The best internet radio stations

There’s nothing more convenient than opening Spotify or Apple Music, launching your favorite playlist, and sinking back into the driver’s seat as you cruise to work. But where’s the human element in streaming media? Sure, the playlists themselves are shareable and curated, but there’s something unbeatable about the familiar jargon, jokes, and repeatable bumpers of internet radio stations and their respective DJs. Call us nostalgic. We can take it.

If you’re looking to keep up with the latest musical trends from coast to coast and the world over, your best bet is to use an internet radio station. You might not be sure which one you should listen to, but luckily, we do. This franken-hacked NES Power Glove instrument/robot is amazing.

Best internet radio stations at a glance

KCMP 89.3 FM — Minneapolis

WMOT 89.5 FM — Nashville

KCRW 89.9 FM — Santa Monica, California

WWPR 105.1 FM — New York

XRAY.fm KXRY 107.1 FM — Portland, Oregon

Dublab — Los Angeles

KUTX 98.9 FM — Austin, Texas

WFMU 91.1 FM — Jersey City, New Jersey

BBC Radio 6 — United Kingdom

WWOZ 90.7 FM — New Orleans

WQXR 105.9 FM — New York

KUSF 90.3 FM — San Francisco

Radio Free Brooklyn — Brooklyn, New York

NTS Radio — London

Radio Musical De Cuba — Havana

Cinemix — Seattle

BBC World Service

KEXP 90.3 FM — Seattle, Washington

Seattle’s best public radio station, a partnership between the University of Washington and Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project, highlights the best new alternative music from around the globe. Best known for its live studio sessions, KEXP is often among the first major media outlets to showcase up-and-coming bands, making it a great place to hear new music before all of your Spotify-loving friends.

ANDROID IOS

KCMP 89.3FM — Minneapolis

Owned and operated by Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), The Current is an adult-alternative haven for all things indie and local in the Minneapolis area. Curated by over a dozen DJs, you’ll hear everything from dirty shoegaze and surf rock to experimental R&B. Various segments intermix with music cuts, including interviews, book and movie call-outs, and livestreamed concerts.

IOS ANDROID

WMOT 89.5FM — Nashville

Undergoing several format changes for the duration of its call-sign, WMOT 89.5FM is tried-and-true Nashville, broadcasting an array of listener-powered roots, Americana, and bluegrass music. Current programs include the nationally-syndicated Hangin’ and Sangin’, The String, and Bel-Air Drive. If you’re looking to get an authentic taste of the city that gave music its heart and soul, look no further.

ANDROID IOS

KCRW 89.9 FM — Santa Monica, California

An NPR member station based out of the Santa Monica College campus, KCRW was founded in 1945 to train ex-servicemen in the then-emerging technology of radio. Now, it’s just a great place to find emerging music. Creators of the famed Morning Becomes Eclectic radio program, a show that highlights new music and live performances from talented indie artists, KCRW is an excellent place to hear well-curated musical selections, as well as to catch up on national news.

IOS ANDROID

WWPR 105.1 FM — New York

Grace your ears with the latest bars featured by Power 105.1, one of the top hip-hop stations in the city that birthed the very genre. Power 105 is genuinely urban. The daily spin features a heavy focus on both mainstream and underground hip-hop and R&B with a splash of Latin and reggae crossover. It’s also home to several talk segments, but none bigger than the Charlamagne-hosted Breakfast Club, one of the culture’s most influential (and controversial) talk radio shows.

IHEART IOS ANDROID

XRAY.fm KXRY 107.1 FM — Portland, Oregon

Portland’s most acclaimed independent radio station serves up the sounds of the city’s popular underground music scene to a global audience. A crowdfunded station formed in 2012, XRAY offers a varied selection of music and progressive talk radio programming and has been broadcasting around the clock for years now thanks to the help of nearly 70 part-time DJs.

IOS

Dublab — Los Angeles

Dublab is an internet-only broadcast that showcases the cutting edge of the DJ universe five days a week. The station also offers each live show for download via its website. With a rotating cast of all-star DJs that includes world-renowned heavyweights like Daedelus, Teebs, Flying Lotus, and more, Dublab is among the best streams on earth for fans of emerging beat music.

IOS ANDROID

KUTX 98.9 FM — Austin, Texas

Owned and operated by the University of Texas in Austin, KUTX showcases a range of genre-specific programming, from indie and pop to disco, Latin, and other genres. It’s an eclectic mix of shows, but they are each extremely vibrant and well-curated, making it an excellent place to find something new and unexpected.

ANDROID IOS

WFMU 91.1 FM — Jersey City, New Jersey

WFMU is the granddaddy of them all. The longest-running independent radio station in the U.S. is also one of the best internet radio stations on the web. This listener-funded station offers a free-form variety of eclectic shows that are sure to provide something for everyone. Such free-form formatting can be a blessing and a curse, as some hours will prod listeners to tune in elsewhere.

IOS ANDROID

BBC Radio 6 — United Kingdom

When it launched in 2002, BBC Radio 6 became the first new station created by the BBC in more than three decades. A digital-only channel that focuses on alternative music from all over the globe, Radio 6 plays everything from guitar music to dance, jazz, and soul cuts. Unfortunately, the BBC’s mobile apps are only available for those living within U.K. shores, but everyone else can just as well head to the website for a listen.

U.K. only: IOS ANDROID

WWOZ 90.7 FM — New Orleans

For those who aren’t lucky enough to live in the Big Easy, WWOZ offers up the sounds of its fair city to the world, showcasing New Orleans’ famed jazz, soul, bounce, and R&B each day. The station’s selections center largely around the jazz tradition — which is still alive and well in the city — providing an amazing look inside one of the world’s most interesting and storied sonic universes.

IOS ANDROID BLACKBERRY

WQXR 105.9 FM — New York

Among the finest — and most-listened-to — classical radio stations in the world, New York’s WQXR is also one of the oldest FM stations in the world. It’s among the best internet radio stations as well. Showcasing the best of composers new and old, it’s an excellent place to tune into when looking for some serious music for work or study. It’s also the perfect pairing for that nice bottle of red wine you have stashed away.

IOS ANDROID

KUSF 90.3 FM — San Francisco

The extremely varied sounds of the Bay Area are best explored on KUSF, the University of San Francisco’s radio station. A glimpse of the region that delves deep into the complex communities that have thrived there for decades, KUSF’s programming is overtly Californian, providing listeners with warm-weather jams they’ll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

IOS

Radio Free Brooklyn — Brooklyn, New York

A community radio station that’s run out of the basement of a bike shop in (you guessed it) Brooklyn, New York, Radio Free Brooklyn offers interesting independent programming, with a variety of interesting talk and music shows to take you through your day the Brooklyn way.

IOS ANDROID

NTS Radio — London

Founded in 2011 by Boiler Room co-creator Femi Adeyemi, NTS Radio offers a massively diverse selection of live and prerecorded music, in a variety of genres, that is often curated by some of the most influential artists in the world. More than 200 hosts regularly appear on the station, whose slogan is “Don’t Assume.” Famed artists who have curated content for NTS Radio include Thurston Moore, Gilles Peterson, Peanut Butter Wolf, Floating Points, and more.

IOS ANDROID

Radio Musical De Cuba — Havana

There’s nothing more fun and energizing than the sounds of Cuban music, and there is no better place to hear it than Radio Musical De Cuba, a Havana-based station featuring an assortment of constantly streaming Cuban sounds. Grab a cigar and a glass of rum, and prepare to enjoy the sounds of one of the world’s most interesting musical cultures.

CMBF

Cinemix

Cinemix is an all-soundtrack station that exclusively plays songs from film and television. A listener-supported station that broadcasts from Toronto, the station highlights the excellent works of iconic film composers like John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and more.

IOS ANDROID WINDOWS

BBC World Service

The BBC’s worldwide arm provides up-to-date coverage of notable events around the globe, as well as interesting interviews, travel, and sports segments. Fans of global politics will love the matter-of-fact way in which the BBC covers those topics.

IOS ANDROID

Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/best-internet-radio-stations/

My Honorable Mentions:

1- NPR National Public Radio: News, Music, Podcasts... at https://www.npr.org/
2- WNYC Radio: Local NPR station: News, Music, Podcasts...at https://www.wnyc.org/
3- Soft Tracks Radio: Adult lite rock radio...at https://www.soft-tracks.com/
4- Lite 106.7 FM Radio: Adult lite hits radio....at https://www.iheart.com/live/1067-lite-fm-1477/
5- Beatles Radio: songs from the Beatles & solo...at https://www.beatlesradio.com/
6- Beatles at 181FM: songs from the Beatles & solo...at https://tunein.com/radio/181FM-Beatles-s113658/
7- Beatles on iHeart Radio: songs from the Beatles & solo...at https://www.iheart.com/artist/the-beatles-591/
8- Classic Rock hits on iHeart Radio: at...https://www.iheart.com/live/the-classic-rock-channel-4426/
9- The Vinyl Experience on iHeart radio: songs that changed the world...at https://www.iheart.com/live/the-vinyl-experience-6878/
10- Singers & Songwriters on Pandora: pop hits...at https://www.pandora.com/station/play/4696058135796382025
11- Country Songwriters on Pandora: Country songwriters at: https://www.pandora.com/station/play/2711313674583113124
12- WSUS Sussex NJ radio: Adult lite 80's+ hits radio...at https://www.iheart.com/live/1023-wsus-1377/

In a Crisis, Radio Should Be Bigger Than Ever — So Why Isn’t It?

04-21-20 - Terrestrial music stations have a major cultural opportunity right now, but employees say a muddied strategy is standing in the way.

Radio personality Kevin Ryder was “baffled” by KROQ’s “cold, heartless attitude” when he and his morning-show team were fired at the end of March. The station has long been an alternative/rock staple in Los Angeles, the second-largest market in the country, and Ryder had been on the air for more than 30 years.

“The new people in charge now weren’t here for the building of the world-famous KROQ,” Ryder, one-half of the popular Kevin & Bean Show, said on air when the station let him go, live one final time. “I don’t think it means anything to them. It’s a numbers business, and there’s no family aspect to it anymore. It’s only numbers, but this place was built without numbers. It was musicians, artists, and the special relationship between music, the station, and our fans.”

AM/FM radio provides localized, round-the-clock information and entertainment via friendly neighborhood voices — so in theory, it’s the perfect platform in a global crisis that forces hundreds of millions of people to stay home. But Ryder is one of many in the radio community — including on-air hosts, music directors, program directors — who have been shocked by sudden job losses in recent weeks as COVID-19 has spread across the U.S., and news out of the industry has been one bad thing after another. Why is terrestrial radio missing the opportunity here — and how should it be fighting to get back on top?

The familiarity gap

In response to the pandemic’s shutdown of live events and many other industries across the U.S., leading radio conglomerates iHeartMedia and Entercom (which owns KROQ) announced widespread firings and furloughs.

Multiple sources who either currently work or recently worked in radio told Rolling Stone they believe the KROQ firings were a branding face-lift a long time coming. KROQ has long been looked at as a relative anomaly in the alternative-radio format: “It was almost its own format with a sound that leaned more rock and didn’t match the current pop/hip-hop-leaning landscape,” one radio industry employee says. “Now, it’s basically just flipping to match every other alternative station, which is what Entercom wanted and Kevin Weatherly [the former program director, who left Entercom in February for Spotify] seemed to be protecting it from.

Entercom’s CEO, David Field, tells Rolling Stone those firings were indeed unrelated to the coronavirus — and that local decisions are made by local management depending on how programs perform. “The ratings on the show post-Bean [Gene “Bean” Baxter left the show last year] were not where they needed to be, so the decision was made locally that it was time for change, and time to rebuild a new show that would hopefully garner higher ratings,” Field says.

But the timing of many of these company cuts — which Field admits was unfortunate in the case of KROQ — may be rattling audiences’ familiarity and contributing to radio’s shakiness. “I was really looking forward to your show during these uncertain times to help keep me grounded and to help ease my anxiety for a few hours each day,” one of Ryder’s fans wrote on Twitter. “What brilliant timing!” another tweeted. “Who wants to hear a familiar voice on the radio during a pandemic?!? Idiotic.”

Bay Area radio figure Aaron Axelsen was told to leave his position as music director and on-air personality at San Francisco’s Alt 105.3 after 23 years with the station. “My termination was based 100 percent on the COVID-19 budget cutbacks,” he says. “This just kind of comes with the territory, though. That’s the nature of the game, and we understand and accept that going into it.”

Axelsen says there comes a point when heritage personalities need to move aside, be grateful for their run, and make room for future talent and fresh perspectives. “Sometimes it’s necessary to reinvent,” he says. “Any time you’re going to get rid of a heritage personality, it’s always gonna be met with resistance. [But] there is the importance of radio personalities in a time of crisis — when your audience is looking for comfort. It takes a while to brand and develop new personalities. It can take years to build up the trust that people have with these long-running personalities in their markets, so I think the timing’s really unfortunate.”

While music fans faced with a sprawling field of streaming options may not need music radio, many in the radio community would argue that they do still need their DJs. “You can hear your songs everywhere, but these personalities that you listen to and grow up with can be the calming, soothing voice to help you feel better, escape, or give you information and news,” says Keith Dakin, the vice president of programming for a smaller radio company that owns about 14 stations on the East Coast. “I 100 percent believe that. It’s who you want to turn to in times of crisis. I grew up in the Eighties. When there was news, I wanted Tom Brokaw to tell me the news, because I grew up with Tom Brokaw. These people become your friends. We do perceptual studies and research studies, and people say, ‘Oh, they’re like my family. They’re like my co-workers.’ Making changes now is bad for your brand, because your listeners are used to these DJs and they’re looking for the DJs they love.”

Where is the flexibility?

Radio reaches more than 90 percent of the U.S. population, according to Nielsen, but the definition of “reach” is murky: The metric doesn’t account for passive background exposure, and it isn’t broken up to illustrate the amount of active engagement. According to Edison Research, AM/FM radio listenership was down 5 percent from 2017 to 2019, when it came to audio sources used most often in the car — while usage of SiriusXM, online platforms like streaming, and podcasts had all increased.

Revenue for terrestrial radio advertising has decreased every year since 2015, per research out of PwC, suggesting that the medium as a whole has become less significant to the general public. (Radio companies have also been on shaky financial ground for a while: the 850-station iHeartMedia, for example, filed for bankruptcy in 2018 as part of an attempt to restructure and reduce its billions in debt, then announced mass layoffs in more “reorganization” last year.)

But what if radio could pivot away from background listening and toward a more situation-based format, engaging listeners on whatever’s relevant at that particular moment? Terrestrial radio has the unique ability to freewheel — so insiders say DJs should be allowed to change course at a moment’s notice to best serve their communities. Radio personalities are able to get updates while they’re live on the air, which is not possible with prerecorded satellite radio shows or podcasts. These personalities have the advantage of being able to adjust with agility and express real emotion as it bubbles up.

“People are gravitating towards things that feel familiar because there is so much comfort in that. But that’s not enough — it depends on what they’re saying!” says Alex Gervasi, a popular radio personality who had spent 10 years at iHeartMedia, and six of those at KIIS in L.A., before being let go as part of the massive iHeart layoffs in December. “We’re witnessing another culture shift away from things and people that are superficial and towards those who are authentic and self-aware. It’s not enough to be just positive and upbeat anymore. Are you being vulnerable? Are you listening to the pulse of your community and the people in your community that might have struggles that look different than yours? You’ll have a hard time connecting if you aren’t listening first.”

“Now’s the time to experiment,” Dakin adds. “All of our stations are playing way less commercials because there’s not as much advertising right now. I’m playing all ‘songs that you can sing along to’ at five o’clock on my AC station. One of our stations on Long Island is [providing] fake ‘live’ concerts, since there aren’t concerts anymore — so it’s tracks from the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers’ live albums. We’re doing zanier stuff. And I’m gonna have my afternoon guy on Star talk about news, when he usually talks about Lady Gaga’s new song. On all of our stations we put news updates at the top of every hour.”

In the specific time of COVID-19, new updates from government leaders and health officials barrel in by the hour — so radio becomes an even more vital medium for communicating all that. “The average person has no idea if they legally have to wear a mask or not,” says KROQ’s former morning-show producer Jay “Lightning” Tilles, who left radio altogether in 2018 after 27 years at the station. “This would be a time that I would want my DJ to say, ‘Hey, just FYI, here’s what the mayor said,’ and then have a debate about it. I’m not saying that’s not a conversation that’s happening, but it [previously] would have been happening through every morning host. They would have all been talking about it.” Dakin, too, recalls DJs pivoting to 24/7 news channels during previous moments of a national crisis, like Sandy Hook and Hurricane Sandy.

The importance of the local

Radio started shifting from local to national years ago: In smaller markets, you might still have a local DJ who covers the opening of a neighborhood restaurant or a hospital in need of supplies, but the larger markets like L.A., New York, and Chicago have become hubs of syndication. “They wanted to be everything to everyone,” says Tilles.

“The one major advantage [terrestrial] radio has is that it can be hyper-local,” he points out. “They can talk about the opening of a shoebox on the corner of La Crescenta, and they have the agility to do that. They can broadcast from out of their car, as many of the DJs used to do when cell phones were invented. That’s not happening anymore, and you’ve noticed it as a listener.”

Moreover, when a station personality is told to represent multiple markets, that can make it harder for the station to solidify its own identity. And, on a broader scale, it makes it harder for the medium to stand out from satellite radio — a platform that was made so that anyone anywhere could access the same stations — or the Spotifys and Pandoras of the world. Homogenization can occur through the content that’s presented and the music that’s played.

“I always made a point, when I was on the air, to talk about growing up in the East Bay or going to this [nearby] club or taco shop,” Axelsen says. “I tried to promote things that were relevant to them — things that help the music community. I tried to provide information about local venues, promoters, DJs, and artists that were struggling: ‘Here’s how you can help.’ ”

Dakin says one of his stations just raised $10,000 to buy restaurant gift cards that they’re planning on giving to hospitals. “All that money came from the listeners,” he says. “People want to help and radio is good for that.”

The dissipation of localism wasn’t something that happened overnight. “As Weatherly used to say, it’s ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ ” Tilles points out. “It was something that happened every time the station was sold and traded hands, and the people who took it over cared a little less about the culture and what made it special. It also had to do with them wanting to use its identity to help sell other stations’ commercial inventory.”

“They want to be able to both program all of their stations and sell all of their stations universally — meaning that one person would oversee all of [one company’s] alternative stations,” says Tilles. “You’re also seeing a homogenization — or a scaling — of sales. If I’m calling Budweiser and I want to sell Budweiser 117 radio stations, and the only one they actually care about is KROQ, but I can’t sell them KROQ? Well, that’s a problem. So, over time those barriers are removed, but those barriers may have been the brand-protection agents that worked within the company, that held on to the culture that made that station an anomaly.”

In a 2019 Statista survey of the reasons for the decline in radio listening in North America, 41 percent cited other audio options as the main factor for leaving radio behind. The very last reason to listen to radio less was a lack of local information (five percent) — which implies that people don’t have issues with receiving local information, and they may even like it.

Radio companies have publicly spoken about decisions to pursue a balance of local and national — with some believing that a 24/7 cycle of live and local news updates should be saved primarily for news/talk stations, which are largely found on AM airwaves. Field, Entercom’s CEO, suggests terrestrial radio can be home to many things — local content, but also podcasts, on-demand, and syndicated programming, as well as the development of a one-stop-shop platform like radio.com. He says he’s looking at a “broader audio business” that can be delivered both digitally and terrestrially.

Could branching out in so many ways confuse the consumer, though? Field doesn’t think so, and says the double-digit growth in radio.com’s total listener hours and monthly average users would support the success of the multipronged strategy.

Feet on the streets

Large street teams are a thing of the past. But one of the most unique and impactful things a radio station can do is stake a physical presence, radio veterans say. Radio’s dwindling physical connection in the pre-COVID era may have set it up for failure, especially because it’s not possible to make up for that physical contact now. “The physical element of the radio stations — where you would go out, meet a DJ, and drop off canned food or masks or whatever you have — those things have all kind of dried up,” says Tilles. “They try to do everything digitally, and you can’t help people digitally these days in a time of crisis like this. Terrestrial radio is not doing the one thing that sets it apart.”

“We go to charity events. I really think that’s the only way radio can live,” Dakin says. “You gotta go to a million events. You gotta host every charity event that they ask you to. It’s a political campaign. The best jocks and the best radio stations are out all the time meeting people.”

In trying to compete with streaming services, satellite radio, and podcasts, terrestrial radio seems to have lost something of its original mission: Familiarity, flexibility, localization, and interactivity. When considering the future of the medium — whether during the ongoing crisis or afterward — veterans warn of not losing track of those original distinguishing features. “These personalities are so key to helping terrestrial radio,” says Axelsen. “They differentiate it from myriad other algorithm-driven music platforms. A good radio personality is a good narrator, someone you emotionally connect with or disagree with. That’s a tour guide.”

Radio conglomerates do show signs of wanting to adapt and pivot. Recently, for example, companies have announced pay cuts in their executive tiers to help alleviate the economic fallout of the pandemic on their operations. “We want our shareholders to know that we have taken immediate and proactive steps to weather this crisis,” iHeart’s CEO, Bob Pittman, last week said in a statement accompanying news that the company would cut $250 million in costs, due in part to senior managers taking voluntary decreases in compensation.

“Like virtually every business in America right now, we are dealing with an unprecedented, massive challenge that is hammering the amount of advertising dollars, because so many of our clients are closed right now,” says Entercom’s Field, who approved a 30 percent reduction of his own salary. “That creates an imperative for us to significantly reduce expenses. We’ve reduced salaries across the company for anybody making more than $50,000. We have suspended our 401(k). We’ve done a whole bunch of things to cut back on expenses to try to minimize the amount of layoffs. But due to the magnitude of the challenge, we had to make significant cuts.”

The radio business hasn’t specified how those savings will translate into strategy, though. In time, we’ll see whether companies take strategic action to re-endear themselves to listeners — and whether these changes are enough to help the industry ride out the crisis.

Source: In a Crisis, Radio Should Be Bigger Than Ever -- So Why Isn't It? - Rolling Stone

 

What’s behind the boom in iconic boomer musicians selling their songs

 Baby Boomer rock icons Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and Neil Young have sold all or portions of song catalogs in recent deals.

Acquirers are using record low-interest rates to fund music rights acquisitions they expect to generate higher investment returns in the future. “It seems like anybody that has a relationship in the music business that knows anybody is trying to raise money,” says Larry Mestel, CEO of Primary Wave Records.

For boomer musicians, estate-planning is key, like it now is for many members of America’s wealthiest generation.

From Bob Dylan plugging in his electric guitar for the first time to Super Bowl commercials, there have always been moments in music history when the most die-hard fans will accuse their idols of doing the unthinkable: selling out. But right now ”’selling out” has a new connotation, and it is a boom market for both investors and superstar recording artists.

A wave of boomer rock icons are selling out of their song catalogs. The moves, the latest of which was made by Paul Simon last week, point to a straightforward truth about the intersection of art and money: Music has always been a business, and one where creative genius deserved to be rewarded with riches. And it is a business that right now is seeing major changes caused by streaming, and further disruptions caused by the pandemic. The deals from Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Neil Young (in Young’s case a 50% stake) and Stevie Nicks (80% of the rights to her songs), highlight major trends in the entertainment industry, capital markets and wealth management.


Music publishing companies like Hipgnosis Songs Fund and Primary Wave Music, and conglomerate players like BMG, Sony, Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, are buying up premier song catalogs in big deals fueled by record low interest rates with the belief there will be more lucrative returns in the future from selling the rights to these songs across entertainment platforms.
Record low rates fuel music deals


Larry Mestel, CEO of Primary Wave Music, the company that just acquired a majority stake in the catalog of two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Stevie Nicks, told CNBC the economic environment that the Coronavirus pandemic has created has worked in favor of companies looking to purchase large assets. These low interest rates make it easier to borrow money, and high rates of return have created a perfect opportunity for acquirers.

“You’re talking about a low interest rate environment and you can achieve a 7% to 9% ... and then increase that through marketing and generate mid-teen returns. That’s a very attractive place for people to put money,” he said.

Music catalogs also have proven to be recession-proof, and the pandemic has only heightened the amount of deals being made as the music industry goes through a massive disruption caused by the shutdown of live venues and touring.
Streaming music’s rise


The deals also come at a time when streaming music — for all of its controversy and skepticism on the part of the musicians themselves about getting a raw deal — has proved to be an economic juggernaut, at least for the record companies. In 2020, Goldman Sachs forecast that global music revenue would reach $142 billion by the end of the decade, reflecting an 84% increase when compared to the 2019 level of $77 billion and streaming capture 1.2 billion users by 2030, four times its 2019 level, and primarily benefiting companies like Sony, which bought Simon’s catalog, and Universal, which acquired Dylan’s songs.

WATCH NOW

VIDEO01:24

Universal Music buys entire catalog of Bob Dylan’s songs

Global streaming music revenue hit an all-time high as percentage of the industry last year (83% according to a recent report) and it favors the superstars, too. Spotify has said its mission is “giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art,” but as a recent New York Times analysis noted, Spotify’s data shows only about 13,000 generated $50,000 or more in payments last year.

It’s not just streaming, though. The rights to bigger acts catalogs, once acquired, can be used in sync placements that license music across various forms of media, including film, television shows, advertisements, and video games.

“From a publisher’s perspective, it is extremely valuable to obtain the rights to a certain catalog that we can pitch for synch,” said Rebecca Valice, copyright and licensing manager at PEN Music Group. “A catalog can do its own pitching just because of its legendary success.”
Valuing rock icons


The more recognizable a catalog is, the more valuable it becomes for companies to purchase and use in movies or television. The best catalogs “pay for themselves” over time, she says, as synch helps recoup the money acquirers spent “and then some as time goes on.”

“I do believe that the icons and legends are worth more than the other artists,” Mestel said. Primary Wave owns the catalogs of stars like Whitney Houston, Ray Charles, and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

Some famous musicians of the boomer era have lashed out at the situation the industry has placed them in, such as David Crosby, who said in a tweet in December, ” I am selling mine also ... I can’t work ... and streaming stole my record money ... I have a family and a mortgage and I have to take care of them so it’s my only option ... I’m sure the others feel the same.”

He sold his entire catalog to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group in March, which had also recently acquired a controlling stake in The Beach Boys’ intellectual property, including a portion of the song catalog.

“Given our current inability to work live, this deal is a blessing for me and my family and I do believe these are the best people to do it with,” Crosby said in a statement announcing the deal.
Boomer generation estate-planning


For the musicians themselves, there is a mega trend at work: the estate-planning needs of America’s wealthiest generation. Boomer musicians (and those born just on the cusp of that generation’s start like Simon and Dylan in 1941), just like their fans, are aging. “Artists are getting older now so they can use cash, they can estate plan,” Mestel says.

Of course, the downside can be loss of control over an artist’s most precious asset: the creative genius that made their careers.

“These aging rock stars may want to cash out to provide for their estates ... but you lose control of your brand and your legacy, to some extent, depending on what protections you put in place as part of the deal,” said John Ozszajca, musician and founder of Music Marketing Manifesto, a company that teaches musicians how to sell and market their music.

Crosby and Azoff have been friends for a long time, a point Azoff made in the release announcing the deal.

It seems like anybody that has a relationship in the music business that knows anybody is trying to raise money.
Larry Mestel
PRIMARY WAVE RECORDS CEO


Some fans aren’t too happy about hearing hits like Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” or Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” selling cars and clothes — though Dylan has done multiple Super Bowl commercials dating back many years for GM and IBM, and his songs have been featured alone in others — but the decisions to sell catalogues can also help musicians avoid posthumous legal battles like the estates of Tom Petty, Prince, and Aretha Franklin had to endure.

BMG acquired the catalog interests of Nicks’ bandmate, Mick Fleetwood, of Fleetwood Mac early this year and noted some stats in its announcement that show that as old as boomer acts may be, they can get renewed life from viral streaming hits. The Fleetwood Mac song ‘Dreams’ generated over 3.2 billion streams globally (during an eight-week period September 24 to November 19, 2020) due to a video with a cranberry juice-loving fan, and introduced a new generation, more accustomed to TikTok, to Fleetwood Mac. The band’s album “Rumours” reached No. 6 on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart 43 years after its release.

Dylan’s deal is the biggest reported so far, estimated at $300 million though no sale price was officially disclosed and Universal only said in a release it was “the most significant music publishing agreement this century.”

Mestel believes the boom isn’t nearing an end.

“It seems like anybody that has a relationship in the music business that knows anybody is trying to raise money. But that doesn’t mean that they can go out an identify assets to sell or even know what they’re doing.”

BMG and private equity giant KKR recently signed a deal to go out and make a major musical rights acquisition, and as one executive told Rolling Stone, “We’re not chasing hits from January 2021. We’re looking at repertoire that’s proved itself about being part of our lives.”

KKR has been in on big music deals in the past, and the trend of buying rights is not new, but the current boom is notable, and fits within the asset class appreciation taking place across so many parts of the market as investors seek more ways to put their money to work. While the boomer deals are the biggest headlines, recent acts are seeing big paydays as well. Earlier this year, KKR bought a stake in the catalog of OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder for a reportedly high sum.

Companies like Primary Wave are working with artists like Nicks to try and keep them as part of the deal, and make that deal even better for them in the future, according to Mestel, who says many didn’t understand that they could enter into a partnership, sell a piece of their catalog, and that piece potentially become more valuable in the future than the 100% they owned before.

“If all goes well, [artists] get the most out of what they’re trying to sell it for, and it’s usually a win-win scenario for the buyer and the seller,” Valice said.

Source: Why there's a boom in boomer rock stars selling their songs (cnbc.com)

How the Decline of the Compact Disc Is Killing Music

 

Goodbye CDs

I recently bought a new Jeep, and I absolutely love it. It looks awesome, and it has knobby tires and four-wheel drive that comes in very handy where I live. It has countless gadgets, mostly controlled by a touch screen on the dash. It has a computer that monitors everything from oil life to tire pressure, and it has a GPS system to tell me where I am and where I am supposed to be going. It has heated seats, and it has a cool backup camera to prevent me from accidentally running stuff over.

But do you know what it doesn’t have? A compact disc player. It has USB ports and an SD card reader, and it has Bluetooth and an aux-in jack, but not a CD player. While this doesn’t make me love my Jeep any less, and I know it has become the standard on most vehicles, it is a bit frustrating. I don’t know exactly how many CDs I own. Certainly, there are many hundreds, if not over a thousand. They are all now useless in my new vehicle.

Apparently CDs just aren’t cool anymore. This move by car companies is a reflection of a trend in society in general. People don't buy CDs the way they used to, and why should they when there are other, more convenient ways to buy and store music?

But for me, the decline of the compact disc isn’t just annoying. I think it’s an indicator of a much greater problem that won’t be fully realized for a decade or more. And, when it eventually comes down, it will hit music lovers hard.

In this article, I’ll try to explain why I’m not just frustrated by the move away from compact discs, but downright frightened.

Technology Marches On

Before I had a big CD collection, I had a big cassette tape collection. Again, I had hundreds of them. Maybe twenty-five years ago I started trading them in and replacing them with CDs. Before cassettes, people collected vinyl records. I only had a couple of those, but I do remember when most home stereo systems came with a record player. I also remember the 8-track boom when I was a kid, which was but a flash in the pan.

Technology changes and advances, and generally that’s a good thing. As tough as it is to find a compact disc player in a new car these days, it’s a whole lot tougher to find one that has a cassette player. It’s unrealistic to expect CD technology, or any technology, to exist forever.

Today, digital music is the thing. You don’t need to own a physical version of the music. You can download the MP3, store it and play it when you feel like it. You don’t even need to buy the whole album if you’d rather buy just one song, and you can carry many hundreds of songs with you on one small storage device.

In a lot of ways that’s pretty cool. Consumers have more choices and can move more quickly when they want to make a purchase. Bands are able to get their music out there to more people. But in other ways, I think, this model will eventually damage music as we know it.

The problem isn’t that compact discs are going away. It is that they aren’t being replaced by another physical, durable medium. Digital music, stored in the cloud or even on your own personal hard drive or storage device, has an inherently short shelf life. When technology changes again, when you change computers or when you delete a user account, you may make an effort to retain some of the music you like, but much of it will be gone forever. There are no physical copies to stand as a record that it ever existed at all.

If music isn’t important to you, you probably don’t care about this. If you are like the typical consumer you buy music on a whim and have no particular allegiance to any band, artist or genre. Music is just something in the background to distract you when you aren’t thinking about Dancing with the Stars.

But if music means something to you, or if you think art and culture with substance and value should matter, this is really bad news. To me, an album by a band I love is something I want to hold in my hands and cherish. If my hundreds of CDs were stored on my computer instead of sitting on my shelf it wouldn’t be the same.

Music matters, and it should be preserved for the future.

Why Physical Music Matters

If you were a Beatles fan back in the ‘60s you probably bought the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band record when it first came out in 1967. I’d bet a lot of Beatles fans still own those same original albums they spent their pennies on way back then. It still exists in physical form, even if it is stored in a box somewhere. And, if you go out and find a turntable, you can still listen to it.

If you are a bit younger and you were a Beatles fan back in 1980 you probably bought Sgt. Pepper on cassette. If you are younger still, in 1990 you likely bought the album on CD.

Heck, there are probably a lot of people who own Sgt. Pepper on vinyl, cassette, and CD, having upgraded each time technology changed. Many copies of each of those still exist, somewhere. They are physical things you can touch and hold.

But the next generation who buys Sgt. Pepper will do so in a digital format. Where will that digital copy be in ten, twenty or thirty years? Chances are it will not exist, and least, not your version that you downloaded.

The Beatles are one thing, but what about a new band who releases their first album today? If most of their music is sold in digital format, where will those albums be in the future? It simply isn’t possible to hold on to a collection of music in digital format for years and decades the way you could with vinyl, cassette, and CDs. If you hope to do so, you are depending on a range of unlikely variables.

So what if I lose my Sgt. Pepper album when my computer explodes or technology changes, you might be thinking. Surely there will be versions of an old album in new formats just like there were in cassette and CD. You can just buy it again.

You’re right. Beatles albums will probably be offered in the most modern formats until the end of time, but that’s not true for all bands. It’s nice to think that record companies would continue to offer a band’s music in new formats for anyone who wants it, but if the money isn’t there surely they won’t bother. There will be songs, albums and entire bands that end up completely lost to time.

That happened with other formats too. But the difference was if a band released a vinyl record album back in 1965 and it was never released on cassette tape or CD, at least copies of the vinyl record are potentially still around. Even though some rare or old albums are no longer printed in any format, if you put your mind to it you could buy an old one on eBay or from a collector if you are lucky.

That won’t be true of digital music. Record companies will decide what music lives and dies based on popularity, which is what they’ve always done. But, without physical copies, the fans of future generations will miss out on a lot of great music that didn’t make the cut. It will simply be gone.

This will hit fans of more obscure genres like metal, jazz and classical especially hard. If you are a casual pop music fan, again, you probably won’t care. However, I like to think maybe you'd care simply because the loss of so much great music will make the world a worse place.

Your Music in 20 Years

If you buy an album in digital form today, do you expect to still own it in twenty years? If so, you are banking on some pretty unlikely events. You need to hope that in twenty years there is still some program or service that plays whatever format your music is stored in. You’re going to have to hope whatever technology you are storing it on remains viable, intact and free of viruses, and that you remember to back everything up correctly and transfer it over each time you change computers or devices.

If you are storing your music online or in the cloud, you need to depend on those services being around in twenty years, and you need to hope they don’t have some kind of problem or disappear overnight. You are going to have to hope that, if something bad does happen, there is still some version of your music out there for you to replace your lost copy.

To be clear, digital music technology is a good thing. It’s good for new bands, it’s good for established bands and it’s good for the consumer. It makes things easier for everybody, and if you are an unsigned band there has never been a time in history when it is more possible to get your music out to more people.

But it lacks a sturdy vessel, and that’s a big problem. We can’t rely on hard drives and the ubiquitous “cloud storage” to protect our music and culture for years or decades to come. Unless this changes, in twenty years there will be a lot of music you remember from years past that you simply will not have access to anymore. It may exist somewhere, in the digital vault of some record company, but as far as the public is concerned it is gone.

Personally, I like the idea that I can remember a band from my high school or college days and still easily find their music. And, for me and I know many others, it’s also about more than just the audio portion of an album. I love the album art, leafing through the liner notes and song lyrics and all the other great stuff that came with a CD or album. With digital music, all of it is gone and that’s really sad.

Physical albums have value beyond the audio. Bands like Evergrey give us a product we can cherish for life.

What Can We Do?

I was wandering around a thrift store the other day, checking out their shelves of second-hand CDs. Somebody had once thought it was a good idea to purchase each of those albums but has since decided they didn’t want them anymore. So, they sold them to the thrift shop, where another person can pick them up for a dirt-cheap price. The music lives on, for another generation.

If they were digital albums, the original owner would have simply deleted them when they were sick of them. What a crime. Is there any way to change this way of thinking, and would we even want to?

In my 30+ years as a musician, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that trying to create any logical change in mainstream culture is like trying to stop a hurricane with a desk fan. The vast majority of people simply don’t care about what will happen in twenty years. As consumers, they want what is cheapest and easiest, and in some ways that’s understandable. They will continue to download songs for a few bucks a pop and the music industry will continue to give them what they want. Expecting people to wake up and figure out the damage this could do is unrealistic.

So, if you do happen to care about music, what can you do? For me, the answer is to continue to buy CDs until another form of physical album comes along. I might not be able to play them in my car, but at least I’ll still own them in 20 years. Like vinyl records today, there will likely still be a way to play them.

If you do choose to buy only digital music, you need to come up with a safe way to store it, controlled completely by you. I’d have a system of dedicated flash drives, and probably backups of those. If the only copy of the music is on your phone, you are asking for trouble.

As for my Jeep, I will probably convert some of my CDs into a digital format so I can listen to them while driving. I’ll have to download them onto my computer and move them over to flash drives or SD cards I guess.

All that seems like a big hassle and something you shouldn’t have to do just to listen to music in your car. There should be an easier way. Like, maybe some kind of disc you could just slide into a player on the dashboard.

Yeah. Somebody ought to work on that idea.

Do You Still Buy Compact Discs?

Comments

KCrusty on July 31, 2020:

I have a lot of CD's as well ...maybe only a few hundred or less. But like you mentioned, Once you move to another format, how many times are you going to pay for the licence to listen to what you already own if you copied all your cd's to a PC hardrive And you move to a new PC your media player will require a licences in order to play it. if you don't have a hard copy then your out of luck. But most people won't care about preserving their old collection

Jon Meltzer on February 10, 2020:

As long as I can keep getting CDs for $1 each at library sales because all the hipsters are dumping them for vinyl, I'm going to keep buying them.

Hell, I remember when vinyl was "worthless". Good thing I saved most of mine then so I can resell it now :-)

Source: https://spinditty.com/industry/How-the-Decline-of-the-Compact-Disc-is-Killing-Music

The Rise and Fall of the Compact Disc

 

CD sales drop to new low

10/04/2020 Streaming

SOURCE: RIAA – The Rise and Fall of CD Sales in US 1983-2019

Compact Disc (CD)

Updated: 10/04/2020 – The first commercial Compact Disc (CD) was released in 1982 and the CD was planned as the successor to the vinyl record. Developed by Philips and Sony, sales of CDs grew quickly and by 2004 cumulative worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs and 200 billion by 2007. However, from the beginning of the early 2000s CDs were increasingly being replaced by other forms of digital storage and distribution with the result that by 2010 the number of audio CDs being sold in the US had dropped to about 50% of their peak.

By 2019 sales of music on physical media in the US had fallen to 11% of the total with only 46.5 million CDs (5.5% of the total) sold in the year compared to their peak of 942.5 million copies. CD sales in the UK declined 26.5% during 2019 and were worth £141.7m representing just 13.3% of total revenue.

SOURCE: RIAA – CD Singles Sales in US 1988-2019

CD Singles

Launched in 1986, CD Singles had a relatively short-lived popularity in the mid-1990s but as digital distribution methods started to become available in the early 2000s sales rapidly dropped. At their peak, CD Singles sold 67 million copies annually in the US and now account for sales of less than $200,000 annually.

SOURCE: RIAA – SACD Sales US 2003-2019

SACD

Super Audio CD or SACDs were developed to be the successor to the CD. They allowed additional playing time – 110 minutes compared to the 80 minutes of a normal CD – and the ability to record up to 6 channels of audio instead of the usual stereo pair of a CD. Audio quality was claimed to be improved but research published in 2007 in the Audio Engineering Society journal found no significant difference in audio quality between SACDs and CDs at ordinary volume levels. Controversy continues as whether SACDs sound better than standard CDs but commercially SACDs never caught on and from a high of 1.3 million copies sold in the US in 2003, sales have declined to $400,000 annually and mainly to a fiercely loyal audiophile audience.

Compact Disc Timeline

1982	First commercial Compact Disc (CD) released – The Visitors by Abba on 7th August
1986	First commercial CD Single released – Angeline by John Martyn on 1st February
1988	CD sales in the US overtook vinyl LPs
1992	CD sales in the US overtook pre-recorded music cassette tapes
1997	First portable MP3 player was launched in 1997 by Saehan Information Systems selling its MPMan players in Asia in spring 1998.
1999	Super Audio CD (SACD) format launched Napster file sharing service launched – 1st June
2000	US sales peaked at 943 million CDs
2001	Pre-recorded music cassette sales in US dropped to 4% of total Apple launches iPod on 23rd October
2003	Most major US record companies discontinued manufacturing pre-recorded music cassette tapes
2008	CD Singles start to be dropped by record companies and retailers due to lack of demand Spotify streaming music service launched launched 7th October
2010	US sales of CDs declined to 50% of their peak
2012	US sales of SACDs dip below 100,000 copies
2014	iPod discontinued by Apple after having sold 390 million units US revenues from digital music services equalled those from physical format sales
2016	1.5 billion smartphones sold globally
2017	US Sales of CDs had declined to 88 million units – 12.7% of US music revenues One third of the world’s population own a smartphone
2018	Streaming music services account for 80% of the US recorded music market US Sales of CDs had declined to 52 million units – 7.1% of US music revenues
2019	Smartphone users are projected to number 2.7 billion users

Future of physical CDs

The Rise and Rise of Streaming

Streaming continues to take an ever larger share of the recorded music market increasing 24% in 2019 to make up 56% of global music industry revenues.

In the US streaming accounted for 80% of the recorded music market in 2019 with physical sales and digital downloads continuing to decline.

Future growth in streaming is likely to come from increased sales of Smart Speakers, ‘connected’ cars with In Car Streaming and the near ubiquitous availability of smartphones.

  Are Smart Speakers the future of Streaming?

US retailers are starting to stop stocking physical CDs

According to Billboard magazine, US retailer Best Buy has told music suppliers it will be ceasing the sales of CDs from its stores from the 1^st July 2018. Sources estimate that despite being the most powerful music retailer in the US, the company’s CD business is ‘only generating about $40 million’ every year.

Best Buy will continue to sell vinyl for the next two years, which enables them to keep their commitments it made to vendors.

Another retailer, Target, has already reduced its music presence, having gone from selling around 800 music titles to now ‘less than 100 titles in most stores’

Future of the CD format

The future of the format seems assured with streaming services adopting it as the base level audiophile/HiFi standard adopted by Qobuz, TIDAL, Deezer, Primephonic, Idagio and the Neil Young Archives. These early adopters have now been joined by industry heavyweight Amazon with their Amazon HD service launched in September 2019 offering both CD Quality and HiRes streaming to their Standard Quality (320 kbps MP3) streaming subscriptions.

CD Quality streams are usually 44.1kHz/16bit FLAC and will need a steady internet connection of 1.5 to 2 Mbps. A 3½ minute song downloaded for offline listening will typically need 51 MB of storage.

Most smart speakers, gaming devices and smart TVs support the CD Quality file format and there are now even CD Quality Internet Radio Stations offering a range of programming options with audiophile/HiFi quality sound.

  CD Quality Internet Radio

  How to listen to lossless FLAC Internet Radio with your browser

Link: https://www.hiresaudio.online/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-compact-disc/

Opinion from Disgogs: The Future of CDs

 

There has been a lot of press and attention given over the last couple years about the ‘return’ of vinyl, with sales numbers for the format reaching highs unprecedented since the compact disc became popular. Yet while we are celebrating the vinyl renaissance (I love it so much I actually wrote a book about it called Why Vinyl Matters), what HAS happened to our former love, the shiny CD? While I extol the virtues of the LP loudly and often, I have to admit I still do own and play CDs (especially in my car). I decided to ask some of my friends, peers and colleagues what they thought the fate and fortunes of the seemingly jilted CD. In no particular order, here are the responses. If my tiny sample group is any indication, the CD is not extinct just yet. –Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

KEVIN MCMANUS-CURATOR, BRITISH MUSIC EXPERIENCE

As part of the British Music Experience, we have a fascinating small display called Playback that highlights the different ways we have listened to music over the years. In amongst the many lovely bits of kit we have on display (the space age looking 8 track player, the boombox, the Dansette, etc.) the poor old CD player looks dull and functional. Two words that probably sum up the largely unloved CD itself.

CDs got a foothold in the mass market when I was doing a load of freelance writing for NME. One of the perks of a job like that was that you get sent loads of free records. Being a slow adapter of new tech and a generous soul to boot, I initially just gave all my freebie CDs away to more savvy mates and persisted with vinyl. Then record company publicists stopped asking which format you wanted their music in and only sent you CDs. I was reluctantly forced to convert. I don’t think I have ever been fully won over by the format. Even though I do still buy the occasional CD, I’ve never felt any real emotional attachment to my collection of CDs in the same way I do with my vinyl. This became clear to me when I recently moved house and was under strict instructions to throw some of my ‘stuff’ out so that we actually had some space in the new place that wasn’t full of my own mini museum/archive. Suffice to say, every single vinyl record I own survived this savage cull while a mountain of CDs was discarded without causing me any great emotional trauma.

Every house and apartment should have records and record players in them. Things would be better.

JULIA RUZICKA-FUTURE OF THE LEFT

Let’s not bury this little fella just yet. Sure, it’s not as cool as its older vinyl sister, and not as vital as its younger digital brothers; but there is still some value left in the CD. The future isn’t bright, but perhaps somewhat stable? Manufacturing time and costs in terms of vinyl production make the CD still a great option for the merch table on tours – the livelihood for many bands. CDs are easier when moving house. They’re still satisfying to whack into the car stereo on a long trip (for us older car owners) and you generally don’t have to worry about them as much – they are the practical, old school, less glamorous sibling of musical formats. The “meh” within the world of recorded music distribution. Nothing wrong with a bit of “meh” in our lives from time to time.

SIMONE ODARANILE-THE GO! TEAM

Growing up and during my teens, my CD Walkman and CD collection were literally my best friends! It’s like comparing E-readers and tablets to books: For me there is not the same personal connection when reading through album artwork and physically placing a CD in to a machine as there is to downloading a track from iTunes. There is something special about having a collection and watching it grow right in front of your eyes! CDs are perfect for bands and artist of all sizes to create and sell; they are an all-arounder for everyone. Let’s not let them go just yet, hey?

CHARLIE ASHCROFT-BT AND AMAZING RADIO

The CD should survive its relative lull. Vinyl costs (to manufacture and buy) are rising, so demand for it may wane again, meaning the CD may re-surface as the physical product, although some distance away from the sales peaks of past decades. Continued mainstream supermarket presence will still count for a lot. Download codes could accompany CD purchases, given the amount of computers without CD drives. Outside the home, CDs still serve the commute, in the same way that FM radio hasn’t disappeared yet. Not everyone has the newest DAB-fitted, data-enabled vehicle — or a streaming subscription.

LUKE GRIFFITHS-FALSE HEADS

The future of CDs seems to be in an extremely bizarre place at the moment. For me, and a lot of people in their twenties and late teens, the CD was like having vinyl (this was really just before the vinyl resurgence occurred). I have a lot of affection for the CD, it was like what vinyl was back in the day AND for what it is now for a lot of people. You had a physical copy of something, with lyrics, liner notes- a proper physical copy in your hand. It’s not like now where record players are everywhere and vinyl is in vogue (which is a good thing, in my opinion; music is more than just streaming) so as a 15-year-old, there wasn’t much chance of getting a record player, and why would I? Vinyl seemed to be dead. Now, vinyl is back and even from our perspective, barely anyone buys our CDs, everyone buys our vinyl. So where do CDs stand? I don’t know. But who expected vinyl to come back like this? Also, remember EVERYONE has a CD player, so I’m not convinced they’re being killed off just yet.

KIM BAYLEY-ENTERTAINMENT RETAILERS ASSOCIATION, RECORD STORE DAY UK

The compact disc remains the most transformational format the music industry has ever seen. Neither the download nor yet streaming have managed to eclipse it. Importantly, 15 years since the launch of iTunes in the UK, the compact disc remains the UK’s biggest album format with around 750,000 discs sold every week. Despite the acres of newsprint devoted to the vinyl revival, the CD stills outsells its vinyl precursor by about ten to one. The relatively poor perception of CD these is in part a factor of just how successful it was: its ubiquity has meant it is too often taken for granted. The fact is its virtues – convenience, sound quality, portability – are the same today as when it was first launched. Sales are certainly down, but CD still has a lot of life left in it.

GRAHAM JONES-AUHTOR, LAST SHOP STANDING

When it was invented in the 1980s the CD was viewed as the future of music. It looked space aged, a gleaming silver disc that the industry told us had a superior sound and no matter how much wear and tear it suffered, would always play perfectly. We were encouraged to change our vinyl collections over to this exciting format, and the industry was happy to sell us our record collections all over again.

The problem with the CD is that it has not improved in more than 30 years. We can send a spacecraft to the edge of the universe but have still not invented a satisfactory CD case. If crushed, the teeth of the plastic tray break so when you open your CD, lots of little pieces of plastic drop out. CDs are wrapped in that irritating plastic that is difficult to tear off. You end up using your teeth or getting a knife. It is as if the format has been sentenced to a long lingering death and nobody is prepared to save it.

People treasure vinyl and take great care not to damage it, yet people don’t value the CD in the same way. My job involves driving all over the UK to visit record shops. On these trips, I take the opportunity to listen to many of our forthcoming releases that I will be selling to the record shops. When I have finished listening to a CD, I throw it on the seat of the car or in to the glove compartment. When I have finished listening to vinyl, I don’t hurl it across the room like a frisbee. The record is carefully replaced in the inner sleeve, before being inserted in the album cover.

Nobody can deny that the CD is undergoing a long and steady decline but talk of “the death of the CD” is premature. It is important to recognize that all formats are integral in ensuring that music prospers. The CD should not be a format we ignore, they are an integral part of the British music industry success story that ought to be celebrated.

RHIAN JONES-MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE, HITS

For 15 years from the early ‘90s, CDs ruled the music market after rocketing past cassettes to represent the number one format in which people would buy tunes. Before that, cassettes had done the same to vinyl, and now digital is doing it to physical. In 2015, cash generated from the sale of digital downloads and music streaming surpassed CDs (and vinyl), and last year, streaming alone took a 38% marketshare while CD sales counted for less than 30%, according to stats from the IFPI. The global domination of smartphones is only growing and you can’t jam a CD into an iPhone. At their current rate of decline, CDs will count for less than 15% of the music market by 2025 — and it’s surely only downhill from there. If you can afford a bespoke music listening experience at home, would you chose high quality sounding and beautiful looking vinyl, or compressed CDs in plastic casing? In the words of British troubadour Sam Smith, the writing’s on the wall.

JOEL D’EATH-MUSIC FOR NATIONS

Even with my relatively short time in the music industry, I have been surprised multiple times by the changes in people’s listening habits. Fifteen years ago who would have even considered that people would have access to millions of songs on a telephone (that fit in your pocket!!), but equally people are baffled that a vinyl LP is now not just a nostalgic safety blanket, but a format powerhouse in 2018 (24,500 UK sales for Arctic Monkey’s Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino in one week). So what’s the future of CDs? I’m unsure, but I’m not throwing mine away, I could be sitting on a goldmine!

DEAN HEWINS-BOOGALOO DEE

I don’t think CDs will be obsolete, just look at what happened to cassettes and how that has become a collectors’ thing now after being obsolete for many years. There is always the gifting market to keep it going, albeit in a much smaller capacity.

I find it hard to believe that they will be revered as records are, but for the collectors market, and the possibility of CD only versions of albums (Michaels Jackson‘s Bad included Leave Me Alone on CD only for example) will drive the music fans who feel the need for physical media, but don’t collect vinyl.

BRENT GREISSLE-DISCOGS’ DISCOGRAPHY SPECIALIST

There’s room for a resurgence here, but I have my doubts. Sales of CDs have been increasing over the past few years. They’re still a fraction of the market, which vinyl still holds control over. As a collector, I’m finding that good records are getting harder to find at affordable prices. Vinyl has more competition between collectors. CDs are going to continue to grow over time. People will find new music without extensive efforts to find affordable copies. CDs are also much quicker to produce than vinyl and at a fraction of the cost. This is more attractive to artists looking for physical merchandise. As ’90s/’00s nostalgia continues to grow, people are going to want the music and media of their youth.

There are a few down sides to CDs that I can see continuing to hamper growth. During the heyday of CDs, pretty much every vehicle and computer had a CD player. CD collectors may need to go through more effort to find functioning players. There is also evidence that CDs may have a shorter lifespan than records. Issues such as bronzing or cheap CDR degradation may mean unplayable copies.

Source: https://blog.discogs.com/en/the-future-of-cds/

PBS: Watch: Bruce Springsteen Memoir, our complete interview

 

Classic 60 Minutes - Bruce Springsteen

 

3 ways the pandemic has changed our music listening habits — from commuting to country songs

I’m a neurotic music listener, which means I have playlists for everything.

Usually, I can look back on those song collections and remember exactly where I was in life, where I lived, how happy I was or which Playboi Carti I was listening to 20 times a day.

But when I reflect on my playlists from the last six months, I see words like “nostalgia” and “cry.” One playlist has a title that features the facepalm emoji. Another is dedicated solely to songs that, ironically, sound better when played in a crowd.

It’d be an understatement to say my music choices have changed over the past half year, and apparently, I’m not alone.

According to a study released by Nielsen Music/MRC Data earlier this summer, our country’s listening habits have made some drastic left turns since March — when the coronavirus pandemic changed just about every part of our daily lives.

Glenn Peoples, Billboard’s lead analyst, explained our months of quarantining as a “pressure cooker,” which has fast-tracked trends that may have been bubbling below the surface.

“I think it accelerated a lot of consumer behaviors that would’ve happened anyway, but now it’s like a pressure cooker for trends and changes in the market,” he told In The Know.

These changes are widespread, and they’re affecting a lot more than what anal retentive music fans (like me) name our playlists. Since March, Americans have changed not just what they’re listening to but also where they listen and how often they do it.
An ‘on-the-go’ habit

Before the pandemic, the music industry was having a record year. From Jan. 1 to March 12, total audio activity — that is, how much people are listening to music across all formats — was up by 14.6 percent over the same period in 2019, per Nielsen Music/MRC Data’s analysis.

Strangely, audio activity has kept growing since then but by a smaller margin. From March 12 to July 2, listening had fallen to a 6.2 percent rate of growth compared to 2019.

So what caused the drop-off? The report shows a sharp decline for physical album sales during the first months of quarantine, although there’s some evidence that this trend has reversed.

Streaming also saw a decrease. On-demand listening on apps like Spotify and Apple Music was up by more than 20 percent during the first two months of 2020, but that figure fell to around 14 percent from March to July.

It’s a change that, according to Peoples, has some at least some connection to our new normal. For example, music fans are no longer driving hours to and from work each day, or blasting their volume to drown out annoying subway passengers.

“Music streaming is very much an on-the-go kind of product. It’s very much tied to the smartphone,” Peoples told In The Know. “And if people are not out of the home … they’re gonna stream less.”

Music has gotten less personal since March, but in the process, it’s become more communal. For example, Peoples said smart-speaker listening had grown during the first months of the pandemic, as families and roommates holed up at home with their favorite albums.
‘Family friendly’ music

Of course, different music sounds better in different environments. For example, would you rather listen to Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” album on a $5 pair of earbuds or through a surround-sound speaker system?

Our choices in quarantine have been less obvious. Without many of our ritualistic listening spaces (the car, the gym or the wine aisle at Trader Joe’s), we’re not queueing up the same genres as usual.

In fact, Nielsen Music/MRC Data’s research found that all but two genres saw their listening numbers decrease during the first weeks of quarantine when compared with the growth during 2020’s pre-pandemic months.

One exception: country music. The genre saw a 21.4 percent increase during that time, a trend Peoples tied largely to technology.

Country fans, he explained, have traditionally been slower to latch onto new music trends like streaming services and smart speakers. During quarantine, though, they didn’t have a choice but to make the switch.

Then there’s the nature of quarantine itself. Suddenly, families were spending all of their time at home together, and, as Peoples described it, country offered a “family-friendly” option.

“People didn’t have to worry about playing it around their kids,” he said.

It’s impossible to prove exactly why families are queuing up Dierks Bentley over say, Lady Gaga, but kids are certainly playing a role. Nielsen Music/MRC Data also found that, after schools nationwide closed their doors in March, children’s music saw its own bump in popularity.
‘A break from reality’

Nostalgia might not be a genre, exactly, but just like country music, it’s having a moment. Nielsen Music/MRC Data’s analysis found that, during the pandemic, people sought comfort in the familiar.

“Older” songs — defined by Nielsen Music/MRC Data as anything released more than 18 months ago — saw an increase in the first months of quarantine. In fact, as the report states, 87 percent of consumers “turned to music they usually listen to.”

Peoples said that to him, the trend shows people may have been identifying older music as a “soothing” alternative to the current state of affairs.

“They needed a break from reality, and I think older music was probably very soothing to people,” he told In The Know.

Just like in my quarantine playlists — one of which is strictly devoted to songs I loved in the 10th grade — music fans are gazing backward. That’s not to say new music has become invisible though.

There’s been an exciting amount of new music of the past six months, even with A-listers like Lady Gaga and The Chicks pushing back their albums at the start of the pandemic.

Those records, among others from superstar artists like Taylor Swift, got plenty of shine during quarantine, while platforms like TikTok have continued boosting new artists — including Doja Cat, Saint Jhn and Roddy Ricch — to the top of the charts.

Throwbacks might be surging, but it’s clear we’re still on the lookout for new songs.

As Peoples explained, music fans won’t ignore the chance to discover what’s new — especially if it comes easily. He specifically pointed to Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist, which updates with the latest releases each week, as an example.

“They’re gonna listen to that whether or not some country star released a single that day,” Peoples said.

It might be the optimist in me, but it feels like there’s some encouragement in that thought. The pandemic has changed so much about our daily lives, and as a result, how we use music to cope with the world around us.

Our habits might be changing — which isn’t necessarily good or bad — but new music keeps coming out, and we keep listening. In a year where everything feels different, there’s something a little comforting in that.

If you liked this story, check out In The Know’s article on how nationwide protests has shed new light on older songs.

Source: https://www.intheknow.com/2020/09/11/music-listening-pandemic-covid19-nielson-billboard-spotify/

The Past Year, And Decade, In Music Listening: Video Rules, The Boy's Club Remains

Two competing data firms, BuzzAngle and Nielsen Music, released reports in early Jan. 2020 detailing the many changes in listening over the past decade. Kirsty Lee / EyeEm/Getty Images/EyeEm hide caption

Two competing data firms, BuzzAngle and Nielsen Music, released reports in early Jan. 2020 detailing the many changes in listening over the past decade.

As we ease into the 2020s, data about the music industry's growth is more abundant than ever.

Within the last week, BuzzAngle and Nielsen Music — the two central, competing, public-facing music-data firms in the U.S. — released their annual reports on music listening trends. BuzzAngle powers Rolling Stone's charts and is owned by Penske Media, the parent company of Rolling Stone, Variety and Deadline; Nielsen Music was acquired by Valence Media, the parent company of Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, in December 2019.

The two reports differ on some details, but are directionally similar. Both put the total number of music streams in the U.S. last year over one trillion for the first time, representing a 15% growth in streams year-over-year. Both note that on-demand streaming accounted for over 80% of total consumption in the U.S., and that audio streaming in particular continued to register solid annual growth (from Nielsen's 24% to BuzzAngle's 32%).

Nielsen's report in particular sheds light on the artists who dominated the past decade. Drake, Eminem and Taylor Swift were the only three artists to rank in the top 10 for the most album sales and streams last decade — country stars like Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw and Toby Keith lead the radio airplay charts over the same time period. Interestingly, while Adele had the two best-selling albums of the decade — 21 and 25, respectively, both released in 2015 or earlier — she's nowhere to be found on any decade-end streaming charts.

In general, music listening is accelerating: According to BuzzAngle, last year's streams alone accounted for more than 30% of all streaming activity over the past six years. But beneath the "one trillion streams" headlines are some deeper truths about the current state of the music business — some of which reflect the industry's stubborn resistance to change, and others of which provide a sign of the global transformation to come.

Audio streams might rule the U.S., but video streams rule the world

Audio-streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music tend to suck up much of the air when talking about the modern music industry, at least in the U.S. But zoom out to a global level and it's actually video — not audio — that reigns supreme.

Nielsen Music and BuzzAngle both found that audio accounted for around 70% of total on-demand streams in the U.S. in 2019, with video comprising the remaining 30%. But Nielsen's worldwide streaming data flips that ratio on its head: Out of the 5.1 trillion on-demand music streams generated globally in 2019, including U.S. plays, 66% came from video, while the remaining 33% came from audio.

This is because YouTube is the preferred consumption platform and marketing machine for several international music genres, from K-pop in Korea to Bollywood in India (YouTube alone accounts for 40% of Indian labels' revenues). Unlike Spotify Premium or Apple Music, YouTube is free and doesn't require a login, raising its appeal for music markets whose consumers might have lower per-capita incomes or haven't yet warmed up to the concept of a paid streaming subscription.

More songs than ever are in the 500-million-streams club, but power is still concentrated

Comparing the reports also outlines a dual narrative with respect to whether the music industry is really becoming a more-level playing field.

On one hand, more artists and songs are participating in the "top 1%" of the industry. According to BuzzAngle, 31 songs were streamed over 500 million times in 2019, up from 21 such songs in 2018. A tier below, nearly 900 songs were streamed over 100 million times last year, up from 525 in 2018.

But that doesn't mean the distribution of power has gotten any more equitable. BuzzAngle found that the 1,000 most-streamed songs in 2019 accounted for 18% of all streams, while the top 500 album titles were responsible for 30% of all album sales — same as the year before.

Major labels also dominate nearly all of the top artist, album and song charts in both reports. With the exception of YNW Melly's "Murder On My Mind," the top 25 songs, albums and artists of 2019 in BuzzAngle's report were all owned and/or distributed by a major label. Nielsen Music found that Universal Music Group, the largest record label by annual revenue, saw little change to its dominant market share, controlling 38.7% of the market in 2019 versus 38.1% in 2018 .




This isn't necessarily to say that the music business is stale, or hostile to disruption. Consider "Old Town Road." Within just one year, the song that Lil Nas X made with a $30 beat and then strategically seeded onto platforms like Triller and TikTok ended up becoming the most-streamed song of the past 10 years, beating ubiquitous hits like "Despacito," "Rockstar" and "Uptown Funk." But even "Old Town Road" arguably could not have gotten to its historic peak without major-label backing — in this case, a distribution deal with Columbia Records, which helped Lil Nas X land remixes with Billy Ray Cyrus, Young Thug, Mason Ramsey and RM from BTS. Not only did these high-profile celebrities help promote the single, the remixes' streams also counted toward the original song's tallies, helping the track make history as the longest-running No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

Vinyl might be having a "revival," but CDs still account for the vast majority of physical albums

Album and song sales continue to wane across the board, seeing a 20% to 25% decline year-over-year in 2019, per BuzzAngle and Nielsen, respectively. Yet vinyl album sales continue to grow, by 11% to 15% annually (BuzzAngle and Nielsen, respectively). According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), revenues from vinyl records are poised to surpass those from CDs within the next few years.

But there's one important caveat: In terms of units, vinyl is not the top physical music format — far from it, in fact. In 2019, CDs still accounted for 74% to 80% of physical album units sold, according to BuzzAngle and Nielsen, respectively. (Absolute numbers differ between the two reports; BuzzAngle pegs the number of CDs sold last year at 44.9 million, while Nielsen Music reports 54.8 million.)

In contrast, vinyl constituted only around 17% to 19% of physical units sold last year — 10.7 million per BuzzAngle and 18.8 million per Nielsen. While vinyl might be providing the music industry with a growing source of revenue, it doesn't come close to achieving the reach of the CD market. The vinyl market also skews the oldest out of all music formats; six out of the top-10-selling vinyl albums of 2019 were released before 2000, and 67% of vinyl sales overall last year came from catalog (i.e., music older than 18 months), according to Nielsen.

Remember: album sales aren't all created equal

Since streaming now accounts for the vast majority of music listening in the U.S. (again, about 80%), it's natural to assume that those plays are an appropriate proxy for consumer behavior across other formats. But a closer examination of the Nielsen Music and BuzzAngle reports reveals that that could not be further from the truth.

Sales-oriented music charts, like the Billboard 200, calculate artists' rankings using formulas that convert stream counts into approximate "album equivalents." For example, as of summer 2018, the Billboard charts register one "album unit" for every 1,250 paid audio streams, 3,750 ad-supported streams or 3,750 video streams. BuzzAngle, meanwhile, has a simpler, unweighted formula, adding one "album project unit" for every 1,500 on-demand streams, regardless of the streams' source or financial value.

Under these formulas, if only one song on a ten-track album was streamed a million times, with the remaining tracks receiving zero activity, that would count just as much towards an album ranking as every track receiving 100,000 streams each.

As of this month — this week, in fact — the Billboard 200 chart is also now incorporating YouTube data into its formula, which puts even further weight on an album's biggest single(s) rather than on all the project's tracks as a whole. In short, album equivalent units often don't reflect actual album consumption, let alone physical album purchases — a nuance that's difficult to communicate in the context of a surface-level chart.

Radio listening and album sales paint a completely different picture of popularity than streaming

Let's compare the top artists on streaming versus terrestrial radio in both reports.

Unsurprisingly, hip-hop/R&B was the top genre for on-demand streaming in 2019, accounting for nearly a third of total on-demand streams. Moreover, rappers accounted for over half of the top ten most-streamed artists and songs of the year, according to Nielsen. BuzzAngle reported an even stronger skew in favor of hip-hop/R&B, with the genre accounting for 80% of the top 25 artists of the year (by on-demand streams).

In contrast, Nielsen's radio airplay charts are almost completely devoid of hip-hop. Towards the end of Nielsen's report, there are four lists of the top artists and songs by airplay spins and audience reach for the decade ending 2019, encompassing 40 total slots. Only five of those slots went to hip-hop/R&B artists, with country and rock dominating nearly all others.

Isolating album and song sales presents a similar story. Country and rock accounted for 14 of BuzzAngle's top 25 artists by album sales from 2015–2019, while only two rappers make an appearance in Nielsen's top 10 artists of the decade by album sales and song sales — Drake and Eminem.

Once disparate, the demographics of streaming, album sales and terrestrial radio listeners are now starting to blur

Listeners of all ages, including parents and seniors, are adopting smart speakers and other voice-enabled devices at a rapid pace, helping revivify back catalog in the streaming era. And it's not just the old guard who can benefit from selling vinyl: Colorful physical products like vinyl records can potentially help an artist stand out in the crowded streaming landscape — and, when bundled with a digital download, can even help them climb the charts (as long as they stick to the rules). In general, the physical market is also increasingly online, with nearly half of all physical album sales in 2019 happening via online e-commerce stores, according to BuzzAngle.

Perhaps the most surprising case study: While Billie Eilish may be a streaming darling, she also has a much more solid track record in vinyl sales than most of her modern-pop peers. In 2019, 19% (BuzzAngle) to 26% (Nielsen Music) of physical units sold for Eilish's When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go were vinyl LPs. In contrast, only 6% of physical sales for Taylor Swift and 9% of those for Harry Styles came from vinyl.

The upper echelon of music is still a boy's club

A disappointing takeaway from both BuzzAngle's and Nielsen's reports is the lack of women among the top-selling artists and songs of both 2019 and the past decade — suggesting that progress towards gender equality in recorded music over the past five to ten years has been incremental at best.

Gender inequities vary somewhat by musical genre. The upper echelons of the pop charts tend to be more inclusive — with the likes of Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift reigning in 2019 — but the top of the hip-hop, country and rock charts remain male-dominated. BuzzAngle's report reveals that all of the top-consumed hip-hop songs and albums of 2019 were performed by men. With the exception of Lizzo, Nielsen's hip-hop/R&B year-end charts were also completely male, and not a single woman made it onto Nielsen's top country and rock charts for the year.

While disruptive in a commercial sense, the advent of streaming has not necessarily made this gender split any better. According to BuzzAngle, with the exception of Cardi B's "Bodak Yellow" and Camila Cabello's "Havana," all of the 25 top-streamed songs over the past five years were by male artists.

These findings parallel more longitudinal studies carried out by institutions such as the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which found that female artists accounted only for 16% of the top 500 charted country songs from 2014 to 2018. Artists like Jennifer Nettles Glamour have been speaking out against these inequities for years, yet they still play out across streaming, physical and radio formats, as well as in the live sector (e.g. the absence of women headliners from this year's Coachella lineup).

It may be a new decade, but the music business is still rife with ingrained biases and gatekeeping practices that prevent women and other minority groups from accessing key exposure, revenue and career opportunities — let alone appearing on year-end industry reports.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796187782/the-past-year-and-decade-in-music-listening