februarytwentyninth-blog

[februarytwentyninth-blog]

UK’s music industry gets boost from 12% rise in audiences at live events

       On Ellis-Petersen(2017) news piece it is suggested that more people than ever are swarming to watch live music, with attendance at concerts and festivals at an all-time high.

                                                                                                     (Briddle, 2017)

        UK Music’s report, ‘Wish you Were Here’ (2017), found that has been a 12% rise in audience at live music events over the year of 2016, to 30.9 million - up from 27.7 million in 2015, bringing £4 billion into the economy and providing a big boost for the music industry. The total number of music tourists from the UK and abroad increased by 20% in 2016 to 12.5 million, of which 11.6 million were UK citizens visiting live music events in other parts of the UK(UK Music, 2017). The research has also found that people were increasingly willing to travel from other parts of the UK, and from abroad, to attend concerts and festivals, spending an average of £850(Ellis-Petersen, 2017).

        It is further evidence that the live sector is one of the most profitable and vibrant part of the music industry, and it is through selling tickets and merchandise that most musicians generate the majority of their revenue(Ellis-Petersen, 2017).

          It is further evidence that the live sector is one of the most profitable and vibrant parts of the music industry, and it is through selling tickets and merchandise that most musicians generate the majority of their revenue(Ellis-Petersen, 2017).

        The research has also found that people were increasingly willing to travel from other parts of the UK, and from abroad, to attend concerts and festivals, spending an average of £850(Ellis-Petersen, 2017).

        The chief executive of UK Music, Michael Dugher, said: “Live music in the UK is a tremendous success story and makes a massive contribution to our culture and general wellbeing, as well as our economy. It showcases our talent to the world and brings pleasure to millions every day”. However, the report found that there was a fall in the amount of money being spent at smaller venues – ones with a capacity of below 1,500. Dugher emphasised that the smaller venues were a “vital part of the live music industry.”.“UK Music will continue to campaign to safeguard smaller music venues, many of which are fighting for survival.” he said.

        The culture secretary, Karen Bradley, affirmed that the “UK Music’s Wish You Were Here report clearly shows music and the creative industries are not only central to our cultural DNA but also hugely important for creating jobs and growth across the country.” (Ellis-Petersen, 2017).

Refereces:

·     Bridle, J. Photography. Available at: http://www.festivalphotography.co.uk/ (Accessed: 8 May 2018). 

·     Ellis-Petersen, H. (2017) ‘UK music industry gets boost from 12% rise in audiences at live events’. The Guardian, 10 July. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/10/uk-music-industry-gets-boost-from-12-rise-in-audiences-at-live-events (Accessed: 8 May 2018).

[februarytwentyninth-blog]

Control, curation and musical experience in streaming music services

        In this paper from 2015, the authors examine how prominent music streaming services position themselves in the marketplace, based on their interfaces, the quality of their curatorial devices, the identity projected for users and the control users have over their music (or, lack thereof). They argue that streaming services are in the business of creating branded musical experiences, which appear to offer fluid and abundant musical content but, in reality, create restricted tiers of content access for a variety of scenarios, users and listening environments (Morris & Powers, 2015).

        The recorded music industries have shifted away from the sale of recordings like physical albums or downloaded MP3s and toward subscription models that sell access to vast collections of musical content. This presents listeners with a vast number of possibilities regarding both the music they can readily hear and the platforms through which they might hear it (Morris & Powers, 2015).

        Streaming services seem to be the realisations to Goldstein’s (1994) ‘celestial jukebox’, the dream of any music imaginable available at any moment through the press of a button. These services foster new cultures, practices and economies of musical circulation and consumption but they also create a crowded marketplace and challenge the norms of media consumption in an era of digital streaming.

        As streaming is growing and downloads and CD sales decline (Bond, 2017), streaming services are still on the process of convincing hesitant consumers to adopt this technology as their primary method of musical consumption, while distinguishing themselves from their competitors, a tricky task in an era of limitless content (Morris & Powers, 2015).

        Streaming’s aquatic connotations play on the notion of music and media as a kind of utility. Music should be like water or electricity, where consumers pay a monthly fee in return for an always on, always utilisable entertainment (Kusek and Leonhard, 2005).

        Streaming services have also promoted a vision of the future where streaming provides a totalising musical atmosphere to satisfy any musical need at any moment. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, for instance, has said he envisions a future in which a ‘musical soundtrack’, tailored for each of us, fitting for the moment will encircle us at all times (Morris & Powers, 2015).“We’re not in the music space – we’re in the moment space”, he said. The idea is to use song analytics and user data to help both human and A.I. curators select the right songs for certain activities or moods and build playlists for those moments. The playlists can be customized according to an individual user’s ‘taste profile’ (Seabrook, 2014).

        A branded experience encompasses a wide range of activities that take place both in the physical and digital worlds, including experiential stunts, corporate events, employee/consumer interactions in-store or via phone, or even the use of a brand’s app or website. That is because each of these things offers a meaningful experience that can either increase or reduce a person’s brand affinity. Effective brand experiences are designed to create specific, valuable interactions between brans and/or products and services and the people that matter most to them. If done well, these interactions can result in deeper emotional connections and greater brand affinity. If done poorly, they can have the opposite effect (Henderson, 2017).

        Streaming services define themselves according to the styles of musical access they offer, deriving from their interface, quality, taste and the control over music they allow. The combination of these variables, unique to each service, amounts to what the authors of the paper call a branded musical experience. More than a simple brand identity, the branded musical experience corresponds to real differences in what a consumer is able to listen to and do within each service (Morris & Powers, 2015). The authors argue that “the branded musical experience identifies a larger shift in musical consumption in which consumers do not own nor fully control discrete musical collections but instead buy into cloud-based libraries, accessible via constant connection to the Internet” (Morris & Powers, 2015).

The shift toward a branded musical experience encloses notable changes in music’s circulation. Quantifying and deploying a listener’s affective relationship to music in the presentation and curation of that music, whether through the facilitation of ‘liking’ or ‘favouriting’ tracks or more aggressively through mood-based or time-of-the-day-based playlists and highly personalized recommendation algorithms, streaming services aim to articulate, understand, and, in some cases, even shape listeners sentiments. Users might resist the idea of the subjective nature of playlists entitled ‘Unrequited Love’, ‘Life Sucks’ or ‘Forever Alone’ playlists (Spotify) and might be especially sceptical when they discover that these mood-based playlists frequently repackage the same individual songs/artists that are popular elsewhere on the service (one person’s ‘Life Sucks’ song is another person’s ‘Caffeine Rush’), but these are evidence that judging these services based on the quality, accuracy or fit of their recommendations is misleading. Instead, “their emphasis on the affective dimensions of music consumption and discovery are part of establishing the quality and identity of their service. In an ecosystem where many of the services offer the same catalogues of musical content, the affective cues and features for discovering and encountering music become the main point of differentiation” (Morris & Powers, 2015).

        The analysis of consumer tastes and their behavioural and social data permits the construction of personalized understandings of individual users, and therefore, tailored experiences, but also, in aggregate, it shapes recommendations algorithms, social features and advertising (Andrejevic, 2007). In other words, digital streaming services depend on a form of communicative capitalism (Dean 2010) where discourse about music is more valuable to these services than the music itself.

        “The likes, plays, stars and comments provide the trackable, actionable data on music habits which can then be used to generate other kinds of sellable data.  The fluid and copiously flowing stream of plays and discourse enables digital music services new means of extracting profit and value from the musical consumption process, especially in an era when much of this consumption occurs through free or ad-supported accounts. While selling music has always involved measuring and understanding audiences, these services embed features that measure users’ affective investments in music, and then deploy the resulting data in service of future recommendation and curation. Thus, not only does this information recursively filter back into an individual user’s experience (so, for better or worse, a service becomes more individualized), but it is also used to inform artist royalty rates (which are based on individual play counts) and promotion (as in the case of Spotify’s featured artists program)” (Morris & Powers, 2015).

References:

Andrejevic, M. 2007. Ispy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

Bond, S. (2017). ‘Streaming revenue to surpass physical music sales this year’, Financial Times, June 17. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/94c5cdb0-4a26-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43(Accessed: 1 May 2018).

Dean, J. 2010. Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive. Cambridge: Polity.

Goldstein, P. (1994). Copyright’s Highway: The Law and Lore of Copyright from Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox. New York: Hill and Wang.

Henderson, B. (2017) ‘The differences between brand experience, experiental and events’, Chief Marketer, May 22. Available at: http://www.chiefmarketer.com/the-differences-between-brand-experience-experiential-and-events/(Accessed: 5 May 2018).

Kusek, D., Leonhard, G. & Getudis Lindsay, S. (2005) The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. 18th ed. Boston: Berklee Press.

Morris, J. W. & Powers, D. (2015). Control, curation and musical experience in streaming music services. Creative Industries Journal, 8(2), 106-122.

Seabrook, J. (2014) ‘Revenue Streams. Is Spotify the music industry’s friend or its foe?’, New Yorker, November 24. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/revenue-streams (Accessed: 1 May 2018).

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Chance the Rapper's Earnings Show Just How Much the Music Industry Has Changed

       On McIntyre’s (2017) news piece, it is said Chance the Rapper stands at number 5 on Forbes list of the highest-paid hip-hop artists in the world. This is an artist who made history by being the first artist in the world winning a Grammy for a streaming-only album (Steele, 2017).

        Starting in February 2016, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) decided to start taking into account audio and video streaming numbers in addition to sales when certifying an album gold or platinum (Steele, 2016). After a "comprehensive analysis" of a number of criteria, including listening patterns and more, the RIAA came up with a formula for including streaming numbers. 1,500 on-demand audio or video song streams will equal 10 track sales or 1 album sale. What's more, 150 on-demand streams will count as one download (RIAA.com,2016).

        Chance, whose real name is Chancellor Johnathan Bennett, is one of the biggest names in hip-hop music, he is a three-time Grammy winner and he has a top 10 record to his credit; however, he never sold a single album. None of his titles been put up for sale (McIntyre, 2017). ‘Lil Chano from the 79th’, how he calls himself, has said that after meeting with three major labels, has realized that his strength was being able to offer his best work to people without any limit on it (Robinson, 2017).

(RamonaRosales.com)

        The artist makes his revenue from touring, selling merchandise at ChanceRaps.com, meet-and-greets and his deals with Apple and other companies – like Bud Light and Citibank, sponsors of his upcoming Magnificent Coloring Day festival (Austen, 2016).

        Touring incessantly and partnering up with brands has made him his $33 million, and his music is incredibly popular on streaming platforms like Spotify, “where at least three of his biggest tunes have been played at least 100 million times” (McIntyre, 2017).

        The 25-year-old Chicago native’s near-unthinkable earnings superbly highlight how the music industry drastically changed, compared to what it was only 20 years ago. Many artists do not make most of their money from selling music and there are now major acts bringing in tens of millions of dollars without selling even one album (McIntyre, 2017).

        These days it is about touring and partnering with companies who have resources to keep artists living well. “Chance’s success shows how much the industry has evolved in a relatively short period of time, and probably soon, there will be other acts following his footsteps, choosing to leverage their art intelligently instead of actually selling it”, McIntyre (2017) adds. “The album as a product and a concept is not dead, and a lot of money can still be made off of one that resonates with a large audience but does not necessarily involve iTunes or CD stories anymore” (McIntyre, 2017).

References:

Austen, B. (2016) ‘The New Pioneers: Chance the Rapper Is One of the Hottest Acts in Music, Has a Top 10 Album and His Own Festival - All Without a Label or Physical Release’, Billboard, 11 August. Available at: https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/7468570/chance-the-rapper-coloring-book-labels-grammys (Accessed: 29 April 2018).

McIntyre, H. (2017) ‘Chance the Rapper's Earnings Show Just How Much the Music Industry Has Changed’, Forbes, 28 September. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/09/28/chance-the-rappers-earnings-show-just-how-much-the-music-industry-has-changed/#530807db780f (Accessed: 29 April 2018).

Ramona Rosales Photography. Available at: http://ramonarosales.com/projects/chance-rapper/ (Accessed: 28 April 2018).

RIAA (2016) ‘RIAA Debuts Album Award with Streams’. Available at: https://www.riaa.com/riaa-debuts-album-award-streams/ (Accessed: 29 April 2018).

Robinson, L. (2017) ‘How Chance the Rapper Makes Music for Free (and How He Actually Makes Money), Vanity Fair, 9 February. Available at: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/02/why-chance-the-rapper-music-is-free-and-how-he-makes-money (Accessed: 1 May 2018).

Steele, B. (2017) ‘Chance the Rapper wins the first Grammy for a streaming-only album’, Engadget, 12 February. Available at: https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/12/chance-the-rapper-first-streaming-only-grammy/ (Accessed: 28 April 2018).

Steele, B. (2016) ‘Music streaming now counts towards gold and platinum certification’, Engadget, 1 February. Available at: https://www.engadget.com/2016/02/01/riaa-music-streaming-gold-platinum-certification/ (Accessed: 28 April 2018).

[februarytwentyninth-blog]

Festival Tourism

          This section will focus on Cudny’s (2013) journal piece called “Festival tourism–the concept, key functions and dysfunctions in the context of tourism geography”.

           In 1976 Tourism Society of England defined tourism as “the temporary, short-term movement of people to destination outside the places where they normally live and work and their activities during the stay at each destination” (Singh, 2008, p. 139).

        England’s definition is very simple and straight to the point, while the East, particularly China has a different idea of what tourism is.

        The Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China states that there are seven basic elements of tourism which are food, toilet, accommodation, travel, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment; and other seven key elements which relate to the development or expansion of tourism and these are culture, business, health, study, leisure, feelings and adventure (Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China, 2006). It is fair to say, music falls into the entertainment, culture, business, leisure, feelings, and, to a certain extent, adventure categories (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2018) (See appendix).

        A festival is an organized set of special events, such as musical performances, usually held annually (Cambridge Dictionary, 2018).

           Festivals play an important role in tourism since they happen within the confinements of a specific geographical area and include local stakeholders, both from the private and the public sector as image, branding and economic interests will be at stake for the local society. The short-concentrated duration of a festival points to festivals as often being re-occurring events that take place annually, often at the same time every year (Lyck, Long & Grige, 2012).

         Tourism as a whole has continued to grow over the years and it is closely linked to infrastructure development, creation of jobs and enterprises and export revenues so it is a key for socio-economic progress, globally surpassing oil exports, food products or even automobiles (World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), 2017).

           While very few detailed studies on the economic benefits of festivals have been done, in 2011, UK Music assembled a comprehensive report into the music tourism industry with results that manifest the great contribution that festivals and concerts make to the UK music industry.

These results are:

·      The major music festivals and concerts in the UK attract 7.7 million music tourists a year.

·      Music tourists at festivals and concerts spend £1.6 billion in total during their trip.

·      This boosts the UK’s economy to the tune of at least £864 million a year, providing 19,700 full-time jobs.

·      Of the 7.7 million music tourists, festival attendances account for 3.4 million (48%).

·      While overseas music tourists account for only 1.7% of attendance figures, their spend is significant, accounting for almost 9% of music tourist spend at festivals.

(Mintel, 2013)

           All of these are positive factors to a city or even country. There may also be, nevertheless, threats from festival tourism, such as increased levels of pollution, or inhabitants finding themselves under pressure to meet tourists’ expectations so, sometimes, tension and conflict may arise between the tourists and the residents (Cudny, 2013).

The following table presents the main functions and dysfunctions of festival tourism in the context of tourist space elements.

(Cudny, 2013)

Festival tourism is a multidimensional phenomenon, really. However, in the end, it is the positive aspects (functions) that dominate. The most important ones being the ones connected with social development and creating new infrastructure, promoting cultural institutions and high culture. The possibility to spend one’s free time in an interesting way, develop one’s interests and make new relationships seems to be a particularly important function of festival tourism. Humans are social creatures, after all. Most people prefer experiences over material possession. Festivals are a highly explored way to get these experiences. The dark side of festival tourism should not be ignored, however, namely its dysfunctions. In order to reduce them, it is necessary to manage festivals properly and cooperate with the local authorities, residents and entrepreneurs.

Appendix:

References:

adventure. 2018. In Merriam-Webster.com.

Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adventure

business. 2018. In Merriam-Webster.com.

Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/business

Cudny, W. (2013). Festival tourism–the concept, key functions and dysfunctions in the context of tourism geography studies.Geografický časopis, 65(2), 105-118.

culture. 2018. In Merriam-Webster.com.

Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

entertainment. 2018. In Merriam-Webster.com.

Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entertainment

feeling. 2018. In Merriam-Webster.com.

Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feeling

leisure. 2018. In Merriam-Webster.com.

Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leisure

Lyck, L., Long, P., & Grige, A. X. (Eds.). (2012). Tourism, festivals and cultural events in times of crisis. Copenhagen Business School.

Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China (2006). Understanding Tourism: Seven Key Elements of Tourism. Available at: http://www.cnta.com/English_Column/201603/t20160328_765008.shtml (Accessed: 18 April 2018).

Mintel Group Ltd. (2013) Music Festival Tourism Worldwide - International - June 2013: Economic Benefits of the Festival Sector

Singh, L. (2008). Trends in Travel and Tourism and Law. Isha Books.

World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (2017). Tourism Highlights 2017 Edition. Available at: https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/book/10.18111/9789284419029 (Accessed 18 April 2018)