Web 3.0 is a lane, not a highway

Facebook was not the first web 2.0 company, but it was the one that took it mainstream to a global audience. Consumers’ digital lives would never be the same again. Whereas web 1.0 had enabled them to visit and read websites, much like a digital evolution of newspapers and magazines, Facebook enabled consumers to participate, to comment, upload photos, converse, etc. It was a total transformation of the internet and enabled much of the digital world in which we live now. But it did not mean the end of web 1.0. Indeed, 18 years after Facebook’s launch, web 1.0 is alive and well, with websites being an integral part of our everyday digital lives. Sure, many of those have adopted web 2.0 components, such as comment fields, but they are still fundamentally web 1.0. With all the hype, or even, post-hype of web 3.0, it is tempting to think that our entire future digital lives will be lived in VR glasses and on the blockchain. But the actual future will be more prosaic, with web 3.0 being another lane to the internet’s highway, rather than an entirely new road to replace the old one. And that is no bad thing, nor does it undermine the vast potential that web 3.0 has. Nonetheless, it does warrant a reassessment of just what role web 3.0 will play.

Image credit: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle#/media/File:Gartner_Hype_Cycle.svg

Many of you will be familiar with Gartner’s iconic hype cycle. The premise is brilliantly simple. When a new technology arrives, the world becomes obsessed with its transformative potential. The tech press builds it up, investors pour in money, and the world is awash with innovative new start-ups, from one-person passion projects to heavily funded companies with lavish booths at tech trade fairs and conferences. This is the peak of inflated expectations. Then, inevitably, the technology’s progress cannot keep pace with those elevated expectations. The tech press starts to turn, with stories emerging at an accelerating rate about failing start-ups and how they have overpromised and underdelivered. The image of well-funded Magic Leap’s AR prototype being the size of a backpack is a perfect example. As the hype turns into derision and doubt, the technology slips into the trough of disillusionment (which I always think sounds like a Radiohead album title). Sometimes this is the graveyard of new tech, but, most often, it is simply a recalibration. With the fierce gaze of the tech world no longer there, the new tech sector can start to grow at a more sustainable, organic pace. Eventually it will start to fulfil its true potential and steadily build up the slope of enlightenment, before fulfilling its original promise. 

This is the path that most new tech is destined to follow. This is because, when thinking about new technology, it is easy to underestimate the near-term potential but overestimate the long-term potential. And this is due to humans adopting new tech in depressingly predictable ways. The early adopters (who are most often also the ones who first make the new tech) can see the potential and adopt immediately, despite all of its bugs and teething problems. It is only when the tech is ready for primetime that early followers come on board, eventually opening up adoption from the mainstream and even the tech-hesitant laggards.

Web 3.0 is now shifting from the inflated peak to the trough. Just look at all of the stories about undersold NFT auctions, falling crypto prices, etc. But we have been here before, many times, even in recent years. Just think about how VR and 3D printers were hyped to change the world. Once the hype subsided, both sectors started to build sustainable futures.

With this considered there are four major factors that will define the future of web 3.0:

• Recalibration: Web 3.0 is neither dead nor dying – it is recalibrating. Will there be a wave of failed start-ups and investors losing money? Yes. But that is part of a long-proven pattern.
• Realism: We need to be realistic about what web 3.0 will be when it does finally reach the slope of enlightenment. Yes, it will change our digital lives, but it will not be all of our digital lives. Just like web 2.0, it will run alongside the rest of the internet. Will it replace some of it? Yes – but not all of it. Instead, the internet highway will have a third, new lane.
• User interface: Web 3.0 is still missing a crucial component: a user interface. Facebook succeeded not because it was a set of revolutionary protocols, but because it was a transformative user experience, allowing consumers to create, share and participate. Web 3.0 needs its interface. We have the building materials for web 3.0 but we do not have the building. Heck, you could argue that we do not yet even have the architectural plans.
• Focus: Web 3.0’s scope and remit are so vast that, in truth, it represents a collection of entirely different propositions that may have an underlying technology link but, to consumers, are entirely separate. Fortnite and Ethereum are as far apart as consumer experiences as a football and a credit card are. An overdependence on reaching for commonality may help get investors on board, but it makes it harder to build the necessarily diverse consumer messages if widespread adoption is to ever happen.

Web 3.0 will change the internet, but it will need to change itself first.

Growth drivers – what comes after streaming

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:

• Games: Ever since the Marshmello Fortnite event, games has acquired a new degree of importance for the music business. WMG’s stake in Roblox points to just how serious labels are taking the opportunity. With global games revenues hitting $120 billion in 2020 (around $100 billion more than the recorded music market) and more than a third of those revenues being driven by cosmetic (i.e., non-gameplay) spend, there is a wealth of opportunity. But to succeed, music companies will need to think about creative ways to enhance the gaming experience rather than simply seeing it as another licensing play.
  
• Social: Revenue from the likes of TikTok and Facebook finally became meaningful in 2020, accounting for around three quarters of the growth registered in ad supported. We are still scratching the surface of what social can do for music, but building tools for users to create their own music and audio will be key. Facebook’s Sound Studio could prove to be a defining first step towards the establishment of the consumer’s version of the social studio.
  
• Creator tools: As regular readers will know, MIDiA considers the current revolution in the creator tools space to be one of the most important shifts to the entire music business in recent years. Not only is it transforming the culture of music creation, it represents a new set of opportunities for deepening artist-fan relationships and a set of new facets for the future of music companies.
  
• Next-generation sync: Although traditional music sync revenues fell in 2020, music production libraries (including royalty free) grew. We are on the cusp of a major new wave of opportunity in sync, with social content, platform and creators representing a scale of demand that far exceeds that of the traditional sync market. And it is the slow-moving nature of that traditional sector which means that the likely winners in the social sync market will be the new generation of companies that offer solutions that are sufficiently agile and fast to meet the scale of micro-sync demand.
  
• Live streaming: The pandemic virtually created the live stream marketplace, resulting in a tidal wave of new start-ups rushing to fill the void left by live. While the results have been a mixed bag, there have been enough high-quality successes to suggest that this is a sector with longevity that will outlive lockdown. The services that will prosper when IRL returns are those that deliver genuinely differentiated experiences that complement rather than try to replace IRL live. 
  
• Fitness: Another of the pandemic’s second order effects was a surge in consumer spending on home fitness equipment, including Peleton. Right now there is some meaningful music licensing revenue building around the space, but Beyoncé’s Peleton partnership shows that the opportunity goes way beyond simply piping music into workouts. Crucially, the Beyoncé partnership creates an audience that is focusing their entire attention on the artist, which is rarely the case when people are listening to music on audio streaming services.
• Fandom: Fandom is the next frontier for music monetisation. Western streaming services monetise consumption, whereas Tencent Music Entertainment monetises fandom, with two thirds of its revenue coming from non-music activity. We are beginning to see a flurry of activity in artist subscriptions and meanwhile, Patreon goes from strength to strength. Check out this free MIDiA report for more on how to tap the fandom opportunity.

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.

The Music Industry’s Next Five Growth Drivers

The risk with trying to imagine what the future might look like is to simply think it is going to be a brighter, shinier version of today. At this precise moment in time, this has perhaps never been truer.

The COVID-19 lockdowns were a seismic shock to the economy, one which will take months, possibly years to recover from. Entertainment consumption patterns have been transformed, with some need states becoming void states in an instant, while new ones have filled their place.

Whether COVID-19 goes for good in the coming months or whether it is with us for years to come, some behaviour patterns have changed for good, creating new opportunities, many of which (e.g. virtual events) have yet to be properly monetised. So at a time when it seems that the whole world is creating music forecasts, it is now the time to think about what comes next rather than just predicting how big the long established revenue streams will get.

With streaming growth slowing and creators feeling short changed, it is time to think about what plan B is, for the sakes of both the industry and the creator community.

At MIDiA we are currently compiling our music industry forecasts with a lot of detailed work being put into estimating how COVID-19 and the coming recession will impact a revenue growth. We’re modelling everything from ARPU, churn, net adds, and disposable income patterns through to store closures. We’re confident that this new methodology will make our already reliable forecasts even better (for the record our 2019 subscription forecasts with within 4.5% of the actual figures).

We’re also going to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and over the course of the year forecast some new revenue streams for which a comprehensive set of historical data does not exist. This means our chances of making incorrect calls is higher, but we’re doing it because we think it is crucial to start trying to frame what the future landscape will look like.

Here are the five emerging revenue sectors that we think could collectively be the music industry’s next growth driver

1. Contextual experiences: Two big lockdown winners have been mindfulness / meditation apps and online fitness training. With it looking likely that consumers will be spending more time at home and away from public places for some time to come, the opportunity for these categories is twofold: 1) build audience now, 2) establish behaviour patterns that will outlive lockdown.

   Music is often a core part of these but it is not always licensed. The example of artists and rightsholders making music available to fitness trainer Joe Wicks illustrates the point. To date, streaming services have provided the soundtrack to such activities with contextual playlists (chill, study, workout). But it is of course far better for the context itself to deliver the music. We expect the next few years to see categories like online wellness and fitness to eat into the time that people were previously using streaming for the soundtrack. Instead of bring your own music, the trend will be the context will bring it. UMG’s Lego partnership is a case in point.

2. Creator tools: There is an increasingly diverse mix of tools for music creators, including production, collaboration, sounds, reporting, mastering and marketing. The vast majority of the millions of independent artists will spend much more on creator tools than they will ever earn from their music. The revenue opportunity is clear, but there is more to it than that.

   Artist distribution platforms built a role as top of funnel tools, helping labels find the next big hit. But the music creation itself, enabled through online SAAS tools is in the fact the real top of funnel. Anyone who can establish relationships there does so before they release music. Right now, Spotify looks better placed to capitalise on this opportunity than labels. But labels should be paying close heed. Just in the way that distribution platforms came out of nowhere to become an established part of the label toolkit, so will artist tools. Simply put, creator tools will become part of what it is to be a music company.

3. Virtual events: As we wrote about earlier this week, there is a huge opportunity to make virtual events (live streaming, listening sessions, avatar performances) a major income stream. The sector is in desperate need of commercial structure and product tiering, but it can happen. A freemium model with free, pay to stay, premium and super-premium tiers will enable this fast-growing sector to be more than a lockdown stop gap.
4. Fandom: Regular readers will know that MIDiA has long argued that phase one of streaming was monetising consumption and that phase two will be about monetising fandom. Tencent Music Entertainment already does a fantastic job of this with live streams, virtual gifts and virtual currencies. So do K-Pop artists and Japanese Idol artists. Now is the time for western social and streaming platforms to wake up to the opportunity. Virtual merch, artist badges, premium chat, artist avatars—there are so many opportunities here waiting to be tapped.
5. Social music: As an extension of fandom, the fact that the vast amount of music-centred social activity on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok has not yet been properly monetised is a gaping hole of opportunity. TikTok will be crucial. As my colleague Tim Mulligan wrote, TikTok is having its ‘Snapchat moment’, trying to identify what commercial route it will take. I’d go even further and frame it as a YouTube or Facebook moment. Both those platforms went on to massively expand their remit and build diversified business models.

   TikTok clearly has momentum that far exceeds that of previous similar apps. It can either choose to just carry on being good at one thing or instead become the next big social platform, growing as its audience ages. Just like Facebook did. TikTok now is where YouTube was back in the late 2000s. If rights holders can establish an entirely new monetisation framework then TikTok could become the biggest single driver of future revenue.

As with any future gazing, the odds are that not all of these opportunities will transpire, but what is clear is that the current dominant format is not enough on its own. Rights holders and creators alike need new future revenue streams to offset the impact of slowing revenue growth and royalty crises.

The last time the music industry had one dominant format and no successor was the CD and we all know what happened then. The music industry is not about to enter a decade of freefall this time, but it is at risk of stagnating, especially as its leading music service is now so eager to diversify away from music that it offers a podcaster more money in one deal than most artists will ever earn in their lifetime from it. Let’s make this next chapter of the industry’s growth about innovation, growth, new opportunities and fresh thinking.

Have We Reached Peak Tech?

In last week’s Take Five I highlighted a Vox story which reported that over the last year the number of companies using terms like ‘tech’ or technology’ in their documents is down 12%. This is an early indicator of a much more fundamental concept – we may have already reached peak in the tech sector, the business sector that has driven the fourth industrial revolution. While some may quibble whether the internet-era transformation was the predecessor to a new industrial revolution built around AI, big data and automation, the underlying factor is that tech – for better or for worse – has shaped the modern world. More in the developed world than the majority world perhaps, but it has shaped it nonetheless. Now, however, with tech so deeply ingrained in our lives and the services and enterprises that facilitate them, has tech become so ubiquitous as to render it meaningless as a way of defining business?

Tech is the modern world

When Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 he could have had little inkling of the successive wave of global tech superpowers that it would incubate. As we near the end of the second decade of the 21^stcentury it is hard to imagine daily life without it. The pervasive reach of the web and the Internet more broadly is perfectly illustrated by Amazon’s recent launch of twelve new devices, including a connected oven, a smart ring (yes a ring) with two mics and a connected night light for kids. All of which follows Facebook’s connected screen Portal, which for a company that trades on user data, raises the question: ‘Is this your portal to the world, or Facebook’s portal to your world?’ However, regardless of why the world’s biggest tech companies want us to put their hardware into our homes, this is simply the latest new frontier for consumer tech. Now that we carry powerful personal computers with us everywhere we go, we remain instantly connected to our personal collections of connected apps and services. Tech is the modern world.

The rise of tech-washing

With tech now powering so much of what we do, it raises the question whether tech is any longer that useful a term for actually distinguishing or delineating anything. If everything is tech, then what is tech? It is a question that the world’s biggest investors are starting to ask themselves, too. In fact, we have now reached a stage where a) tech is a meaningless concept – everything is tech, and b) there is the realisation that many companies are ‘tech washing’, using the term ‘tech’ to hide the fact that they are in fact anything but tech companies which happen to use technology platforms to manage their operations. In the era when everything is tech enabled, you would be hard pushed to bring a new business to market that does nothave tech at its core. Companies like Uber, WeWork and just-listedPeleton have managed to raise money against billion-dollar-plus valuations in large part because they have positioned themselves as tech companies. In actual fact when the tech veneer is removed, they are respectively a logistics company, a commercial rental business and an exercise equipment company. If they had come to market simply with those tag lines, they would undoubtedly have secured far smaller valuations and many of their tech-focused investors would not have backed them. Investors are beginning to see through the ‘tech-washing’, as evidenced by the instant fall in Peleton’s stock price, WeWork’s crisis mode sell-off and Uber’s continuing struggles.

Pseudo-tech

Calling yourself a tech company has become a get out of jail free card for new companies, an ability to raise funds at inflated valuations, and a means to persuade investors to focus on ‘the story’ and downplay costs and profit in favour of growth, innovation and of course, that hallowed tech company term: disruption. I have been a media and tech analyst since the latter days of the original dot-com boom, and the mantra of the companies of that era was that ‘old world metrics’ such as profitability didn’t apply to them. Of course, as soon as the investment dried up, the ‘old world metrics’ killed most of them off. Today’s ready access to capital, enabled in part by low interest rates, has enabled a whole new generation of companies to spin the same yarn. But whether it is the onset of a global recession or growing investor scepticism, a similar fate will likely face today’s crop of ‘disruptors’. The dot-com crash separated the wheat from the chaff, wiping out the likes of Pets.com but seeing companies like eBay and Amazon survive to thrive.It also took a bunch of promising companies with it too. The imperative now is to strip away pseudo-tech companies from the tech sector so that investors can better segment the market and know who they should really be backing through what will likely be a tumultuous economic cycle. As SoftBank is finding to its cost, building a portfolio around pseudo-tech becomes high risk when the tech-veneer can no longer hide the structural challenges that the underlying businesses face.

Tech is central to the modern global economy and will only increase in importance – at least until the world starts building a post-climate-crisis economy. It is imperative for genuine tech companies and investors alike to start taking a more critical view of what actually constitutes tech. The alternative is that the tech sector will get dragged down by the failings of logistics companies and gym equipment manufacturers.