We do not aspire to be cheerleaders for any market, however much we may believe in it. Instead, forecasts are, at least in MIDiA’s worldview, a structured, numerical representation of analyst thinking. The simple truth is that there are no facts about the future. Experience, though, has shown that realism most often trumps optimism. Throughout those years there have been many calls for the numbers to be bigger and bolder. MIDiA has been building global music forecasts for nearly a decade now, and I personally have been building them for nearly two decades. Posted in fandom, Major Labels, Music Formats, Music Products | Tagged fandom, monetizing fandom, Music Aficionado, Music Aficiondos, music fans, Superfans | 3 Replies Making sense of global music forecasts Fans need new things to persuade them to spend, new things that actually build and deepen their fandom rather than simply a new opportunity to fleece them for another dollar. So, to Make Fans Super Again™, there has to be a genuine value exchange. Buying a special edition of an album is simply another version of something that fans already have on streaming. When they used to buy five albums a month, they got hours of new music that they would not have had otherwise. When consumers spend money on a live concert, they get a unique, in the moment experience. Consumers will need re-educating, re-familiarising. Much of the latent superfan spend has dissipated due to fading habits and the wallet share shift to live. None of this is to say that there is not a massive superfan opportunity to be had, but it will take work. We have had 15 years (i.e., almost a generation’s worth of time) of educating consumers that music does not need to cost more than $9.99….ok….$10.99. The problem is that this behaviour is at the fringes of consumer behaviour. Whether that be indie fans on Bandcamp, or Swifties being convinced to ‘help Taylor’ by buying yet another re-recorded album. Over recent years, the industry has started to nudge people towards becoming superfans again, or at least spending like them. And to quote Syndrome from the Incredibles “When everyone’s super, no one’s super”. The average, semi-casual fan was now spending the same as superfans. As the years passed, newer, younger music fans came into the market who had never spent large chunks of their disposable income on buying albums. Streaming placed a cap on superfan spend. The problem was that those people who used to buy multiple albums every month, now only spent the cost of less than one album to get all the music they could ever want. With more people spending more frequently, revenue growth returned. Perhaps not immediately, as much of the label community needed convincing, but that speed bump was cleared when labels started to see consumers commit, at scale, to monthly spend. So, when Spotify came along with the promise of getting people back into the habit of spending on recorded music again, it was eagerly welcomed. Live became the place superfans began to shift their spend, with merch sales growing in live’s wake. As music sales fell, live revenues grew, almost in mirror opposite curves. 50 quid bloke had become an endangered species. People just were not buying albums anymore. When Spotify came to market, the recorded music industry was in crisis, with revenues in freefall. Music sales started to plummet and the album began its long, steady demise, as consumers dissected albums, first on Napster, then iTunes, and then YouTube and Spotify. Then along came Napster, turning the world upside down. And there was no ceiling on how much they could spend. Superfans would buy multiple albums every month ( leading to the rise of the ‘50 quid bloke’). The CD era catalysed music buying at scale and the heyday of the album era. Yet, music sales were still the main fandom game in town. The live business emerged as a revenue generator in its own right (rather than the loss-leader for selling albums that it had largely been). Throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, the music business further professionalised and productised. A small portion were also members of (usually fan-run) fan clubs. The means of demonstrating that fandom was buying the records and, if you were really lucky, seeing the band. In the early days of the modern music business, music fans were the superfans. And the reasons for that lie in the very same streaming economy that the industry is trying to build beyond. The problem is that they may not be as valuable in the future as they once were. There is no doubt that superfans are crucial – they always have been. Little surprise, given how record labels are trying to establish superfans as the next growth driver for an investor community that is growing increasingly concerned about slowing streaming growth and looming threats, such as AI. There has been a lot of talk recently of music superfans and how they may be the shining light of the industry’s future.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |