Reports: playlisting

With playlists representing streaming’s lingua franca, the dramatic shifts in consumption they are powering are rewriting the rule books on music marketing, music formats and revenue generation, all in one swoop. Though the rate of change is partially offset by the grandfathering of the download format and, in certain cases, the resistance of physical markets (Germany and Japan), the economics of playlist monetisation is a rude awakening for the industry at large.

Streaming is transforming music and video consumption, creating new business models and behaviours. 2017 was a strong year for both sectors but growth is not uniformly distributed. Video subscriptions are set to see much wider adoption than music subscriptions and across both sectors, leading behaviours are slowing.

There is a significant behavioural and demographic overlap between gamers and music consumers. An affinity for music, adoption of subscription services, attendance of live music events, merchandise sales and following celebrities on social media, are just a few of the many indicators in which gamers over-index, compared to average consumers.

Streaming hit a host of milestones in 2015, reaching 67.5 million subscribers and driving $2.9 billion of trade revenue, up 31% on 2014. While the competitive marketplace upped the ante, music services wielded curation to drive differentiation. Playlists have always been the core currency of streaming, but now more than ever they are becoming the beating heart, the fuel which drives both discovery and consumption.