rates, ranging from just 11% for Merlin labels through to a dramatic 48% for independent artists and an even more impressive 58% for ‘other independent labels’. This provides further evidence of the way in which (much of) the independent sector continues to thrive during streaming’s continuing ascendancy.

Most intriguing is the 58% growth for ‘other independent labels’. I am using the quote marks because this is essentially an ‘all others’ bucket and so captures music entities that don’t fit the traditional classification of ‘label’. This includes AI generative music and of course library music companies like Epidemic Sound.

It is of course important to consider that growth rates are not absolute growth – the majors still added much more new Spotify revenue in 2019 (€1 billion) than all of the rest put together. Nonetheless, the difference in growth rates is stark and only Spotify will be able to answer questions about how much of this is organic versus how much of this is driven by the way that it engineers its recommendations and programming.

Whatever the causes, the effect is clear: streaming benefits everyone but it benefits some more than others.