Music Business Research 2017 – in retrospective

Dear readers of music business research blog,

The music streaming boom dominated 2017. Market statistics highlight that music streaming revenue has become the most important income stream for the phonographic industry. The US figures for 2016 highlight a tremendous shift from selling music (CDs and downloads) to accessing music (by streaming services). In the US, music consumers paid for the first time more for music access by ad-supported and paid streaming services (US$ 3.9bn) than for CDs, music downloads and ringtones (US$ 3.5bn). In the UK, the massive growth of music streaming revenue also increased overall recorded music sales in 2016. Gains of £103m in the music streaming segment, thus, compensated not just for the loss of £5.8m of physical sales, but also for the £56m decrease in download sales in a year-to-year comparison, as a long-term analysis of the UK recording sales indicates. We can, thus, expect a further massive growth of music streaming revenue in 2017 also on markets with a still strong physical segment such as Germany.

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The Blockchained Music Business – the Intermediaries’ Perspective

On March 3, 2017, an international workshop on “The Blockchained Music Business” was organized by the Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the Music Information Center Austria (MICA). Carlotta De Ninni (Mycelia for Music Foundation, London), Peter Jenner (Sincere Management, London) and Benji Rogers (PledgeMusic & Dot Blockchain Music, New York) were the workshop supervisors focusing on different aspects of the blockchain technology’s impact on the music business. In the second part of the workshop’s summary, we focus on the discussion of the workshop-group on the impact of blockchain technology on the music industry’s intermediaries that was supervised by Benji Rogers (PledgeMusic & Dot Blockchain Music, New York).

The Music Business in the Blockchain

When the Economist article “The Trust Machine. The Promise of the Blockchain” was published in October 2015, a broader audience beyond the bitcoin community has become interested in the disruptive potential of the cryptocurrency’s technology. Meanwhile, further articles on the blockchain have appeared in the main press and Don & Alex Tapscott published “Blockchain Revolution” (2016), which highlights in detail the (revolutionary) impact of blockchain technology on the music business in chapter 9. We also discussed the relevance of the blockchain for the music business with the Blogchain-Hub founder Shermin Voshmgir in a music business research jour-fixe in Vienna on June 20, 2016.

On March 3, 2017, Carlotta de Ninni (Mycelia for Music Foundation, London), Peter Jenner (Sincere Management, London) and Benji Rogers (PledgeMusic and Dot Blockchain Music, New York) will supervise the international workshop “The Blockchained Music Business” at the Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. After the workshop(16:30-18:00) our guests will discuss the opportunities and challenges of blockchain technology for the music business in a public panel discussion in the Large Conference room of IKM (Anton-von-Webern Platz 1, 1030 Vienna).

In the following, I’m going to explain the fundamentals of blockchain technology and I outline its opportunities and challenges of the blockchain for the music business.