Blog: music business

We are entering the era of the end-to-end music company. Companies are increasingly striving to capture more parts of the value chain by building end-to-end ecosystems that serve creators at all levels along every step, from music creation to distribution to marketing and beyond.

We have heard it (and said it) many times before: the music industry has never been as competitive as it is today. But the challenge is not just that today’s landscape is ultra-competitive, it is also that new artists chasing success are competing against artists who came up before the landscape became so fragmented , as well as the entire history of music — not just that which is new.

The catalogue-sales boom is one of the most talked about music trends of the past two years. Most of the conversation has, understandably, revolved around aging icons, like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, whose catalogues have fetched hundreds of millions of dollars each.

The IFPI has reported that global recorded music revenues have hit $19.1 billion, which means that MIDiA’sownestimatespublished in Marchwere within 1.6% of the actual results . This revenue growth story is strong and sustained but the market itself is undergoing dramatic change.

Recent discussions over how music will look in the app economy, with services such as TikTok effectively ‘meme-ing’ the concept of music and emphasising its social context, has led me to reflect on the second-order effects of technology on the arts - those unforeseen and often unpredictable consequences of a new technology that changes the way people create.

The Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music exclusives Cold-War reveals something telling: from Drake, to Chance the Rapper, Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, the quest to garner exclusives has been done almost entirely with R&B, Hip-Hop and Dance artists, with minimal efforts to secure the same deals for Rock musicians.