Music Lessons: How the music industry rediscovered its mojo

The music industry was one of the first sectors to be fundamentally disrupted by the Internet. Facing an epic and almost existential battle with piracy, coupled with expectations that music should be free, the record labels have tested many different business and distribution models. With sales of recorded music finally growing again, telcos and their partners can learn a lot from the music industry's hits and misses.

Introduction

The latest report in STL Partners’ Dealing with Disruption stream, this paper explores what telcos and their partners can learn from the music industry and its response to disruptive forces unleashed by the Internet.

Music was among the first industries to see its core product (compact discs) completely undermined by the Internet’s emergence as the primary distribution mechanism for content and software, throwing the record labels into a long standing struggle to maintain both relevance and revenues. After almost two decades of decline, sales of recorded music are growing again and, in developed markets, at least, the existential threat posed by piracy seems to have abated. Although the music industry still has problems aplenty, the success of streaming services has steadied the ship.

This report outlines how the music industry has regained its mojo, before considering the lessons for telcos and other digital service providers. The first section of the paper considers why music streaming has become so successful and whether the model will be sustainable. The second section of the paper explores the lessons companies from other sectors, notably telecoms, can draw from the ways in which the music industry responded to the Internet’s disruptive forces.

This paper builds on other entertainment-related reports published by STL Partners, including:

Apple’s pivot to services: What it means for telcos
Telco-Driven Disruption: Will AT&T, Axiata, Reliance Jio and Turkcell succeed?
Amazon: Telcos’ Chameleon-King Ally?
Can Telcos Entertain You? Vodafone and MTN’s Emerging Market Strategies (Part 2)
Can Telcos Entertain You? (Part 1)

Music bounces back

Over the past 20 years, the rise of the Internet has shaken the music industry to the core, obsolescing its distribution model, undermining its business model and enabling new forms of piracy. Yet, the major record labels have survived, albeit in a consolidated form, and the sector is now showing some tentative signs of recovery. In 2013, the global music industry began to grow again for the first time since the turn of the Millennium. It continues to recover and will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 3.5% between now and 2021, according to research by PwC, fuelled by growth in both the recorded music and the live music sectors (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The global music industry has returned to growth

Source: PWC and Ovum

For most of the past two decades, revenues from recorded music have been shrinking, leaving the industry increasingly reliant on ticket sales for live performances. Widespread piracy, together with the growing obsolesce of CDs, appeared to be turning recorded music into a form of advertising for concerts and tours.

But in 2015, global recorded music revenues began to grow again. In 2016, they rose a relatively healthy 5.9% to US$15.7 billion (about one third of the industry’s total revenue), according to a report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). For music industry executives, that growth marks an important milestone. “We got here through years of hard work,” Michael Nash, executive vice president of digital strategy at Universal records, told the Guardian in April 2017, adding that the music industry was still going through a “historical transformation. The only reason we saw growth in the past two years, after some 15 years of substantial decline, is that music has been one of the fastest adapting sectors in the digital world.”

Contents:

• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Music bounces back
• What has changed?
• Is streaming the final word in music distribution
• Lessons to learn from music’s recovery

Figures:

• Figure 1: The global music industry has returned to growth
• Figure 2: The way people buy recorded music is changing dramatically
• Figure 3: YouTube pays particularly low rates per stream
• Figure 4: YouTube is a major destination for music lover
• Figure 5: Music is one of the slowest growing entertainment segments
• Figure 6: Spotify’s losses continue to grow despite the growth in revenues
• Figure 7: Spotify’s subscription service is growing rapidly
• Figure 8: Concert ticket revenues are up sevenfold since 1996 in North America
• Figure 9: Major concert tickets sell for an average of $77 apiece

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