Blog: music product strategy

Non-DSP streaming was one of – arguably the – differences between steady growth and stellar growth for the music business in 2021. With three billion dollars of retail revenues in 2021, non-DSP has quickly become a key source of revenue, but not without bringing its own set of challenges .

Should entertainment fans be compensated for their fandom? Play-to-earn (P2E), a newly popular school of thought in the gaming space, says yes. People usually play video games for pure enjoyment, but in the attention economy , entertainment companies must give people reasons — not just ways — to spend their attention.

Kanye West knows how to stir things up, not least in making us rethink what music is and nudging us away from considering it as linear and static. First there was his announcement that Life of Pablo was a “ living, breathing, changing creative expression ”, and now there is his Donda Stem Player - which we wrote about here last week.

A community of Roblox users are losing a battle against moderation as the platform cracks down on music piracy, due to the platform’s newly public status bringing with it a new level of responsibility.

Decade retrospectives are almost doomed to fail. Assess the 60s in 1969 and you would have likely overweighed the influence of Grand Funk Railroad compared to The Velvet Underground. When it comes to the 70s, proto Hip-Hop pioneers such as Grandmaster Flash or the Post-Punk of Joy Division would have been a mere footnote in favour of David Naughton or Melissa Manchester.

Formats have shaped and dictated the evolution of recorded music. The constraints that formats set have, in turn, become the creative frameworks within which music has operated. Now, in the internet era, formats are becoming a thing of the past – and yet the way in which music is made and distributed still conforms to the old physical world.