The Future of Music
With summer around the corner, and the music festival season to accompany, we hosted a panel event in Glasgow’s ‘The Record Factory’ alongside co-sponsors The Agency Works and BIMA, to explore ‘The Future of Music’.
We covered at spectrum of topics from; how music production has changed from analog to digital, to how content is being consumed on demand, and how the industry is adapting to monetise for artists and brands alike, via streaming platforms and collaborations.
Our panel, which was moderated by our own Head of Strategy and Planning, David Simpson, was made up of industry experts from agency, production, events and retail which included:
- Tom Roberts, Managing Director of Tribal Worldwide London, and founder of Freerange Records and Delusions of grandeur
- Andy Haldane, Marketing Manager of GuitarGuitar, accomplished Musician and Producer of Andy Haldane Productions
- Kevin Dougans, Managing Director of Ibiza Digital Media
- Allan Baird, Executive Assistant to the Senior Bookers at DF Concerts
We kicked off with reflection of the changes in the music industry over the past ten years. Andy of GuitarGuitar extended this timeline to the past twenty years to illustrate the true contrast in that period as relates to production, going from a room full of equipment and ground breaking 'digital production' suite in 1989 with Cuebase, to now working from a high spec mac and a few supporting inputs to achieve the same (if not better) results.
Consistently, our panel honed in on how the shift of music distribution and consumption across digital channels had fundamental altered the approach to market by artists and labels alike. With music production being accessible to all, and barriers to entry for 'Artists' to share their content being lowered, the traditional controls for distribution and monetisation had changed irreversibly.
With streaming platforms ushering in the demise of hardware formats like CD, a quantifiable monetary stream, the panel felt ‘performance was the product’ now for Artists. Allan of DF concerts in particular noted that there is now an inversion of what was an artist going on tour to promote a new album - now they release an album to promote the tour.
Kevin of Ibiza Digital went on to share live examples of how artists in the dance music scene, in particular in Ibiza, are collaborating with other brands and venues to reach the masses via social media to build their profile; in the case of Marco Carola ’s collaboration with Amnesia, Ibiza, to become one of the most in-demand and top paid DJs on the planet.
We looked at the opportunity for brands to collaborate with artists to develop real connections with end audiences. An excellent case study which we had flashing on the screens during the event was from Tom of Tribal Worldwide London, who explained how his team supported Adidas Originals to collaborate with Run DMC and A-Trak to leverage Instagram’s video feature, with the ‘Drop A Rhyme’ campaign, promoting creativity and engagement amongst hip hop fans on a platform they were already native to. Check out the full case study here: #DropARhyme
It was also noted by Tom that it is important for brands and artists to ensure the integrity of their public persona isn’t compromised by the other party - the risks being higher for house hold brands e.g. the well documented Pepsi sponsorship of Madonna while she burned crucifixes!
When looking forward towards the next ten years, thoughts leaned again towards how artist and brands will collaborate even more, with suggestion from Alan of DF concerts that the likes of Jack Daniels could/should follow Red Bull in the wholly owned management of artists (cutting out the 'middle man' record label).
It was also noted by Andy of GuitarGuitar that while traditional channels such as TV are on the decline - Radio is here to stay, and will only become even more influential as a key channel for filtering out the ‘Good’ from the ‘Great’.
The final key point is the inevitable continued rise and sway of social media platforms as a way for artists to promote themselves as ‘the product’ and drive deeper audience engagement, with the cautionary peril of artists damaging their own brand with a wayward share of their personal lives on these very transparent platforms.
A question from the audience which triggered debate was 'how brands can play a role within streaming platforms who offer ‘premium’ ad free models (versus ‘freemium’) to users'. The need for brands and artists to become fluid with one another to develop native content that doesn’t detract from the end product or user enjoyment should be the way forward; something for the marketeers and planners of tomorrow to ponder over.
Check out comments from the night on #BIMAThirstday and some snaps from the night here: DigitalParade_
Team DP.
