Trend Report: Things to Watch 2011 Music Edition
Friday, October 14th, 2011
This week I came across a presentation from New York marketing communications brand, JWT. Their October 2011 Things to Watch list is a special Music Edition, and covers a variety of trends in “accessing, discovering and sharing music”.
After a variety of research and specialist analysis, there seems to be a bit more clarity in this presentation than there has been in recent years. The digital age certainly flipped everything on it’s head, but the fact that the big digital guns have stepped into the arena means that they see a viable future. Independent artists are more common and more powerful, and the platforms available for them to communicate and reach out to consumers are much more of a regular way of life than previous years. The frustration of not knowing where to find the music you like, and then not knowing what the ‘legal’ options were seems to be vanishing, and whilst there is no one ‘savior’ of the industry, the combination of many new techniques and technologies has created the beginnings of a new enjoyable sharing experience for all music lovers and appreciators.
Says JWT director of trendspotting Ann Mack, “It’s all about the ability to listen to your own archives, and just about anything else, wherever you are. It’s a major change, and one that comes just as listening gets a lot more social, from Turntable’s DJ rooms to Facebook’s peeks into what friends are listening to.”
Some of the my favorite points include;
Access Over Ownership – in today’s music world, consumers are shifting to the convenience of simply having access to music (i.e. music for hire), as opposed to wanting to own a copy themselves.
The Celestial Jukebox – a dream come true! The advent of Spotify, Rdio and the like means that we seem to have near infinite music available at our fingertips.
Taking it to the Cloud – 2011 saw some major players offer cloud storage (Apple’s iCloud / Amazon’s Cloud Player and Google Music Beta), and with that remove the limitations of hardware storage and which devices have music on them.
The Death of the MP3 Player – we are moving away from both devices that store music, and also devices that have only one function. Being able to stream more music from a mobile device that has multiple uses is a big shift in trend.
The Facebook Effect – the world’s runaway leader in sharing and networking has recently unveiled real-time sharing of music listening habits, via third party apps such as Spotify, Vevo, Mixcloud, Rhapsody, Soundcloud and more.
Youtube IS MTV – albeit an on-demand version, with new licensed content, music documentaries, vintage live shows and much more, this offers something for every music fan to tune into.
Artists are Doing it for Themselves – services and platforms helping musicians manage, market and sell have come on leaps and bounds. It really is possible to be a self made superstar in the internet age.
by Lee Jarvis.
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