As we have reported before, YouTube wants to be the most valuable revenue generator for the music industry. YouTube’s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen, has recently set 2025 as their target. According to the newest numbers, YouTube paid out USD 4 billion to artists, labels, and distributors, 1 billion less than Spotify. But how is YouTube planning to overtake the industry leader? Well, on the hand, with the rapidly growing ad revenues and on the other, with the tremendous growth of YouTube Music.

High music consumption on YouTube

A quarter of all videos consumed on YouTube is music content. Another quarter comes from media companies and the remaining 50% from creators. This is an impressive number, especially if you consider that YouTube has 2 billion monthly users who watch one billion hours’ worth of videos every day (meaning 250 million hours of music are consumed daily on YouTube). This also means that musicians are receiving a considerable part of the ad revenues – which are growing enormously.

Ads revenue rises heavily

In the first 9 months of this year, YouTube generated USD 20.21 billion from advertisements, more than they did across the whole year in 2018 or 2019. By the end of the year, analysts predict the number to reach USD 29 to 32 billion. Using advertisements, YouTube thus makes more profit than the entire music industry. And a pretty portion of that sum should be going into the pockets of the musicians.

If music makes up a quarter of video consumption, the music industry should be receiving around USD 7.25 and 8 billion. But this number probably won’t be reached, since during the time period in which the music industry received the USD 4 billion, YouTube made 24.8 billion in advertising turnover, so a quarter would have been equivalent to 6.2 billion. Still: rising ad revenues means more money for the music industry.

YouTube Music establishes itself

A strong growth can also be observed at YouTube Music, which has now reached 50 million subscribers (including YouTube Premium customers who automatically have YouTube Music in their subscription). In a short amount of time, YouTube Music has thus established itself as one of the most important streaming services out there and is currently showing the highest growth rates.

This might set alarm bells ringing for some, since YouTube has a bad reputation when it comes to paying their musicians. Indeed, the payouts for Art Tracks or those made via the Content ID are rather meager. However, we must look at YouTube Music separately, and the numbers show that the payout per stream does hold up to the rates of Spotify, Amazon, and Apple Music. We will analyze in more detail how big these payments exactly in another post.

YouTube with enormous market power

Whether or not YouTube will reach their lofty goal is still written in the stars. But they definitely have the potential. YouTube alone has enormous market power, even more so as part of the behemoth Alphabet (Google). They also offer a multitude of opportunities for musicians, from streaming on YouTube Music to Art Tracks to music videos to podcasts, all the way to the Content ID, thanks to which you also make money when others use your music.

After several months of work and many night shifts from our developers, we are happy to present you the Deals feature. From now on you have the possibility to share the revenue of your releases directly with your collaborators and set it all up directly from the mobile app. Creating, sending, and receiving deals has never been so easy and convenient!

How to set up Deals

You can set the splits for each song, both on the desktop and directly through the app. As soon as you have entered the splits, your collaborators will automatically receive a notification and also have access to their personal iGroove account and the iGroove app. Onboarding is faster than ever before thanks to our newly introduced Magic Code. With just a few clicks, you have your account and can find all the information regarding your splits, view the trend data of the corresponding songs and have your share paid out directly by us.

The advantages

• No more paperwork: deals are submitted once and then we take care of the rest.
• Anytime and anywhere: Whether from your desktop or conveniently on the go via the mobile app – you can access your deals or enter new ones at any time.
• Transparency: All spits are clearly listed for you and your collaborators. By accessing the trend data of the corresponding songs, your collaborators can also see how they are performing at any time.
• Automated payout: No more complex royalty calculations, the payouts are credited monthly by iGroove to the accounts of all participants. Each participant can pay out their balance independently of the others at a time of their own choosing.

In addition to these benefits, we also placed a lot of emphasis on setting up the tax situation correctly right from the start.

Withholding tax

We did not focus on the technical implementation alone, but also took the legal situation into account. In concrete terms, this means that you can define for each deal whether it includes withholding tax or not. This way, each of your collaborators is correctly registered from the beginning and you can save yourself a lot of paperwork.

Costs

There are no costs for those who set up the deals. Due to the large amount of work involved in paying out the collaborators, we charge them a small flat-fee per payout. Specifically, this amounts to 8 USD per payout. This fee only applies to artists who are not already iGroove customers, i.e. who only use iGroove as a partner without releasing their own music through us.

All participants receive a monthly credit, but they are completely free to decide when and how often to have it paid out. So, this can also be only e.g. every three months or once a year. This is a clear advantage over other providers such as DistroKid, which charge a fixed monthly fee of 10 USD per partner.

Try now

Use the demo mode of the iGroove app now and discover how the Deals feature works. If you have any questions, our support team will be happy to help you.

As we have reported last year already, musicians and especially songwriters will have to suffer financial loses even after the pandemic. The reason for this is because the copyright collectives are distributing payouts with a delay of anywhere between 6 months and 2 years. The “Global Collections Report” published by CISAC, the umbrella organization of copyright collectives, have now, unfortunately, confirmed this.

According to the report, worldwide revenues for copyright collectives have gone down by 9.9%, which in absolute numbers is equivalent to a loss of more than one billion Euros. In the area of music, the losses amount to 10.7% or 775 million Euros. The only aspect to sweeten the pill: CISAC had originally predicted a downturn between 20-30%, meaning around 2-3 billion.

Drastic decline in the live sector

It comes as no surprise that the main reason for this downturn is the live sector, where revenues declined by 45.4%, from 2.9 billion Euros to 1.6 billion. What prevented a total crash was digital music consumption, that is, mainly streaming. Compared to 2019, the streaming sector grew by a whopping 16.6%. The broadcasting sector, however, dropped by 4.3%, which means that in the total area of “recorded music” there is still a net plus of 7.4%.

DSPs want to reduce payouts

CISAC also points out that the revenues from the streaming sector are entirely disproportionate to its popularity. Streaming only makes up a quarter of the revenues worldwide, thus generating less than the broadcasting sector. If the streaming providers had their way, the payouts for songwriters’ publishing rights would actually drop even further.

The streaming services always reach an agreement with the US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) on the share of their revenues that they pay out to the songwriters for a certain period of time. For the 2018-2022 period, the CRB set the rate at 15.1%, although this was legally challenged by the streaming services (except Apple Music) and is still pending.

While the National Music Publishers’ Association is demanding a raise to 20% for the 2023-2027 period, the streaming services have other plans. Spotify, Amazon, and Pandora only want to pay out 10.5% of their revenues to the songwriters, which was the rate prior to 2018. Google and Apple want the same rate as the one for the 2018-2022 period, so depending on what the court rules, the rate will be set at 10.5% or 15.1%. Assuming the CRB doesn’t surprise us all, this means that the income for songwriters won’t be increasing by much and might even drop in the worst-case scenario.

The future

Since there have been a lot of restrictions in 2021 still, CISAC predicts that the numbers will not turn out too great either. Musicians will have to expect lower payouts in 2022, as well. Ideally, things will look up in 2023, as there will hopefully be a similar number of live events in 2022 as there were before the pandemic hit.

A study commissioned by IFPI surveyed 43,000 people in 21 countries on how they consume music. “Engaging with Music”, according to their own reports, is worldwide the biggest music-oriented consumer study to date. The biggest conclusion to draw from it is that consumers listen to an average of 18.4 hours of music per week. In the last study, conducted in 2019, it was only 18 hours. Assuming that the average song is 3 minutes long, this number is equivalent to 368 songs per week.

But where is this music played? Weekly music consumption is divided as follows:

Format	Worldwide
Premium streaming	23%
Free streaming	9%
Video streaming (e.g., YouTube, DailyMotion)	22%
Short-form video apps (e.g., TikTok, Triller)	11%
Social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram)	3%
Radio	16%
Purchased music (downloads, CDs, vinyl)	9%
Live (including livestreaming)	2%
Other	5%

Streaming

A total of 78% of respondents said that they use streaming services. Out of those that choose to do without streaming, 35% said that they don’t need streaming services because they can find all the music they need on free video platforms.

The survey also shows that listeners don’t just consume whatever the algorithm sets in front of them.

• 68% reported looking for a specific song more than once per week (16-24-year-olds: 82%)
• 62% reported looking for a specific artist more than once per week (16-24-year-olds: 73%)
• 62% reported listening to a self-compiled playlist more than once per week 16-24-year-olds: 78%)

Livestreaming / radio

29% of survey participants said that they watched a livestream concert. 65% will continue to consume livestreams even when live concerts are back. 55% view livestreams as a good alternative for when they are unable to attend a concert.

As the analysis shows, radio remains a medium that should not be underestimated. 74% said that they turn on their radio mainly for the music and 66% stated that they would not listen to radio if it weren’t for the music. In the 35-64 age range, 81% listen to the radio, among 25-34-year-olds, the number is still as high as 76%, and even when it comes to 16-24-year-olds, radio can count on two thirds of the demographic to listen in.

Physical audio formats

The study additionally shows that physical products have not entirely disappeared. 12% of respondents have purchased a CD in the last month and 8% have bought a vinyl. For both formats, 25-34-year-olds rank above average with 15% purchasing CDs and 11% vinyl. Vinyl consumers are particularly passionate music fans. 81% of them use streaming services and 67% reported discovering new music or new artists every week. They also listen to 22.1 hours of music per week on average, which is 20% more than the average respondent.

Stream ripping

But of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. 30% of survey participants admitted to consuming music illegally. This is especially common among 16-24-year-olds, where the number reaches 38%. The most popular practice is stream ripping, which is used by 27% of respondents and 35% of 16-24-year-olds. This, unfortunately, shows that the streaming boom has not yet fully eradicated piracy.

Fun and joy

No matter how the music is consumed, almost everyone agrees that music is simply good for the mind. 80% of survey participants stated that music helped their mental health during the pandemic. Among 16-19-year-olds it is 85%. 87% actually said that music gave them fun and joy during COVID. Let’s hope that this joy leads to more streaming subscriptions, merch purchases, and concert viewership.

Up until recently, Spotify was the only place where artists, managements, and smaller record labels could pitch their songs directly to the playlist curators. Other streaming providers give this privilege only to the big labels and distributors. Now, Amazon Music has launched the tool “New Release Pitch” with which you can suggest your tracks for their official playlists and stations.

You can do this on Amazon Music for Artists, which is available both on the desktop site as well as the mobile app. These guidelines should be observed when pitching your song:

• You can only pitch new, unpublished music (no re-releases)
• You can only pitch one track per release, regardless if it’s a single, an EP, or an album
• The song can only be submitted a maximum of 14 days after the release

This is how the New Release Pitch Tool works

Just like on Spotify, you will need to include a description of the song and a brief overview of the marketing activities you have planned. Additionally, you must specify the genre (up to 3) and language of the song, as well as whether it has lyrics or is an instrumental piece. You also have the option to add the vibe of the track as well as so-called “activity labels” (e.g., “chilling out”) if you so desire. Other optional details include the mention of up to three artists who make similar music and the location of your biggest fanbase, although Amazon admits that they obviously have this information already and that they are simply interested in your own assessment here.

More than just playlist placements

By sending Amazon your song along with the metadata, you not only get the chance to be considered for playlists or stations but also help Amazon work out how they should show your music to your listeners.

What this means in practice is posts in the activity feed, push notifications, and Alexa alerts for established fans and followers. However, you can also reach new listeners through searches by genre as well as suggestions from Alexa. That means that even if you don’t get selected by the curators, you will still enjoy certain benefits from your pitch and can increase your reach.

So, if you ‘ve never used Amazon Music for Artists before, you have one more reason to start now.at nun einen triftigen Grund mehr.

Amazon Music is also part of iGroove’s pitching services, along with Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube Music, and Tidal.

Spotify has long planned to give musicians the option of selling merch through their platform, but so far, it has been a rather bumpy road. Towards the end of 2013, they started a collaboration with Topspin, but when Topspin was bought out by Beats Music which was then acquired by Apple, Spotify switched over to BandPage. However, here, too, a competitor interfered: YouTube took over BandPage, and thus, Spotify had to switch again, namely to their current partner Merchbar.

Merchbar, however, poses some obstacles for many artists, especially those who operate independently, which might explain why out of the million artists on Spotify, only 370,000 offer merch or tickets there. This is all to change thanks to the partnership with the e-commerce company Shopify – a collaboration waiting to happen based on the name alone, if nothing else. From now on, musicians can show three items from their Shopify store on their Spotify profile.

This is how it works

To offer merchandise from Shopify, you need admin access to Spotify for Artists, as well as a Shopify store. You can then import up to 250 items to your Spotify for Artists, out of which, as we mentioned before, you can pick three to show on your Spotify profile. So, you always have the option to customize the products that are displayed.

You will also continue to be able to offer items from Merchbar on Spotify. For that, however, you will need to disconnect the Shopify integration.

Only in beta

The integration of Shopify is still in beta, which means that while musicians worldwide can integrate their Shopify store, the products will only be shown to consumers in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. At the moment, Spotify is not charging any fees, but this will change in the future. But when that will happen and how much the cost will be is not yet known.

Try free of charge

In times where concerts are still a scarce commodity, it is certainly well worth it to set up a digital merch table in addition to a physical one. For a time, this comes at no additional cost either, since artists who have not yet used Shopify can try it for free for 90 days.

Gaming as a market leader

The days when video games were a niche topic are long gone. On the contrary: Now, the gaming industry is bigger than the music and the film business put together. Film adaptations of video games are no longer a novelty. But the music industry, too, is witnessing the enormous influence of the gaming world. This has now gone way beyond soundtracks or trailers with popular songs in them. In this post, we will talk about what the future holds, how far the symbiosis between gaming and music is going at the moment, and why rap music is playing a big role in particular.

New discoveries

According to MRC Data, 28% of Gen-Z music consumers discover new music through video games. These games are thus becoming an increasingly important medium for musicians not only through lucrative deals, but also as an extremely relevant promotional tool. Record labels are therefore striving for a good relationship with gaming publishers. That can far transcend the simple inclusion of a song in a game’s soundtrack.

Collaborations

The most prominent example for such a mammoth collaboration are probably the Fortnite live events. As part of the so-called Rift Tour, there have been interactive concerts with Travis Scott, Ariana Grande, and J Balvin. Way back in the day, placements in games like GTA, Tony Hawk’s or Guitar Hero were already able to give popular songs an enormous boost. In recent years, Eminem’s “Survival” was used for the trailer for “Call of Duty: Ghosts” and had a corresponding music video to go with it. The single went platinum in the US.

Monetization

While the music industry has almost entirely switched over to streaming in the past years, so-called free-to-play models have long been established in the gaming world. Loot boxes, battle passes, and other in-game purchases are a significantly longer lasting monetization model than a one-time purchasing price. The music industry is, therefore, also moving more and more in this direction – even Twitch, a platform originally created for gaming, is now being used by countless musicians. The readiness of fans to support and pay their favorite artists is growing. According to YouGov, 43% of Americans are willing to pay for a concert livestream.

The role of hip hop

Rap artists are some of the smartest and most progressive marketers in the industry. No other genre is so in step with and has such an influence on the zeitgeist as rap. This is not even necessarily due to the culture but more so the fanbase that is young, hungry, and ready for progress. Studies by Midia Research have shown that hip hop fans are especially indulgent in their passion, happy to spend money on merch, streams, and also in-game purchases, for example during the Fortnite concert events. In the future of these new business models, this could play an increasingly important role.

The future

What developments are coming in the future are hardly foreseeable. Some companies, including virtual reality market leader Facebook, are working on a so-called metaverse, for instance – an entirely digital hub world where users can practically do anything they want. The implementation of music offers unlimited opportunities in this area. This could open the door even to smaller artists, since so far, the video games, usually multi-million dollar productions, have only focused on already popular and well-established acts. New technologies like NFTs are already offering a small taste of the different possibilities and could play a big role in the metaverse.

Conclusion

The future might be uncertain but it’s certainly exciting. The music and gaming industries are entering into increasingly closer partnerships, new technologies are opening the doors for innovative ways of consumption and monetization models. Young fans in particular are ready to take this step forward. That should not only prove interesting culturally but also rather lucrative for both industries. What some of the drawbacks might be remains to be seen over the next few years.

Why a deal at all?

Finally, a record deal – that seems to be the big dream for most newcomers. But is a record label really that important? Would a distribution deal, like iGroove offers, for instance, or even a non-binding distribution platform also do the job? Let’s take a look at the most important criteria for your decision and especially at which contract details you should pay special attention to. Where you sign or whether you sign at all is ultimately your personal decision that really depends on your situation and goals – there is no universal right or wrong here.

Record label or distributor?

What is even the difference between a record label and a distributor? For a cut of around 20%, a distributor will mainly take care of delivering your music to the stores and services, cutting down processing times, backing your playlist pitches, and providing you with statistics and support. The services of a record label go a little further: They essentially acquire the rights to your music, and handle marketing, planning, and many other tasks depending on the deal. Because of that, however, record labels also keep the lion’s share of the revenues – often 70% or more.

Want to keep your master rights?

While record labels usually acquire the master rights to your music, distributors will only take their share. Giving away the rights means that the music doesn’t effectively belong to you anymore. You still own the copyright (in the EU this can’t be given away at all), but the songs belong to the record label for the agreed amount of time or even forever. This does mean that the record label has a vested interest in making the music successful, but in a distribution deal, on the other hand, you retain all the rights and only pay the previously mentioned share of the revenues to pay for the distributor’s work.

Scope and timeframe

Most contracts contain a contract period as well as a number of songs that the signing has to deliver within a set timeframe. Major record labels additionally offer so-called 360-degree deals, where not only the rights to the recordings are transferred but also the live performance, merch, and publishing rights. While this makes a lot of things easier, it also creates enormous dependency. Many contracts furthermore provide the option that your contractual partner can have you commit yourself to them for a pre-determined number of additional songs.

Advance payment – who’s paying what?

A hefty advance seems, just like the deal itself, to be one of the top goals for aspiring musicians. But an advance is no gift; it needs to be brought in at some point. Should your revenues not meet the expectations, you won’t be able to make money off your music for a long time. Additionally, the question arises: What are you using the advance for? Who is paying for the production and videos? Who is paying for the marketing and how big is the budget? All these costs could fall to the artist or to the record label, depending on the contract.

Indies

Next to the big players, independent record labels are also an option: While the major labels have their own distribution structures, an indie label will take the master rights they acquired from you to a distributor and close a personalized distribution contract with them. While indie budget is usually significantly smaller than a major label’s, you won’t just be one of many signed artists there. As an alternative to the classic distribution model, there are also various digital aggregators where instead of giving them a share of your revenues, you simply pay a flat rate per year or per release.

Conclusion

Developing your own model has never been easier. Whether you want to make use of services offered by record labels should definitely depend on what you and your team can do yourself and what areas you need assistance in. Big artists often launch their own record label – but these are almost always joint ventures with major record labels. While contracts have become more complex, considering that every segment is drawn up individually and every structure can be set according to your specific needs, this also means that the options are almost limitless.

As we have pointed out on multiple occasions, using artificial streams not only hurts all the artists who abstain from fraud – they often also hurt yourself. We have also questioned whether Spotify and other DSPs are consistent enough in cracking down on bot streams and other fraudulent practices. Spotify has now at least communicated that they will tighten the screw once more.

Despite numerous warnings from the industry, many artists are still responding to offers that promise a quick boost in streaming numbers. Spotify makes it clear: “We have a huge team of engineers working on detecting, mitigating, and removing artificial streaming activity across Spotify, so we can protect artists and their legitimate streams.”

When Spotify spots an artificial stream, it might lead to payments being withheld, streaming numbers corrected, chart positions adjusted, or even the music being removed from Spotify entirely. If the music is removed, the distributor will be notified and the artist will have the chance to prove that the streams were obtained through legal means, although few have been successful.

Spotify also points out in their video that you should keep an eye on your numbers on Spotify for Artists when you’ve booked a promotion. You can learn more about how to spot fake streams in this detailed article.

iGroove monitors the streaming numbers of their artists daily and sends out a warning as soon as the numbers start to look suspicious, so that the promotion can be aborted early.

Since Spotify can sometimes be very rigorous in their rule enforcement, correcting streams and removing music without prior warning, another problem arises: Someone could potentially buy artificial streams for another artist to intentionally hurt their career. What Spotify and other DSPs will do in such cases is still unclear.

How’s it going at TikTok?

TikTok is now considered the most relevant promotional platform for musicians worldwide. The rapid consumability of content, the precise algorithm, and the countless tools and functions offer the chance to have enormous reach even without a huge fanbase. This is paying off: TikTok is experiencing massive growth! New features are added regularly and the numbers speak for themselves.

One billion monthly users

In July, TikTok reached a milestone: One billion monthly users worldwide. This point was crossed far quicker than competitors like Instagram ever did. The accomplishment can be credited largely to the rapid growth over the past year. As part of a legal battle with the US government, it was reported in July 2020 that there were 689,174,209 monthly active users at the time. That means that in one year, the platform grew by a whopping 45%.

More watch time than YouTube

But it’s not just about the users. One of the most important KPIs of any video platform is the usage time – and here, TikTok really kicks off. In this area, the app owned by the Chinese multinational corporation ByteDance has now overtaken even veteran top-dog YouTube.
The average TikTok user consumes more than 24 hours of content per month on the platform. On YouTube, it is only 22 hours and 40 minutes. Of course, with YouTube’s over 2 billion monthly users, its total cumulated watch time is still significantly higher – but there is certainly a clear trend emerging here.

The European market

TikTok is currently investing massive sums into the European market in particular. But it seems to be paying off: In 2020, the profit generated in Europe grew by an extraordinary 545% compared to the previous year – from around 22.9 million euros in 2019 to no less than 147.79 million euros. On the other hand, there were also exorbitant expenses: The costs in 2020 amounted to 557.55 million euros – 442% more than in 2019. This is not least due to the fact that TikTok hired more than 1,000 employers to work in Europe.

Shopping on TikTok

TikTok is aggressively investing in its own future. But to ensure that the profit will one day exceed the cost, they not only want to generate more users but also tap into more monetization options. For that, TikTok is collaborating with e-commerce platform Shopify. In the US, Canada, and the UK this shopping feature has already been rolled out. There, users can browse the app for the product catalogs of Shopify sellers and instantly acquire specific products that they have just seen in a video clip.

What’s next for TikTok?

TikTok is rapidly growing and continually expanding its features, and now, with its integration of Shopify, they might just revolutionize the online shopping industry and generate gigantic revenues. The enormous losses that TikTok reports are not uncommon in the expansion phase of a company of this size and point towards an even more accelerated growth in the future. After all, these are targeted investments. There are still numerous markets for TikTok to enter, in any case – but for now, the focus seems to lie on Europe.

Playlists are one of the most important features of the platform for artists, consumers and Spotify itself. Accordingly, Spotify wants to continuously optimize them and add new options. We have summarized some of the latest developments for you.

Enhance

Anyone who creates playlists themselves is certainly already familiar with the recommendations on the part of Spotify, which are listed at the end of the playlist. They have now expanded this feature with the “Enhance” button, which is visible at the top of every playlist you create. Clicking the button, Spotify automatically adds songs to the playlist that they think will fit. Suggested songs are added after every two tracks, with a maximum of 30 per playlist. You can definitely add them to the playlist with the +, and of course the feature can easily be turned off again so that the playlist is as it was before.

Spotify Blend

Blend creates a playlist based on the music tastes of two listeners. The user has to invite a friend and Spotify will create a mix based on the listening habits of both people. In addition, a score is created that shows how similar the music tastes of the two are. You can also see which song was added to the playlist based on whose taste.

This is also a nice gimmick for artists and works well for casual social media content. For example, band members can compare their musical tastes, you can create a blend with artist friends or the band you’ll be performing with soon or of course give fans the opportunity to compare their musical tastes with yours.

Release Radar

The Release Radar celebrates its fifth birthday this year and looks back on 16 billion streams generated by it. This makes it one of the three most popular personalized playlists. The Release Radar is now the third personalized playlist (after Discover Weekly and On Repeat) that Spotify is opening up to sponsored content from companies. However, only consumers who use Spotify Free will hear the ads.

However, there is also trouble in the playlist paradise. TechCrunch reported on various curators whose playlists were removed for misuse. Users have the option to report playlists for sexist, violent, fraudulent or hateful content. Of course, this is absolutely right and important, but the problem is: as soon as such a report is received, Spotify removes the playlist’s metadata such as title, description or cover image without further review. Spotify vows to improve, which is also urgently needed, because otherwise it’s far too easy to blacken a rival.

The pandemic has been with us for almost two years now. For musicians, this means in most cases lower income, often an increasing psychological burden and often the feeling that the appreciation for their (own) art is not as great as they might have hoped. Some will also have lost faith in support from politicians. But what else do people take away from this exceptional situation – at best, even positive things?

Relying on streaming is not enough

Very few artists can live on their streaming income alone. While this is not a new insight, this fact was easier to ignore before the pandemic.

Only one source of income is not enough

Relying on one revenue stream as a musician can go well for a long time, but then it can suddenly come back to bite you in the ass. If you relied entirely on concert revenue, you were left high and dry during the pandemic. As an artist, you should always build up several pillars so that your income does not completely collapse when one of them disappears.

Be open to new things

Multiple pillars means openness to new technologies and revenue streams. Livestreaming can be an alternative or at least a supplement to concerts, you should at least read up on NFTs, there are more and more alternatives in crowdfunding, or maybe you can supplement your income by letting your music go viral on TikTok or by using it in videogames. Not everything suits everyone, but there are possibilities for everyone that you should not close your mind to.

Stay flexible and up to date

In order to be aware of these new developments, musicians, or at least their managers, should keep up with the changes in the music industry. It is also important to be flexible so that you can react quickly to developments. As with musical trends, it’s better to be there early than to try to jump on the bandwagon completely late.

Don’t just carry on as before

If the pandemic does eventually come to an end, don’t just pick up where you left off in 2019. Many new opportunities that arose during the pandemic will continue post-Corona. The world, as well as the music industry, is not the same as it was before, and this must be taken into account.

The musicians suffer – the industry grows

While many artists are going through hard times or even returning to their bread-and-butter jobs, many companies in the music industry are posting record sales and music start-ups are raking in millions. Put simply, the industry is doing great, while the musicians, without whom the industry would not exist, have been in crisis mode for two years. Similar to politics, everyone has to decide for themselves if they want to accept this or if they want to work for a change.