Current and Future Trends

Jay Frank, an author of FutureHit.DNA & Hack Your HIT, shared a slideshow from a panel at New Music Seminar, which was titled “Breakthrough Trends in the Music Industry”. By looking through the presentation that was given by music industry professionals. The presentation offers an inside view, where these professionals offer there insight on were the industry is and where it is possibly heading. For this blog post, I just want to highlight some of the trends and ideas that were presented.

The main trend that was presented is the exchange in which albums sales have gotten lower, as singles have gone up. Today, digital singles are at an all time rise. An example of this is Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” which sold over 11 million units. In the U.S., digital singles are sales have dramatically risen. Digital singles’ sales include ringtone, subscription, digital album, digital tracks and royalties. In addition to this, the actually songs take much longer to break into mainstream than ever before. At the website, examples of these are presented.

Currently, the main challenge that investors and music executives are having is finding a way to economize from this trend. They can no longer rely on album sales to make a good profit from selling music; they have to depend on digitals and the Internet. In the future, they will have a way to gain a greater profit from this digital single shift in the music industry. There are many ways they can possibly do this. My guess on what could possibly happen is that music will be charged by a subscription or monthly fee, similar to cable. I guess we will see if music executives will find a way to economize from this trend, or maybe another trend will take over? It will be interesting to see what will in the next few years.

Reference:

Frank, J. FutureHit.DNA. “Breakthrough Trends in the Music Industry”. June, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.futurehitdna.com/breakthrough-trends-in-the-music-industry/.