How Apple Music And Tidal Transformed Streaming (And Why Apple May Be Buying Tidal)

 

It is 15 months since the launch of Tidal (which was 2 months after Jay-Z’s Project Panther Bidco bought Aspiro) and it is 12 months since the launch of Apple Music (which was a year after Apple bought Beats Music). The streaming world has changed a lot in that time and both those companies have had a disproportionately large amount on influence on the market’s direction of travel. Their arrivals defined Spotify’s role as incumbent while simultaneously casting Apple and Beats as challengers. They have performed their roles of disruptive entrants well, reshaping the competitive marketplace with a strong focus on brand and artist exclusives. Now reports emerge that Apple is in talks to buy Tidal. First victory in the exclusives war or overspending for market share?

When Is An Exclusive And Exclusive?

In the streaming video world an exclusive means exactly that. If you want to watch ‘House Of Cards’ you need Netflix, if you want to watch ‘Man In The High Castle’ you need Amazon Prime. But in music the rules are far more flexible.

Looking at the flagpole exclusives across Apple Music, Tidal and Spotify, most of these are available on other platforms as downloads, while many are available to stream. For example, Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ is only available to stream via Tidal but was available to download on iTunes within 24 hours of release. Understandably, the exclusive albums of each company’s respective godfather are genuinely exclusive. But Rihanna’s ‘Anti’ was given away by Samsung while Spotify’s rock legends exclusives are streaming only.

Apple is beginning to push the envelope though, pitching creative solutions to labels and artists, resulting in output like videos for The Weekend and Drake. At the same time it is beginning to look suspiciously like a record label with the release of Chance The Rapper’s ‘Colouring Book’ mixtape. The net result of all this clamouring to be seen as the ‘home’ of an artist is resounding confusion and frustration for music fans. An avid TV fan may well accept the need to have both a Netflix and Amazon subscription because no video service claims to have all the TV shows and movies on the planet. However, the central proposition of streaming music services is exactly that…or at least it was until Tidal and Apple Music upset the the apple cart (ahem). The irony is that in scoring a quick win against Spotify, Tidal and Apple may have fundamentally undermined the long term positioning of the entire streaming music product.

Exclusives Cannot Recreate The 1990s

Apple Music’s head of original content Larry Jackson has said he wants to make Apple Music to emulate the success of MTV in the 80’s and the 90’s, creating the sense that artists ‘live there’. It is an admirable goal but the music world of the 2010’s is a dramatically different one. In those days there was scarcity (you had to buy music to listen on demand) and there was a finite amount of radio and TV. It was possible to control both the message and the audience. Now we are in the Era of Distributed Audiences where people are simultaneously in multiple digital places, with artists and labels racing after them in all those places. No amount of exclusive windowing is going to change that. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

The Economics Of Exclusives

Where the streaming video and streaming music markets match up is that content budgets are currently being used to drive user acquisition. While streaming services have a long way to go before they reach Netflix’s $6 billion annual content budget, both types of streaming service will overspend to get market share and will reel budgets back in later. So it should be no surprise that the amounts being spent on artists don’t really add up.

For example, Apple is reported to have spent $19 million on Drake and was rumoured to have bid up to $25 million for Harry Styles. If Styles had signed, even if he had racked up the same number of streams as Drake on Spotify in 2015 (1.8 billion, the highest number of any artist) he would still only have generated gross revenue of $18 million and net revenue of revenue of around $14 million, leaving something like an $8 million loss for Apple when Apple Music’s additional retailer margin is factored in. Apple would however have been able to make up the remainder on album sales, but Styles would have needed to have shifted a good number of albums. (Adele’s ‘25’, the biggest selling download album in the US in 2015 drove around $15 million in label revenue.) So for now, it takes selling albums to make the economics of streaming exclusives add up.

Jay-Z paid $56 million for Aspiro’s 512,000 subscribers, $110 per subscriber. Assuming he’d want a similar per subscriber price, that would put Tidal’s price tag at around $440 million. That’s no small amount of money for around 5% of the global subscriber market. Or to put it another way, Apple could another 23 Drake exclusives for that money which most likely would have a bigger impact on subscriber growth. Indeed, on all growth measures Apple Music has outperformed Tidal over the last 12 months, adding 12.5 million new subscribers to Tidal’s 3.1 million, growing by an average of 1.4 million subscribers a month compared to 0.3 million for Tidal. Apple even has the edge in % growth terms (352% compared to 328%).

So why is Apple in the market for Tidal (albeit reportedly)? Probably more than anything it is about taking an irritatingly threatening competitor out of the market. Tidal has been stealing Beat’s core customer base from right under its nose. It’s no coincidence that Apple Music’s exclusives strategy has had a strong urban bias. Apple wants its Beats customers back, just like it wants its iTunes customers back from Spotify.

Even if Apple does buy Tidal, don’t expect the exclusives wars to go away. Indeed, Spotify just acquired its own exclusives supremo in the shape of Troy Carter, and Apple clearly has its mind set on continuing to spend heavily. So the next few years of streaming will be  defined by streaming services getting closer to artists (with Connect becoming much more important for Apple) which in turn will see the distinctions between what constitutes a streaming service and a record label blur all the more.

As science fiction write William Gibson wrote: the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet…

 

Jay-Z, Becoming An HBO For Streaming, And Digital Music Bling

Jay-Z just made his much hyped entrance into streaming official with his star studded but awkward signing ceremony for TIDAL. Once having navigated a few objections from minor shareholders, Jay-Z’s first major act after successfully buying the not-very-appropriately-named-for-a-hip-hop-superstar WiMP was to rebrand it to TIDAL, the name that WiMP’s high quality service had been operating under. Jay-Z is unashamedly bringing his superstar power to bear to make as big a splash as possible, but once the tidal wave of hype has subsided will there be enough to transform the market?

On the surface Jay-Z did not get too much for his $56m WiMP TIDAL acquisition: a streaming provider that actually lost 11% of its subscribers last year, of whom 77% are tied up in telco bundles and that has a total global subscriber market share of about 1%. The much vaunted TIDAL part of the company as just 17,000 subscribers.

But of course the deal was never about what WiMP has done to date, it was an instant entry point into the streaming music landscape. It is the streaming equivalent of buying a plot of land that has already been granted planning permission, with the slight convenience of the previous owner already having started building a little edifice in the corner of the plot. Now Jay-Z is clearing the site and laying the foundations for a construction of far greater ambition.

One of the problems with streaming music services to date is that they have generally lacked personality. This is a combination of being technology led, having to be all things to all people and having to keep the big labels happy. Jay-Z is shovelling bucket loads of stardust on TIDAL, leaning on his superstar contacts help get the launch off to a star studded bang and even making them shareholders. But it will require much more than the support of a few music biz a-listers to make TIDAL a success:

• TIDAL is creating an aspirational, premium streaming brand: In many respects TIDAL is filling the aspirational music brand space that Beats vacated when it was acquired by Apple. High quality audio and video editorial (powered by the RADR division of TIDAL) are a natural fit with this positioning. Most consumers do not actually care that much about high quality audio (only a fifth consider it an important part of a music services) and even can actually tell the difference. But that’s not the point. This is about aspiration. Just in the same way that most Beats customers buy the headphones because they represent quality rather than because of their frequency response ranges. $19.99 is not meant to be a mass market price point. It is streaming bling for those who want people to know they have the best.
• TIDAL wants to be the HBO of streaming music: One key differentiation point for TIDAL is an exclusive first streaming release window for artists. What they’ll get in return is unclear, and it certainly won’t halt the decline of sales, but it nonetheless creates a clear perception of value to artists and to subscribers. It helps solidify TIDAL’s positioning as a premium brand, the streaming music equivalent of HBO.
• Even TIDAL can’t fix the underlying problem with royalties: One of the big issues surrounding streaming is the fact artists and songwriters do not feel they are earning enough. Yet with 80% of subscription fees heading back to rights owners there is clearly not much scope for increasing the payouts. Even doubling the subscription price (on the $19.99 tier) only means artists are getting paid (at best) in double cent increments rather than single cents. The underlying dynamics remain the same i.e. you need a lot more people streaming an album to make the same money you would from selling it. In fact, you would require roughly 15 as many people, listening an average of 5 times each.
• A next generation label: Somewhere down the line TIDAL might follow Netflix’s lead and start creating TIDAL Originals, signing artists directly. Doing this would present a whole set of ways in which TIDAL could start to experiment with generating more value for artists. But it would also put TIDAL in a difficult position. Right now TV broadcasters are starting to reassess their relationship with Netflix because now it is competing directly with them for shows and talent. Netflix has bought itself some time by dint of being such a valuable revenue stream for TV companies, but the more it pushes its own content, the more TV companies want to clip its wings. Expect the same scenario to play out for TIDAL if goes this route.

TIDAL is a welcome addition to the streaming space and brings some much needed star quality. But the path ahead is far from clear. Jay-Z will need all the luck and superstar support he can get to make waves with TIDAL.

What $500 Million And Jay-Z Say About the State Of Streaming In 2015

2014 was a big year for streaming, 2015 will be bigger. Apple entering the fray is the catalyst. Apple enters a market when it is ready for primetime. Apple lets the pioneers establish the market, prove the model and create consumer mindshare before it comes in and most often assumes a leadership role. Apple is certainly leaving it later than normal with subscriptions but it is still the same classic follower model, and the marketplace knows it. Hence Jay-Z’s reported €50 million interest in Norwegian streaming service WiMP and Spotify’s reported pursuit of a further $500 million. The first move is ‘let’s get in a market Apple is about to make huge’ and the second is an Apple war chest

Spotify’s 2014 growth was little short of spectacular, especially its December surge. But it is still not enough to IPO on. Not because 15 million subscribers in itself is not a huge achievement – it is – but because the market place is holding its breath, waiting to see what Apple does. Apple remains the world’s largest digital music company and is on the verge of becoming the world’s leading shipper of smartphones. But most crucially Apple has the iTunes ecosystem and a deep, deep understanding of the world’s most valuable content consumers. If anyone can take subscriptions to the mainstream Apple can. And in the process it will likely take back a chunk of the iTunes Music buyers that Spotify ‘stole’. Which is not to say that Spotify will not be able to continue to grow, but instead that rapid growth will be harder when Apple is snapping at its heels.

Pricing will be key, as will the role of free. If Apple succeeds in bringing the standard price point down to 7.99 (and perhaps a subsidised price point of 4.99) then a whole new swathe of users will be brought into the marketplace. Still not the mainstream, but certainly getting towards the higher end of the mainstream that Netflix competes in. And certainly a bigger marketplace than the current one. If Spotify finds its free tier heavily capped then it will lose much of its customer acquisition strength, which may force it to spend more heavily on traditional acquisition tactics like app marketing and TV ad spots.

In this expanded marketplace a $500 million war chest would give Spotify the ability expand into new territories, double down on churn management and market in core markets. The intent will most likely be to weather the Apple storm and to be in solid enough shape the other end to IPO. As we have seen in the smartphone and tablet business, Apple can be leader but still leave plenty enough space for a vibrant and competitive marketplace. That is the scenario Spotify, Deezer, Rdio, Rhapsody and Jay-Z’s new plaything-to-be WiMP will be hoping for.

How Downloads Will Determine the Future of Streaming

There is no doubt that streaming subscriptions will play a major role in the future of digital music, but their impact is going to be far from immediate. There also needs to be great caution applied to interpreting the encouraging early signs of the advanced streaming markets and the potential impact on total music sales.

Norway and Sweden both experienced an upturn in music sales in the first half of 2013 thanks largely to the impact of streaming subscriptions, while most of the rest of the global music market continued in its struggle to return to growth after more than a decade of decline.  The easy conclusion to draw is that when streaming subscriptions take hold across the globe, music revenue grow.  While there is some truth in the argument, it is too simplistic.

An analysis of the leading streaming markets (Sweden, Norway, France, Netherlands) and the leading download markets (US, UK, Germany, Japan) – see figure one – reveals that streaming took hold in markets where downloads had not.  The markets where downloads represented the lowest share of total music sales in 2010 (before streaming really kicked off) are those that in 2013 had the rates of streaming as a share of digital music revenue.  In markets where downloads were making the biggest contribution to total music income (not just digital) streaming did not get much of a look in in 2013.  In the US and UK streaming subscriptions were in market long before Spotify and Deezer, but most digital music consumers opted for downloads and have been unwilling to switch allegiances since.  It will happen over time, but right now downloads have a firm grip and that is largely because of Apple.

When we look at the same countries plotted by streaming share against Apple device penetration we see an even more pronounced trend – see figure two.  Here the relationship is clear: streaming has taken hold where Apple has not.  In short, there was no established mainstream digital music service and streaming subscriptions filled the void.  But of greatest significance is the impact on total music revenue.  These strong streaming markets contribute just 10% to global digital revenue, even though France and the Netherlands are two of the world’s top 10 music markets.  Meanwhile the UK and US alone count for 54%.  If you factor in Japan and Germany too you have 71% of all digital music income, and within these four countries (the four biggest music markets) streaming accounted for just 10% of digital revenue.

On the other side of the equation, streaming has brought unparalleled growth in its core markets: across Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands digital revenue grew by an average of 213% between 2010 and 2013, compared to an average of just 40% across the big four markets (though Japan’s declining digital sector pulls that average down).  And of course the Swedish and Norwegian music markets both grew in 2012 and 2013 while the rest did not.

While there is not a clear cut ‘answer’ to streaming’s likely long term impact we can however draw a few important conclusions:

• Streaming will grow more slowly in markets where Apple and the download market are strong (which helps explain why growth of Spotify et al appears to have slowed in markets like the US and UK).
• Streaming can make a digital market grow more quickly than downloads can (though it does so normally at the direct expense of downloads – download sales shrank in both Sweden and Norway in 2012 and 2013)
• ‘Home turf’ counts.  Most of the big streaming markets have their own local heroes (Sweden – Spotify, Norway – WiMP, France – Deezer) – all of whom also benefited from hard bundles and marketing support from their incumbent telcos. Meanwhile Apple of course prospers on its home turf and that of the English speaking UK.
• Consumer behavior and technology are all edging towards a more access based world and it is inevitable that the download will become less important.  So although these brakes on streaming adoption exist in many markets, they will slow rather than halt the transition. Streaming will near 50% of global digital revenues by 2018.

Streaming remains bedeviled by countless issues – not least artist payments – but what is clear is that it has the ability to transform the shape of the digital music market.  And while that change may be slower to come than the Swedish and Norwegian experiences might suggest, come it will.

 

 

New Report: Building the New Business Case for Bundled Music Services

Today MIDiA Consulting is proud to announce the release of a white paper commissioned by Universal Music entitled “Building the New Business Case for Bundled Music Services”.  The report, written by myself and MIDiA Consulting co-founder Keith Jopling, provides an unprecedented analysis of telco music services, taking a critical look at what has and had not worked to date and a series of models and recommendations for the future.  We interviewed a host of telco music executives to get a deep understanding of what telcos need out of music services to make them a success and combined this insight with data from consumer surveys and music service trials as well as case studies and best practices.  We think it is pretty much the definitive piece of work on the topic (!) and we invite you to download it here: Building the New Business Case for Bundled Music Services – FULL REPORT.  You can also download an executive summary version of the report here: Building the New Business Case for Bundled Music Services – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

Here are some of the key findings of the report.

The consumer shift from downloads to streaming is the most important digital music market trend since the advent of the iTunes Music Store.  Before streaming services telcos struggled to find a way in which they could compete in a market dominated by Apple, restricted to selling DRM locked downloads that of course would not play on Apple devices.  Subscription services changed all of that, with the leading streaming services all pursuing robust telco partnership strategies as well as a number of download subscription services.  There are now nearly 50 telco music service partnerships live in six regions across the globe.  With 40% of streaming consumers now paying to stream, generating $1.2 billion in trade revenue in 2012 the opportunity is clear.

However it is clear that many of the hurdles that telcos faced in the last decade continue to pose challenges.  These include music not being a priority for many telcos, internal business casing getting in the way of building compelling services and the wrong success metrics being used.

The new success stories of telco music services are those that make music a strategic priority.  This is not some sop to the record labels, but a reflection of what it takes to make music strategy a success. If a telco just adds music to a long list of Value Added Services (VAS) it will wither on the vine.  But if a telco puts a music service front and centre and positions around it then success is far more likely.  Success stories that have followed this approach include Telia Sonera’s hard bundle with Spotify in Sweden and Cricket Wireless’ Muve Music in the US.

The Role of Promotional Offers

For all the obvious synergies of telco music bundles there is a real danger that hard bundles that make music subscriptions free or feel like free to the end user run the risk of devaluing the proposition.  Yet it is also clear that consumers need to be able to ‘suck it and see’ before subscribing so promotional free trials and limited period bundles present a strong balance of value to the consumer, cost effectiveness to the telco and protecting the integral value of music for artists and labels.  The market data for free trial is compelling: half of one month trialists convert to a paid subscription at the end of the promotional offer period.

Customer Satisfaction, the New Music Service Opportunity

An entirely new aspect to music bundling that we dive into in the report is the role of music subscriptions in driving customer satisfaction across a telco’s wider business.  Even the most edgy, cleverly positioned challenger telco is ultimately a provider of important products but not usually a consumer passion point.  Music though has that brand passion secret sauce and partnering with the right music service can enhance the telco’s own brand and customer sentiment.  Smart integration of music into the customer journey and integration with customer satisfaction measurement tools, particularly Net Promoter Score (NPS) can enable telcos to create a customer satisfaction halo effect.  With music converting satisfied music subscription customers into highly vocal net promoters with satisfaction benefits felt across the full range of a telco’s services.

Bundled music services did not get off to the best of starts, but now their time has come, giving telcos the opportunity to assume centre stage in the digital music marketplace.

For more information on the research please feel free to email us at info AT midiaconsulting DOT COM.

About MIDiA Consulting

MIDiA Consulting is a boutique, media industry focused consultancy that delivers practical, results-driven outcomes.  MIDiA stands for Media Insights & Decisions in Action. Our mission is to help media and technology companies develop purposeful strategies quickly through market understanding, clarity of vision, and workable innovation.

We help media and technology companies make sense of the changes that digital market forces are bringing about. And we help them make profits from digital content.

http://www.midiaconsulting.com

info@midiaconsulting.com

Assessing the Impact of Streaming on Total Music Revenue Growth

[My summer blogging hiatus is herewith over]

The Dutch music industry trade body the NVPI has announced that recorded music revenues were up by 1.9% in the first half of 2013.  This follows first half rises for Norway (17%), Sweden (12%) and Germany (1.5%) which in turns comes on the heels of full year growth in 2012 for markets such as Brazil, Sweden and Norway (all markets with strong subscriptions and ad supported sectors).  This is undoubtedly positive news and indicative of the proverbial corner being turned. However it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions about the impact of streaming on music revenue (and let’s stop calling it ‘sales’, a tag that hardly fits on-demand subscriptions).

Music revenues have been in decline for so long that sooner or later the bottom has to be reached, else the market would diminish into obscurity.  We are now somewhere close to that bottom but we need to be careful not to read too much into 1^st half sales. Music revenue is heavily concentrated into the last quarter of the year due to festive period gifting.  But gifting is becoming increasingly eaten away at by digital for many reasons, not least of which is that gifting an iTunes voucher just isn’t the same as actually giving an album.  So if digital is able to sustain growth across growth markets for a second successive year then we can start talking about the sustained revenue growth potential of streaming.

Even if that growth is sustained though, another speed bump is on its way: the post-CD revenue collapse.  The CD is still by far the world’s biggest music revenue source. If you strip out the US and UK, digital accounted for just one qyarter of global music sales in 2012.  Viewing the music world through the Anglo-American lens can give a distorted view of things.  In Japan, the world’s second biggest music market, physical accounts for 80% of revenue, in Germany, the fourth largest, it is 75%.  Currently the trend in most markets is that many CD buyers are simply falling out of the habit of buying music rather than going digital.  If that trend continues for a sizeable chunk of the music buyers that currently account for three quarters of non-US and UK music spend, then a big dip in revenues should be anticipated.

The fate of the CD is of course largely out of the hands of streaming services, but is nonetheless highly correlated. Streaming has taken root most quickly in the markets where the CD has already hit rock bottom.  There are clear-cut cases of streaming helping tip these markets into growth but there are also plenty of markets with strong streaming where total market growth has not yet arrived (see figure).  In some instances the scale of the decline of the CD market is just too big for digital to do anything about.

What is clear from this sample of markets though is that there is a large concentration of low streaming / low growth markets and very few low streaming / high growth markets.  Where streaming has a low market share, revenue growth is usually negative.  This does not necessarily indicate cause and effect but the correlation is nonetheless fairly compelling.

So some preliminary conclusions that emerge are:

 

• In markets where CD growth is slowing (often because the majority of the initial contraction period is over) streaming can tip markets into growth
• In markets with comparatively strong CD sales and / or download sales, total revenue is less likely to grow
• As we near the end of this first main phase of CD revenue decline, streaming’s contribution to digital will increasingly be enough to tilt markets back into modest growth

So while it is too early to say that streaming is saving music revenues, we are seeing the first signs that in markets with the right conditions, it can be enough to tip the balance.

 

Streaming Artist Subscriptions: A Product Strategy Proposal

The following post is an excerpt from my forthcoming book: Meltdown

For all of the undoubted positive impact that streaming services continue to have on the digital music market one of the key challenges they pose is the subjugation of the artist brand to that of the music service.  With download services and CD stores the customer buys artist specific products, but with a streaming service the transaction is for all of the music in the world.  The brand of any individual artist is inherently diluted.   Artist apps are thus an artist-level subscription for the most engaged music fans, an opportunity to develop artist brand experiences across digital platforms.  However as more of consumers’ music experiences occur within access based environments, more needs to be done to build artist specific experiences within them. Doing so not only makes good business sense, it makes for better user experiences too: 20+ million tracks is a meaningless consumer proposition without an effective means of getting to the miniscule fraction of that content that any one consumer is interested in.

The solution is the introduction of artist subscriptions within existing streaming services, with users paying a small monthly fee – say $/€1 – for a month’s worth of artist content.   With the cost added directly to a monthly music subscription, users get access to a curated channel of artist content including:

• Core catalogue: The entire standard catalogue of the artist programmed with editorial such as story of the making of each album and features such as musical influences.
• Exclusive and rare catalogue: Music that is not available elsewhere on the streaming service, such as unreleased rarities from each album, remixes, specially made tracks for the artist subscription etc. This might require some rarer content being withdrawn from the main service to be held back for the artist subscriptions.
• Exclusive programming: Non-standard music content such as acoustic sessions, simulcasts of concerts, music video etc.
• Non-music content: Audio visual content that helps tell the artist story, such as editorial, photo shoots, artwork and video storyboards, artist interviews, back stage footage, live chat sessions with artists etc.

It is crucial that artists streaming subscriptions are not simply a collection of playlists.  Though delivering such a diverse suite of content types will clearly require a user experience above and beyond that of the standard streaming service. It does not however require a fundamental reworking of streaming technology architecture.  Instead these app-like artist experiences – and app-like experiences is exactly what they are – can leverage the app developer platforms most streaming services already have.  Indeed, the success of artist subscriptions depends upon them being immersive, programmed and interactive experiences, telling the artist’s story to new fans and enriching it for existing fans.  The programming effort will of course be significant and the burden will need to fall as much on the labels and as it will the services. Having labels co-run artist subscriptions also makes sense from the business perspective as it gets around issues of charging for streaming apps – TuneWiki’s demise is recent evidence of the problem created by 3^rd parties not being able to charge for streaming apps.

To mitigate resourcing concerns, a template-orientated approach will ensure scalability as well as a consistent user experience.  It will also be possible to rotate a majority of the content over periods of 4 to 6 months.  This is because just as music buyers buy an album and listen to it for a time before moving onto a new one, artists subscriptions will be swapped around and changed on a constant basis by users. Most fans will have a few artists they will always want to keep connected to, but will also want to have ability to deep dive into a new selection of artists every month or two.

Artist streaming subscriptions not only create a rich user experience, they also solve multiple streaming business challenges by:

•  Monetizing the mainstream: For as long as the price of mobile enabled subscription services remain out of the reach of mass market music fans they will struggle to have mainstream appeal.   Pricing experiments will play an essential role in the mainstreaming of music subscriptions but even more flexibility will be needed if they are ever going to match the spending patterns of an audience anywhere near as large and diverse as the current base of download buyers.  Artist subscriptions give consumers the familiarity and flexibility of a la carte spending dynamics but the user experience benefits of subscriptions.  Thus consumers can build their expenditure at a pace and level that matches their appetite.
• Creating artist specific revenue: Artist subscriptions also help mitigate the threat of streaming services turning download dollars into streaming cents.  They do so by giving consumers the ability to commit spending to the artists they like, and by enabling artists to build rich, immersive channels of content and editorial around their music.  The revenue opportunity for artists can be extended further by tight integration of ancillary revenue retailing, such as exclusive live-streamed sessions, merchandize and concert tickets.
• Ease free users into paid subscriptions: If artist subscriptions are additionally made available to free tier streaming users they present these users with the opportunity to ease themselves into subscriptions.  Zero to €/$/£9.99 is a big leap, but zero to a few dollars or euros is a far more palatable shift.  To deliver clear value artist subscriptions will need to provide mobile and ad free listening even when paid for by free tier subscribers.  This will additionally help drive free-to-paid conversion by accentuating the usability contrast with the rest of the streaming experience for free tier users. Once they have started enjoying the benefits of ad free mobile listening for a small selection of artists, the chances of migrating them to full subscriptions are much increased.  A careful balance will however need to be struck to ensure that consumers do not swap $/€/£9.99 subscriptions for 3 or 4 artist subscriptions.
• Giving music fans the music they want: Artist subscriptions give users an alternative, and far more intuitive, way to navigate streaming services.  At the most basic level they can be thought of like smartphone and tablet apps, supercharged bookmarks, gateways to immersive and interactive artist experiences.  At a more sophisticated level they can become the foundations of the programming architecture of streaming subscription services.  Artist channels can be grouped into collections such as genres and decades to cerate music channels, which then can be sold as bundles in the same way a pay TV provider sells bundles of programmes. Instead paying for movies, sports and documentary packages, streaming users could opt for bundles such as ‘alternative rock’, ‘EDM’ and ‘Urban’.  The bundle approach is not without its complexities, such as how much of an artist’s standalone subscription content would get into a genre bundle, and which artists would make it in.  But the clear advantage of the approach is that artist subscriptions, and bundles of them, turn the amorphous mass of streaming services into richly programmed music content networks. The pay TV model translated for music.

Streaming subscriptions still have a long way to go before most doubts will be eased, but streaming artist subscriptions represent an opportunity to accelerate the process by simultaneously addressing concerns of sustainability, user experience and artist pay outs.  Streaming artist subscriptions are not the entire answer, but they can be a big part of the puzzle.

The Challenges of Becoming a Subscription Business

Subscriptions are still only a small share of the music market but their time is coming. That time is long over due (I and my former Jupiter colleagues David Card and Aram Sinnreich first started making the case for subscriptions back in 2000) and a slew of big players are getting ready to play ball now that subscription look ready for primetime.  But they will find it far from plain sailing.

Spotify, Deezer, Rhapsody, Muve, Rdio, WiMP etc. have done much get the market moving and although there are still major challenges ahead (e.g. 9.99 not being a mass market price point) a host of new entrants are poised to make their moves.  The much mooted / touted (delete as appropriate) Daisy is one of the more eagerly anticipated ones (see my take here) but focus has recently turned to potential moves from big players like Amazon and Google, while Apple’s arrival in the subscription market is becoming Godot-esque.

All of these companies bring fantastic assets to the subscription market –scale being the most important – but they will all find the subscription transition difficult.  However good their technology assets, however big their marketing spend, however big their customer base, none of these companies have subscriptions running through the DNA of their products nor, most importantly, their customers.  Here are the key challenges each will face:

• Apple: Apple was the music industry’s digital beachhead but now Apple has a problem.  Downloads were a transition strategy with one foot in the digital future and one foot in the analogue past.  Apple has built a paid content customer base founded on ownership, a la carte transactions and downloads.  Meanwhile it tiers its hardware pricing by hard-drive capacity.  In some ways this latter point matters most: in the streaming era consumers download less which means there is less need for higher capacity devices, which in turn means that demand for the higher priced, higher capacity devices tails off.  Apple can use subscriptions to address this issue by creating bundles e.g. iPad Gold, a $200 price premium with device-lifetime access to an iTunes music, video and Apps subscription.   This sort of tactic will be crucial for Apple because the concept of digital content subscriptions is alien to the vast majority of its 400 million iTunes customers.  If anyone can make subscriptions work, it is Apple – and I believe they will – but currently its customer base, hardware pricing and content offerings (iMatch and movie rentals excepted) are simply not the right foundations for building a subscription service on.  A lot needs to change before Apple and its customers are ready for subscriptions.
• Amazon: Amazon’s content-device strategy is the mirror opposite of Apple’s: Amazon is selling devices to help sell content. Amazon needs to be a key player in the music and video business because these low price point items are the bottom rung on the purchase ladder that Amazon hooks new customers in with.  Subscriptions though, are high consideration items.  Amazon is hoping it can nudge customers up to monthly subscriptions in the same way it can nudge customers from a CD to a laptop.  But it isn’t the same transition.  Most Amazon customers have a lot of one-night stands with the retailer rather than a relationship: it is where they go to get stuff, not to immerse themselves in experiences.  Of course Amazon is trying to change that – particularly with video – but it requires a fundamental change in the relationship with its customers.  As with Apple, a device / subscription bundle strategy will deliver best near-term results.
• Google: Google has the most diverse set of assets at its disposal. In YouTube it has the most successful streaming music service on the planet and in Google Play it has, well, not the most successful digital content store on the planet.  Launching a subscription service on YouTube is an obvious option and the sheer scale of YouTube means that even with highly modest conversion rate it can easily become a major player very quickly.  But the fact that YouTube is free is core to why it is so popular, so the vast majority of its users have little interest in paying fees.  Thus Google will have to ‘think different’ to make subscriptions work on YouTube.  But where Google could really make the subscription play work is, well, on Play.  Not Play by itself though but instead as a tightly integrated subscription – device ecosystem with Motorola.  A while ago I wrote that Google ‘needs to do an Apple with Motorola’. It still does, but it should do so in a manner fit for the cloud era by hard bundling a Play subscription service into Motorola handsets. (You should be spotting the theme by now).
• Samsung / HTC / Nokia et al. By this stage any readers from a non-Apple and non-Motorola handset business might be beginning to wonder how on earth their companies are going able to squeeze themselves into the subscription equation.  It is a very good question.  Most mobile handset companies are at a crucial juncture, they now face the same problem as ISPs did in the mid-2000’s: unless something changes mobile handset companies are going to become ‘dumb devices’ just as ISPs ‘became dumb pipes’.  Nokia recognized this earlier than most but got the solution wrong – or at least the implementation – with Ovi and is slowly clawing its way back.  But all of them have a huge task ahead them if they are to avoid becoming helpless observers as other companies build robust digital businesses on the back of their hardware. If they can harness the carrier billing relationship then they have a truly unique asset for building a music subscription market, but that is much, much easier said then done (remember Comes With Music?).

All of these business have the potential to be successful subscription businesses but none of them will find it an easy transition and none of them are guaranteed success.  Not only will they have to transform their products, pricing and customer bases, but they will also have to develop entirely new business practices.  To some degree or another, all of these companies have to make the transition from being retail businesses to being subscription businesses.  Being in the subscription business is all about managing churn.  It doesn’t matter how good a job you do of acquiring customers if you can’t keep hold of them.  These are the skillsets that Rhapsody has been quietly perfecting for years and that Spotify is quickly learning.  A successful subscription business can appear like a duck, slow moving above the water line, but feet moving furiously fast below.

The Churn Killer: Device Subscription Bundles

Any business that is new to subscriptions – whatever they may say to the contrary and whatever talent they might hire in – is going to be learning the ropes.  Which is another reason why hard-bundling subscriptions with hardware makes so much sense for these new entrants. Besides the consumer benefits of turning an ethereal subscription into a tangible product, they allow the providers to plan for 12 to 24 months worth of customer life time value rather than worrying about subscribers churning out after just a month or two.

Even though downloads and CDs will still dominate global music revenues by the end of 2013, it is going to be a big year for subscriptions. Whether the new entrants can help turn that into a big decade remains to be seen.

View From the Top: 10 Streaming CEOs on 2012 and 2013

A special feature for the end of what has a been a big and often controversial year for streaming.  Here are the views of 10 CEO’s of of the top streaming services and of the leading multi-room streaming system, on the following two questions:

1 – What was the most important thing to happen to the streaming market in 2012

2 – What is the most important issue that the streaming market must address in 2013

Daniel Ek, CEO and Founder – Spotify

2012: Growth – both in terms of the number of people who are now paying for music again and the growth in payments back to artists as a result. 2012 was the year when people realised the future growth in the music industry is coming from streaming services.

2013: The abundance of choice. How do you make sense out of 20 million songs?

Axel Dauchez, CEO – Deezer

2012: The streaming market continues to progress at breathtaking speed and we’ve seen some incredibly positive developments in 2012. Most exciting for us, is the fact that targeted online content has developed into something much, much more sophisticated than just algorithm-generated recommendations.  We’re seeing the focus now shift towards personalised music curation. At Deezer we’ve gone a step further, developing really bold new product innovations that are designed to put integration with apps, social media and digital services at the forefront of our new user experience. Our aim is to help music fans discover and share music and promote new artists.  That’s why our local editorial teams work hard to create suggested playlists and recommendations to give music fans a more personal and individual service.

2013: Getting as many people as possible to find out about services such as ours! We’re convinced that the future of digital music will rely on music discovery and re-establishing the emotional connection between music and people. Our mantra is to help people rediscover music, through recommendations by real people all over the world. Our locally-based editorial teams share new music from upcoming local artists, not just in their own countries, but with the other editorial guys around the world – another example of Deezer taking music even further regardless of boundaries. Now our biggest challenge is to get people everywhere to find out how intuitive – and fun! – it is to use Deezer, and we hope to make great strides on this in 2013.

Jon Irwin, CEO – Rhapsody

2012: Looking back, 2012 was the year that streaming became mainstream. We’ve seen a rapid evolution since streaming music was freed from the PC and became a constant companion via smartphones, to this year, when streaming made its way into the living room and into cars—the two places where people listen to the most music. Streaming services are everywhere! This heightened awareness has resulted in more consumers embracing the model and eschewing their old beliefs around the need to own their media; which has given rise to more investment in the sector, innovation around business models and M&A activity. After spending the past 10 years forging the path and taking those proverbial arrows, we are finally seeing the realization of streaming music’s promise.

2013: The most important issue of the mainstreaming of streaming is that artists are paying more attention to how they’re being paid on the various streaming services. Artists are seeing a lot of streams, but are not seeing a lot of cash for them. This makes them justifiably nervous that streaming services are getting popular at the expense of digital sales–and in some cases withholding their music from streaming–a detriment to the growth of these services, just as they become popular. The solution of the problem is twofold. First, we need to do a much better job at education about how artists are compensated and creating transparency around where streaming revenues flow. Streaming services have a responsibility to innovate around artist compensation to get more money into artists’ pockets and help them understand how their music is being consumed. I think there is a lot more that we can—and should—do to ensure that artists are fairly compensated for their music and are extracting maximum value from streaming services.

Steve Purdham, CEO and Founder Investor – We7

2012: Two things, in the UK, the silent landmark in 2012 was the launch of the BBC iPlayer Radio app this has the potential in 2013 to be the catalyst for mainstream adoption of streaming, without the need to know its streaming and secondly the driving momentum of smart phone and tablet adoption reaching what I believe was a tipping point in 2012.

2013: In 2013 the dream would be easier licensing, more flexible pricing plans removing the artificial technical and commercial barriers with  the ability to demonstrate clear ROI’s but in reality for any of the models to work they need the true internet scale that is possible and to achieve that we need to find the means to enable mass market adoption. This is the elusive jewel in the crown that we all should be really seeking to solve.

Ben Drury, CEO and Founder – 7 Digital

2012: Streaming cloud locker services from Google and Amazon

2013: Globalised rights

 

 

Drew Larner, CEO – Rdio

2012: Social media has had a profound impact on the way music is shared, which is something we anticipated when we first built Rdio. 2012 also saw the entry of services into global markets (with our own service expanding to 17 countries). The continued growth of mobile around the world with faster speeds and better phones also contributed to the rise of music streaming in 2012.

2013: Awareness is still a key factor moving into 2013. We’ve seen a big shift in 2012 with more services opening up globally, but we aren’t truly mainstream yet. Innovating on discovery is a key focus as well. With all the songs in the world at your fingertips, creating fun ways to decide what to play next is a challenge. We built Rdio with human powered music discovery at the heart of the experience and we’ll continue to enhance discovery across platforms moving into 2013. Another key issue moving into the new year is the our responsibility to the artist community. We’ve started to address this through the recently launched Artist Program and will continue to work closely with artists to help them create new revenue streams and tap into new opportunities generated by the streaming music model.

Nick Massey, CEO – Rara

2012: The introduction of frictionless music sharing across social networks has led to a massive increase in the adoption of music streaming in 2012.  62.6 million tracks were played 22 billion times across Facebook in the first 12 months of open graph coming to the network.  In the UK UMG reported that 7.5bn tracks had been streamed in 2012 to mid November; a 700% increase on the 1.1bn tracks streamed in 2011.

2013:  Despite the huge rise in popularity of streaming, there’s a lot more work to do before the mass market transitions from music ownership to the access based streaming music services.  Increasing adoption of tablet computing is making it easier for people to consume digital entertainment content while high speed broadband and 4G mobile networks deliver more data to us faster.  However it will be the ways in which streaming services enable simple but engaging access to music through recommendations, sharing and curation which will be key to driving wider consumer uptake in 2013.

Mike Bebel, Head of Music – Nokia

2012: 2012 was a year when many of the mainstream music service providers realized that the typical mobile music consumer is seeking more effortless and delightful entertainment. This is something we had already understood and rolled out to over 20 markets around the globe with Nokia Music, the most satisfying and compelling mobile music experience to date.

2013: In 2013, we expect others will follow our lead and work hard to remove barriers to usage and some have already announced that they also need to solve the consumer issues that we identified long ago. Rest assured that Nokia Music will continue to innovate and deliver the music that people love in the most satisfying and intriguing mobile experiences. We welcome all to discover and enjoy it.

Espen Lauritzen, CEO – WiMP

2012:  The beginning of consolidation in the industry, which I believe we will see more of in the coming year.

2013: The big discussion on sustainability of the business model throughout the value chain.

 

John MacFarlane, Founder and CEO – Sonos 

2012:  In 2012 we’ve seen streaming services go mainstream. With the proliferation of innovative services such as Spotify, RDIO, Pandora, Rhapsody and QQ, we now have access to more music than ever before. At Sonos we’re dedicated to providing music lovers with the simplest way to enjoy all the music on earth in every room and our partnership with such popular music services has ultimately seen our customers consume twice as much music.

2013: 2013 must bring a healthy debate on the value chain of artist to consumer within streaming, and it’s essential that this is resolved to ensure the artist gets paid and the consumer gets a great experience. We are just beginning this dialogue but it absolutely needs to be continued in earnest over the next year.

My take

2012: It was streaming’s big year.  Finally the confluence of ubiquitous connectivity, and smartphones and tablets going mainstream has created the necessary market conditions for streaming to step up to the plate.  It is still very early days and streaming revenues are dwarfed by download and CD revenue, but finally there is the glimmer of a ‘digital plan B’. The artist streaming debate was a useful coming of age for artists, but too much data has too often been misinterpreted, creating a confused marketplace.

2013: 9.99 is not a mass market price point, somehow (bundling, discounts, pricing innovation, partnerships etc) that price must come down to drive wider adoption.  Also the value chain must work out a transparency solution that can work within the restrictions set by commercial relationships.  Artists may never get the full picture, but it is in the interest of all parties that they get as much of it as is possible to help them make informed opinions. Finally, the elephant in the room remains YouTube.  More catalogue than any of the other services, video (of course), great functionality, on every smartphone and tablet, and all for absolutely nothing.  That creates a playing field that is anything but level for the rest.

Rara Sets Sights on the Global Streaming Opportunity

Today UK-headquartered streaming service Rara issued a slew of announcements (squeezed in just ahead of Apple’ iPad mini launch) including expanding from 20 to 27 markets, increasing their catalogue to 18 million tracks, iOS and Windows apps and a deal with Lenovo.  Rara have been in the market for some time now but have largely slipped under the radar.  Now though they appear to be ready for taking a shot at the big time.

There is of course no shortage of streaming music services (Spotify, Deezer, Rhapsody, Wimp, Simfy, Sony Music Unlimited etc etc) but there is also a massive amount of opportunity.  Streaming will become increasingly pervasive as the music world continues its steady switch from the distribution age of selling-units-of-stuff to the consumption era of access-trumping-ownership.  In fact streaming will become so ubiquitous that it will become anachronistic to talk of ‘streaming services’.  Streaming is merely the technology that enables on-demand, consumption based music experiences.   So when the leading on-demand services only number their total users in the low tens of millions and paying users in single digit millions, while Apple touts 450 million credit card iTunes accounts, the scale of the untapped opportunity is abundantly clear.

The challenge is how to sell streaming to the masses.  Personalized radio is one approach: Pandora have made a lot of progress, with more than 150 million registered users and 7Digital just announced a $10 million finance raise to (among other things) pursue their own personalized radio play.  Rara’s strategic ambition though, is to take on-demand streaming to the masses.  Rara has built its user experience and market strategy around targeting the mass market consumer, opting for moods and a visual navigation approach over the traditional list-based navigation.  But an inherent difficulty with selling premium subscriptions to the mass market (Rara do not have a free tier) is that those very consumers are the ones who are going to find renting streaming music an unfamiliar concept.

Rara have built a service designed to demystify streaming. The partnership with Lenovo (Rara will be pre-installed on laptops and tablets) will help.  But a new stealth competitor will be present on those devices, in the shape of Microsoft’s subsidized xBox Music on all Windows 8 devices.  When you consider the challenge of persuading a new laptop owner to pay for a music service when the device comes with a free music service embedded in the OS you realize just how disruptive Microsoft’s new music play is.  As I have said before, I’ll be very interested to see what the European Commission make of xBox Music’ Windows 8 bundle, considering that years ago they compelled Microsoft to unbundle Windows Media Player from Windows for being anti-competitive.

The xBox challenge is of course a hurdle all music service will have to navigate, but Rara will be hoping that being pre-installed on the devices of one of the world’s biggest PC manufacturers will give them an advantage over the rest.