Here’s Why Vinyl Isn’t About To Save The Music Business And Why Albums Need Rethinking

The BPI announced that ‘album equivalent sales’ were up by 1.6% in volume terms in 2016, with vinyl and streaming identified as the key drivers. Many people retain a nostalgic soft spot for vinyl, so an apparently vinyl led revival is always going to get people’s attention. But not only is vinyl not the future (it was just 2.6% of sales in 2016), the big differences between the most popular vinyl, streaming, singles and album artists reveal just how fragmented the music business has become.

Each of the top 10 charts (album sales, singles, top streaming artists, vinyl sales) almost reads as a standalone group of artists with remarkably little cross over. In fact, only 2 artists (the ubiquitous Drake and Justin Bieber) appear across streaming, singles and albums. None appear across all four charts.

The fragmentation adds complexity to an already sophisticated and nuanced landscape:

• Two tribes: Only one of the top single artists of 2016 (Justin Bieber) was also a top album artist. This is why the album vs playlist album argument will continue way beyond 2017. Both realities co-exist with one catering more towards older audiences and the other to younger ones. The top 10 albums list is like browsing through a high street music store CD rack circa 2005: Elvis Presley, David Bowie (twice), Coldplay, Michael Ball. Of course, there is some overlap with streaming, an inescapable overlap considering that streams are now (for all the wrong reasons) counted towards album sales. Thus, we see contemporary artists Little Mix, Drake and Jess Glyn fill the 7,8 and 9 slots, while Justin Bieber is at #4. But first and foremost this is a tale of 2 tribes, 2 groups of music fans whose tastes and consumption patterns rarely overlap.
• Old format, old bands: Vinyl sales may have hit their highest level in the UK since 1991 but this is hardly a sign of what is to come. Indeed, a quick look through the top 10 vinyl albums of 2016 reveals that all but one of the artists were releasing music back in 1991! The exception is Amy Winehouse and she’s dead. The majority of the volume of vinyl sales is driven by nostalgic older music fans. Of course, younger people do buy vinyl too, but interestingly they generally do so as either a form of merch or as a way of supporting their favourite artist. In fact, many under 30’s vinyl buyers don’t even have turntables.

The really important takeaway from all this though, is what it means for driving sales and marketing artists in 2017. One size stopped fitting all long ago, but now there are clearly two broad groups of music audiences which must be addressed in entirely different ways, across different channels and with different tactics. At the most base level this is a case of youth versus grey, of digital native versus digital immigrant, of playlist versus album, of sales versus consumption. But it is also more complex and nuanced than that. There are overlaps and cross pollination. They may be relatively thin on the ground right now, but like some long-lost treasure map, they may point to how bridges can be built across these two worlds. If no such links can be made then ultimately this will be a story of one world hurtling to oblivion while the other booms. That is of course the more likely scenario, highlighted by the fact that (in volume terms) UK CD sales fell by 12% and download sales by 26% in 2016 while streams were up 67%.

As large volumes of older consumers switch to streaming (and Amazon should play a key role here) there will be more opportunity to join the dots. But do not mistake this simply as an opportunity to try to revive yesterday’s formats in today’s platforms. The album is clearly fading. According to MIDiA Research survey data, 68% of subscribers state that playlists are replacing albums for them. It is time to start investing though and effort in rethinking what album experiences should be in the digital era. And that conversation should have no bounds, everything should be on the table (number of tracks, street date vs continual updates, interactivity, changing content etc.).

The 2016 sales figures show us that the album in its traditional format still has a very solid, albeit quickly declining, audience. But if it is to outlive that dwindling customer base it must be rethought for the streaming era.

The Three Things You Need To Know About The UK Music Sales Figures

As most people expected, the UK recorded music industry returned to growth in 2015. The UK now follows an increasingly familiar European narrative of strong streaming growth helping bring total markets back to growth. Sales revenue increased 3.5% to reach £1.1 billion while total streams increased by 85% to reach 53.7 billion, with audio stream representing 49.9% of that total. There is no doubt that these are welcome figures for the UK music industry but as is always the case, a little digging beneath the surface of the numbers reveals a more complex and nuanced story. Here are the three things you need to know about UK music sales in 2015.

1 – Streaming Growth Accompanied A Download Collapse

Long term readers will know that I’ve long argued the ‘Replacement Theory’, that streaming growth directly reduces download sales. It is a simple and inevitable artefact of the transition process. Indeed a quarter of subscribers state they used to but no longer buy more than one album a month since they started paying for streaming. There have been plenty of opponents to this argument, normally from parties with vested interests. But the market data is now becoming unequivocal. While streams increased by 257% between 2013 and 2015 download sales decreased by 23%. And of course the vast majority of that streaming volume came from free streams, not paid.

2 – The Transition Follows A Clear Defined Path

The download to streaming transition is an inevitability, whatever business models are wrapped around it. It is part of the fundamental shift from ownership to access of which streaming music is but single component. It comprises consumers progressively replacing one behaviour with another. In fact, the evolution is so deliberate and predictable that it manifests in a clear numerical relationship: the Transition Triangle.

The UK music industry trade body the BPI has created a number of additional classifications for music sales and consumption. These include Stream Equivalent Albums (1,000 streams = 1 album) and Track Equivalent Sales (10 track sales = 1 album). Using these classifications and adding in actual album download sales we see a very clear relationship between the growth of streaming and the decline of downloads. The difference in volumes between downloads and streams each year is almost exactly the same as the amount by which downloads decreased the previous year. At this point even the most ardent replacement theory sceptic might start suspecting there’s at least some degree of causality at play.

3 – Thanks Are Due To Adele, Again

Back when Adele’s ‘21’ was setting sales records, music markets across the globe owed her a debt of gratitude for helping slow the incessant decline in sales. Global revenue decline fell to less than 1% and US revenue actually grew by 2.9% (falling back down the following year). Now she’s done it again with ’25’, giving album sales enough of a boost to ensure that the growth in streaming revenue lifted the entire market. For although album sales actually declined in 2015 and streaming volumes had grown more strongly in 2014, it was the combined impact of slowed album decline and streaming growth in 2015 that enabled the total market to grow so strongly.

Adele generated around £25 million of retail sales revenue in 2015, which was equivalent to 70% of the £36 million by which UK music sales revenue increased that year. While of course a portion of that £25 million would have been spent on other repertoire if ‘25’ had not been released, the majority would not. With ‘21’ and now with ‘25’ Adele has been able to pull casual music consumers out of the woodwork and persuade them to buy one of the only albums they’ll buy all year, often the only one.

Without that £25 million UK music sales would have increased by just 1%.  So in effect streaming services have Adele to thank for ensuring their growth lifted the whole market even though she famously held ‘25’ back from each and every one of them. Sweet irony indeed.

As a final postscript, the role of YouTube, while underplayed in the official figures, is crucial. While audio streams grew by an impressive 81% in 2015, video streams grew by 88%. So however good a job the streaming services might be doing of growing their market, YouTube is doing an even better one.

Windowing, Shake It Off

The removal of all of Taylor Swift’s albums from Spotify and other streaming services is sending minor shockwaves through the music industry. Swift’s label Big Machine has long adhered to a streaming windowing strategy and there is pretty compelling evidence that the approach has paid dividends. Swift’s ‘1989’ is not only on track to be the only million selling US album this year it is also set to have the highest ever first week album sales for a female artist, again in the US. No mean feat considering how much album sales have tanked. While it is impossible to prove the exact degree of causality, it would be fatuous to claim that windowing had done anything less than not hurt those sales. Windowing is an issue that refuses to go away but is a natural effect of the transition phase we are in.

Some artists and labels were just as fearful of iTunes in the 2000’s as they are now of Spotify. Heck, it took the Beatles seven whole years to finally license their catalogue. Right now there is still a very sizeable music sales marketplace. 79% of all recorded music revenue in 2013 came from sales. So it is understandable that some labels want to protect that Golden Goose as long as they can. And it is little compensation for labels that declining music sales are made up by increased live revenues. In even the most label friendly 360 deals music sales are still the core revenue stream.

However the shift to consumption models is an inevitable process. In the short term expect copy cat actions. Labels and artists will see the run away success of ‘1989’ and conclude that windowing played a key role. This may hurt Spotify just as it was beginning to feel good about proving its model. But the long view shows us that licensed streaming music will be ubiquitous five years from now, music sales will not. Even if Taylor Swift is still at the top of her game in 2019 she won’t be selling any 1 million albums anymore.

Spotify though can’t wait five years for Swift to shake off her streaming inhibitions. It can however help itself by accepting that its free tier should be on a different release window from its paid tier. If it doesn’t it makes windowing a binary equation which in turn makes it easier for an entire blanket ban to be conceived.

Of course the biggest irony in all this is that the free streaming services face no such blocks. All of Swift’s videos are still on YouTube and you can find her music all over Soundcloud, let alone Grooveshark. As MIDiA revealed last week, YouTube is one of the largest threats to music revenue. But because the music industry still views it as a marketing channel rather than a consumption channel it is measured by different standards. Thus 10 million YouTube views is a promotional success, whereas 10 million Spotify streams is x thousand lost sales. This hypocritical inconsistency has to end. Spotify premium customers are some of the most valuable music fans there are, most YouTube users are not.

And both YouTube and Soundcloud also fail to crack down on blatant misuse of their platforms. As the screen grab above shows, YouTube makes it easier than easy to access the full ‘1989’ album, which in this instance is fully monetized and has 400,000 views. Meanwhile Soundcloud also has the full album, this time conveniently presented as individual tracks. And even if / when UMG catches up with these infringing files, not only will more pop up, YouTube also has this, a full ‘1989’ playlist, full of non-infringing, Vevo videos.   The simple fact is that too much is given away for free on YouTube. If Big Machine and Taylor Swift are really worried about cannibalizing album sales, they should take a long hard look at their YouTube strategy before pulling their content from Spotify.

UPDATE: UMG caught up with the 400,000 views full album YouTube video of ‘1989’ (that was quick) but the very same user has multiple other instances of the full ‘1989’ album which have hundreds of thousands of views and are still live.

Beyoncé And The Growing Importance Of First Week Sales

Beyoncé’s team will be rightly feeling pretty pleased with themselves right now, having created a massive buzz around her eponymously titled fifth studio album by deliberately creating absolutely no buzz whatsoever prior to its release on Friday 13^th.  By doing something a little different with digital they have managed to get swathes of media coverage, cutting through in a manner that could only be dreamed of with a traditional music marketing campaign.  Showcasing a big digital gimmick is a reasonably well used trick by established artists wanting to cut through, whether that be Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ pay what you like experiment or Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’ iTunes exclusive.  There of course many serious permutations of the ‘Beyoncé’ release, both in terms of product strategy (e.g. the integration of video) as well as marketing (turning the traditional album build-up strategy on its head).  But of most significance is what it says about the growing role of first week sales.

Prior to the release of this album Beyoncé’s sales were in sharp decline, from a peak of 4.9 million US sales for ‘Dangerously in Love’ in 2003 to just 1.4 million for ‘4’ in 2011 (see figure).  The total market decline in album sales was clearly a mitigating factor but the rate at which Top 10 US album sales declined over the same period – 50% – was significantly less than the 71% by which her album sales declined.  Beyoncé’s team needed something clever to ensure that the latest album didn’t continue the downward trend.  Doubling down on first week sales was a smart move.  It combined the novelty of the tactic, the creation of a sense of scarcity by being an iTunes exclusive for one week and the ability to mobilize her core fans into buying in a concentrated manner and thus increase the odds of pushing the album to the number one spot on its debut full week.

First week sales have become a crucial marketing tool for big artists, with efforts focused on concentrating sales to build the platform for the rest of the marketing and sales strategies.  First week sales of ‘Beyoncé’ look set to represent 30% of all sales, a considerable rise from the 6% for ‘Dangerously in Love’.  As impressive as ‘Beyoncé’s expected 600,000 first week sales are though, the record for US first week sales was set last year by Taylor Swift’s ‘Red’ with an impressive 1.2 million.  In many respects Taylor Swift’s album sales trajectory is similar to Beyoncé’s even though she is in an earlier stage of her career.  Again the decline in total music sales plays a key role, but over the period Swift managed to ever so slightly buck the trend, declining by 25% instead of 26%. (Though if the high water mark of her second album ‘Fearless’ is used then the decline is 41% compared to a Top 10 rate of 5%.)

What unites Taylor Swift and Beyoncé is the growing importance of first week sales.  Both are suffering declining album sales as a result of broader consumer trends, and both have concentrated ever larger proportions of sales into the first week of release.  Consequently for Beyoncé first week sales volumes have increased by 89% while total sales declined by 71%.  For Swift first week sales have increased by 218% while total sales fell by a quarter.  Other artists have woken up to the importance of the first week sales springboard too, not least Daft Punk who secured first week sales of 339,000 for ‘Random Access Memories’ representing 44% of all US sales to date. By contrast their last album ‘Human After All’ sold just 127,000 in the US.

As music sales continue to dwindle artists’ release teams have to get increasingly creative about how they get the most bang for their marketing buck. Expect the first week sales focus to sharpen even further now for frontline global scale artists.