Reports: music video

Music rightsholders are keen to leverage artist IP in an increasingly competitive direct-to-consumer video landscape, where appealing to silver streamers is a strategic play to minimise churn in an era of peak video subscriptions. The monetisable emerging long tail of video streaming, combined with the transformation of music IP into a content asset, has created the opportunity for the leveraging non-music IP for video audiences to build a new revenue stream that is free from the pre-digital constraints of the music industry.

This report is now into its second edition, updating the most comprehensive YouTube music dataset ever compiled in order to present all sides of the argument in an objective and impartial manner. The report provides an exhaustive view of the market for revenues, ad rates, stream rates, users, streams and subscribers.

Music video at the end of 2016 finds itself at a crossroads. The original perception of Music video as a sales promotion tool no longer applies in the post-download era, when consumers are now showing a clear preference for streaming rather than buying one-off products.

YouTube is the music platform of choice for Millennials and Gen Z and is by far the most widely used streaming service on the planet. But YouTube and music rights holders have never been the closest of partners and intensive lobbying and counter lobbying in 2016 turned up the heat.

The music video has undergone a major transformation since its original conceptualisation in the 1970s and commercialisation in the 1980s. Originally a tool to drive sales, MTV transformed it into a product in its own right and then YouTube did the same thing for the digital era.

YouTube is the globe’s leading digital music service but it delivers comparatively little back to the music industry in direct revenue. Even the one billion dollars paid out in Content ID revenues only represents $0.14 for each of its one billion users per year, since the launch of Content ID in 2007.