Yesterday Once More?
The value of music is same as it ever was.
After years spent talking about the music biz, we thought we had heard every industry anecdote and audience observation out there. But a new one came to light this week during the ever-quotable Mat Dryhurst's appearance on the Not A Diving Podcast.
Dryhurst drops some science gleened from an unnamed University of Bristol professor by stating, “The vast majority of records that were purchased in the 1970s and 1980s were never opened. People generally like to be considered people who bought records and went to record stores.”
You can hear the complete quote here:
We tried and failed to find the source of this hyperbolic statistic, but it tracks with the current equivalent that half of people who buy vinyl don’t own a record player.
The presumably tru-ish factoid also indicates that even in a time when consumers were paying what amounted to $30 dollars adjusted for inflation (AFI) for an LP in 1978 (or the same $30 AFI for a CD in 1999), lean-back listening was still a thing. Platforms may change, but people stay relatively the same.
Despite who was and was not listening in previous decades, the two years we mentioned, 1978 and 1999, stand out as peak years for the industry as a whole. But we wonder whether we’re actually in another golden era the past few years and are too used to the negativity of social media to see it.
Complaints about how low streaming rates make it impossible for musicians to earn a living have become endemic to the conversation, but they generally come from veteran artists who probably overestimate their ability to earn recording revenue regardless of the era. At the same time, those artists who are making decent money probably have the good sense to keep quiet about it, given the tenor of the conversation.
BUT HOW CAN WE KNOW FOR SURE!?
Lack of transparency has been a major sticking point between streaming services and creators in the ongoing Hollywood strike. The same could be said for the DSPs and musicians. Individual artists’ incomes are private. Anecdotes are incomplete. And memes can paint any picture the poster wants.
Without clear data, there’s no way to know if music streaming has, on the whole, made things better or worse for musicians. Could rights holders actually make larger profits during the days of CD sales, despite the higher cost of recording, manufacturing and distribution in 1999, than they can today, even when those costs have reached near zero?
The ever-increasing revenue of major labels seems to indicate that there is more money to be made now than ever. If that’s the case, are artists getting screwed in a new way? Or are artists whose popularity has waned with age simply blaming the streaming boogieman for their declining fortunes?
We have an idea how to figure this out. The first step is identifying an unimpeachable metric for an artist's actual popularity. To use scientific terms, we need a constant against which to measure the variable.
Online metrics didn’t exist in the 90s, let alone the 70s, so citing billions of plays, millions of followers, thousands of likes, etc., is useless in this thought experiment.
One constant that hasn’t changed much in the past few decades is concert venues. In every city, you’ll find at least one 1,000-ish-capacity club that has catered to touring bands for decades. In Detroit, that venue is St. Andrew’s Hall, a turn-of-the-century social hall that began steadily hosting punk and new wave shows in the early 1980s. Everyone from REM and Nirvana to My Chemical Romance, Halsey and Post Malone have played St. Andrews on their way to larger stages, plus thousands of small and medium-sized touring acts that could claim the job of “working musicians” at the time of their booking.
So, let’s use St. Andrews Hall as our constant. According to The Concert Database, 100 acts headlined St. Andrew’s in 1999. They include notable of-the-era artists like Pavement, Macy Grey and Moby. The same could be said for at least 100 acts who took the same stage in 2019 including Lizzo and Earl Sweatshirt.
Now that we have a robust sample set of artists whose popularity should indicate a reasonable amount of recording revenue, we need to figure out how much money these 1999 and 2019 acts earned from CDs and streaming those same years, respectively. Sadly, this data isn’t easily accessible. Someone with a very expensive Luminate professional account could pull streaming numbers if they were so inclined (hint). Just be prepared to crash your Excel when opening the giant spreadsheet.
We honestly don’t if those same servers offer SoundScan data from 1999, but if any of our readers with a login want to investigate…
Of course, it might be easier to skip the comparisons altogether. Like Teddy Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” But it would be nice to know whose grievances hold empirical merit before putting our energies into trying to address them.
Shakespeare allegedly wrote, “Expectation is the root of all heartache.” The Folger Shakespeare Library says he didn’t, but since when has that stopped the internet from spreading half-truths? Try to remember that the next time your timeline tells you with absolute certainty that streaming is “broken.” Broken for who is the question we’d like to know.
TAKEAWAYS
Salient statements from this week’s music news.
1. JKBX, Music Royalty Trading Platform, To Start Taking Reservations
Shares of songs, including hits by Taylor Swift, Jonas Brothers and Beyoncé, will be available starting September 25.
Takeaway: The early adopters who ‘reserve’ their ownership of royalty streams after JKBX launches in September won’t initially have to put any money down. Instead, these reservations will be nonbinding while JKBX awaits final approval from the SEC to make its offerings available to purchase for investors.
2. U.S. Copyright Office Launches Latest Study of AI Implications
Issues of training data, disclosures and the copyright status of AI works will be part of the biggest study yet by U.S. regulators.
Takeaway: What will be interesting will be the opportunity to compare that to what companies in the AI sector think – until now, they haven’t really set out their views as publicly and fully as the rightsholders have.
3. A New Era of ‘Fan-Made’ Music is About to Begin
TikTok is rolling out in-app features to let users make their own versions of songs.
Takeaway: With fan-made music, the music industry can create the next-generation format and open up a growth driver in a way in-game spending has grown the video game industry. This is the social music growth driver the music industry needs.
