The Music Business Buddy
A podcast that aims to educate and inspire music creators in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. A new episode is released each Wednesday and aims to offer clarity and insight into a range of subjects across the music industry, all through the lens of a music creator for the benefit of other music creators. The series includes soundbites and interviews with guests from all over the world together with commentary and clarity on a range of topics. The podcast is hosted by award winning music industry professional Jonny Amos.
Jonny Amos is a music producer with credits on a range of major and independent labels, a songwriter with chart success in Europe and Asia, a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business at BIMM University UK, director of The SongLab Ltd and the author of The Music Business for Music Creators.
www.jonnyamos.com
The Music Business Buddy
Episode 18: A Glimpse Into The Future - Redefining the Live Music Experience
Can you imagine a future where you can enjoy front-row concert experiences from the comfort of your own home? Join Jonny Amos, author of "The Music Business for Music Creators," as he navigates the exciting world of live-streamed music events. In this captivating episode of the Music Business Buddy, Jonny predict's how live streaming is set to become a game-changer in the music industry, driven by rising ticket prices and a surprising post-pandemic drop in live event sales. Discover how immersive audio experiences, reduced environmental impact, and increased accessibility could make virtual concerts a mainstream phenomenon, offering unparalleled experiences without breaking the bank.
Explore the economic and environmental hurdles facing the music industry in the wake of the pandemic, and how live streaming could provide innovative solutions. Let's deep dive into a speculative scenario featuring Ed Sheeran's 2036 world tour to illustrate the potential of virtual attendance. Plus, we can dissect the current flaws in streaming economics and the pressing need to tackle intellectual property issues to prevent the resurgence of piracy. Tune in for a hopeful vision of the music industry's future, where inclusivity, sustainability, and cutting-edge technology converge to redefine live music experiences.
Websites
www.jonnyamos.com
https://themusicbusinessbuddy.buzzsprout.com
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/themusicbusinessbuddypodcast/
https://www.instagram.com/jonny_amos/
Email
jonnyamos@me.com
The Music Business Buddy. The Music Business Buddy Hello everybody, welcome to you. You're listening to the Music Business Buddy with me, johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I'm the author of the book the Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback, ebook format in all the major bookstores and online. I'm a music creator with credits on a variety of major and indie labels as either a writer or a producer. I'm also a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business. Wherever you are, whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of the community. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music.
Speaker 1:Okay, so today very interesting subject I'm going to make a prediction, and I love making predictions. My book, the Music Business for Music Creators, has a bunch of different predictions towards the latter part of the book, and one of the predictions that I place in that book is the one that I'm going to focus on in today's podcast. It's a subject that I think about quite a lot and I want to share it with you. So here we go. I predict that one of the most important facets of the future of the music business are live streamed music events. There you go. I said it. Let's go into a little bit more detail on this, okay, so as we progress throughout this current decade, the 2020s, there's a cost of living crisis right, and ticket prices for live music events have continually increased over the last few years. Now, when we came out of the pandemic, I think myself and many, many other people thought that there would be a big bounce back, a big rebound, and it didn't happen. In fact, things got worse In 2022, just when live music was expected to rebound after the pandemic, many events suffered from a very surprising drop in sales, and it was a big shock. Today, many artists are making much more informed choices as to whether a tour is even financially viable.
Speaker 1:Now, if you combine that with the development of immersive audio experiences and, of course, you know, coupled with the heightened concern for the environment and the pressure on people and companies to decrease their carbon footprint, it all points towards one trend, and that is the growth of live streamed events. Now, there's going to be a lot of people that don't like the sound of that, so let me just go a little deeper into this. Right, I am not suggesting for even one moment that the live music experience will be replaced by an immersive one. No, they can coexist. People don't need to be disappointed because if live stream events grow, they will never, ever replace the experience of a live music event. They can coexist right Now, if we just go back a little.
Speaker 1:Right, because technology has moved on so much even in just this decade. Right, if we think right back to like the early pandemic, the spring of 2020, and how glitchy and unreliable technology was when it came to live streaming and it may be even at times for many, you know, felt a little charitable, right to kind of persist with it. However, it kickstarted a totally new way of building a live experience, way of building a live experience, and platforms, you know, kind of like youtube and twitch, started to kind of set the bar for those kind of, you know, audience-led experiences. But I boldly predict that much bigger things lie ahead. Imagine people saying such things like it feels like you're actually there or it's actually better because you're always in the front row and you don't have to queue to get in and to get out and you don't have to drive home afterwards. Wow. This totally changes the logistics of whether I could have made that gig in person or not. These are the kind of sentiments that could well become commonplace right in the near future, as immersive audio and virtual reality and 4k resolution and beyond all start to evolve and triangulate towards a position that creates a platform for artists to be truly global.
Speaker 1:In an instant moment, let's just think about the economics on this just for a minute. Right, just just bear with me, entertain me for a minute while I just share this thought with you. Right? Imagine being one of those people that desperately wanted to go and see Oasis in their big reunion, and you sit and you refresh your screen and you do all these things through Ticketmaster to try and get your ticket and you don't get one, right? Well, all of those tickets were for in-person live events. Right, and that's great. Right Again, all we ever really know about live music is when we're there, and if we're not there, it doesn't feel like.
Speaker 1:But what if it did? What if it did feel live? What about, instead of paying £75 for a ticket, you could pay £10 per ticket? Now, you're not there physically, but you're there virtually it. Now, you're not there physically, but you're there virtually, and with an increase of sophisticated hardware and software, it can feel like you're there, even when you're not. Now we know that this technology already exists, right? We know that we've got all sorts of different pieces of hardware and apparatus that we can apply to make us feel like we're somewhere where we're not. Now it's that, but amplified on a much larger scale scale.
Speaker 1:Now let's just go back to those Oasis ticket sales again. Now think about how much money could have been made if everybody who wanted a ticket could have got a ticket, whether it were virtual or whether it were in person. Now, if people don't want the virtual ticket, then they don't have to buy it. Of course they don't, but I predict that a lot of people would have done that and I think that a lot of people will do that in the future.
Speaker 1:Now, when we attend a live music event, it's amazing, isn't it? You know you're with your friends or your family, or you're enjoying the festivities of what's around you. It's fantastic, but it's also quite linear. You're in a fixed position, maybe you're in a standing position, maybe you can walk around a little bit, or maybe you're in a seat, but you only get one perspective. What about if I were to tell you that actually, on a virtual level, you can move around anywhere within that stadium or that arena or that venue? What about that? Just think about that for a minute. Then you can see different angles and the immersive audio experience would change as you move around.
Speaker 1:Again, the technology is already there to make that happen. Now it's going to be interesting to see who the early market movers are on this change. I mean, if you think about it logically, the DSPs like Apple and Spotify, amazon they're in a very strong position to develop that model further. You know they're perfectly poised to be able to move in on that and do something about it. But maybe it's the giants of the live sector that will actually start to emerge as the leaders on this, but maybe they start to uh, acquire the tech startups that built this technology for the industry. I mean, we're already witnessing things like you know, virtual meet and greets and virtual venues that you know. That's not the future, that's already here, right? So perhaps live streaming of music events can further enhance the relationship between fans and artists. There are so many different ways that this can be packaged.
Speaker 1:Technological developments already in test mode suggest not only an increase in live streamed experiences, but also a decrease in audio latency, meaning that to live stream from the usa, from japan, would be delayed by no more than two seconds at most. Perhaps, as tours are planned out, you know, later in the decade the logistics will not only cover those live events themselves, but also the live stream of the events in both audio and visual format. A live stream ticket would only be a fraction of the in-person costs for the event, which would not only allow access on a global level, but also draw in more income than is currently imaginable. Okay, so imagine being like a mega fan of Coldplay and they play a big world tour and you go and see them at Wembley Stadium and it's absolutely amazing and it lives with you forever. It's wonderful, but it's not enough for you. So you want to go and see them at the Tokyo Dome two months later, except the logistics are in the way and you can't make it there and it's too expensive. So instead you buy a virtual ticket instead and you have. You attend it live. So's live Tokyo time. So you have to kind of, you know, compromise your own bedtime if you don't live in Japan and you watch it and you're there as a part of that experience. I'm not saying that that's any better than going to Wembley, I'm just saying that that can coexist with it.
Speaker 1:Now, I mentioned earlier about difficult kind of economics that make touring a little bit harder than what it was before the pandemic. But there's also another facet that really really suggests that this might become more of a thing, and that is environmental protection. It's become a very, very urgent concern, and there's a lot of governments and NATO meetings, all sorts of different things, because we know that the way that we are traveling around the world is not helping the world we're in right Now. I don't want to go too heavy and too green on this, but we know that that's a thing right. So, with that in mind, if our carbon footprint could decrease as a result of this, that can only make things even more appealing for the emergence of this live stream event sector. Now, on top of that, there is a much needed drive for greater inclusivity. That sits right at the top of the agenda for many people, which would also be served well from this change.
Speaker 1:Now I'm talking about people that can't attend live events that they wish to imagine. You know, having physical abilities that prevent you from being able to go and watch your favorite band in the world. You know, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to go and enjoy and watch your favorite band in the world. So this also supports people from different backgrounds with different needs. You know, what about people that really, really struggle with incredibly loud noises, or people that feeling very anxious around massive audiences? You know, again, there's a lot of different people out there and many of them are not being catered for.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's flash forward. Let's just think about this for a minute. It's the year 2036 and it's the 25th anniversary of Ed Sheeran's debut album Plus. It's a massive event. It's a massive world tour. And you're talking to somebody and you say, hey, I went to see the Paris show last week. And they go, oh, wow, cool, yeah, me too. And then the other person says were you there or were you there virtually? I was there virtually. Oh, cool. Okay, did you go to the Rome show? Yeah, I went to the Rome show virtually. I went to the London show in person, but you see how realistic that sounds. I think that's ahead of us. Okay, maybe I'm getting carried away, or maybe not. It's exciting though, isn't it? Doesn't it feel realistic, though, when we start to talk about it, when we start to verbalise thoughts and we start to actually think about this subject, because actually, it opens up a whole other world, other array of pocket subjects that sit inside this larger subject.
Speaker 1:Think about this for a minute streaming economics. There's a lot of flaws to it, isn't there? Now, I'm not for one minute criticising streaming platforms here. Right, because what came before streaming was far worse. It was piracy. No one made anything, right?
Speaker 1:So streaming has a sense of partial recovery on an economic level in the music industry, right, and we cling on to it and it becomes a narrative. However, it's fairly flawed, isn't it? Because we don't really make very much money out of it. We spend money in gaining traction for an act, but then we don't really make it back, so it's kind of flawed, isn't it? When we really think about it, we own up to the cold grown-up truth of it, right? However, what I flawed, isn't it? When we really think about it, we own up to the cold grown-up truth of it, right?
Speaker 1:However, what I'm suggesting in this podcast is perhaps something way more important. Perhaps it is the answer to how the global music industry recovers. To be a giant once more sounds quite exciting, doesn't it? And I can't think of many reasons as to why it can't become a reality. Of course there are pitfalls. Of course there are potential problems like, for example, one of the?
Speaker 1:Uh, the bigger concerns perhaps sits around the intellectual property side of it. You know, there's, uh, the rights of the recordings and how these are governed and controlled and handled on an administrative level. You know, if an experience becomes a digital document, it holds a value unless it's not documented, unless it's live and then gone. But people can screen grab, people can document things. So there is an issue there around intellectual property, but the encouragement is about inclusivity in a moment, and then that moment's gone, rather like attending a real event, if you will. But it is something that needs to be looked at and controlled and understood, because the last thing the music industry needs is a return to piracy. So it needs to be handled carefully. We can't rush into it, but at the same time, it could happen pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Well, there you go. There's a few thoughts. That's one of my predictions. I have many I won't bore you with any more today, but perhaps in the future. Uh, thank you for listening to this today for being a part of the community. Please feel free to send me comments or to email me or pass on any thoughts whatsoever. Please feel free to also rate the podcast and all that sort of stuff. Thank you for listening. May the force be with you.
