By Mitch Rice

Nowadays, it’s hard to keep up with all the changes in the world. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and social media are all influencing and accelerating the transformation of our daily routine. We listen to music online, play video poker games, watch movies, and spend much time on social networks – our habits are rapidly changing and adapting to global changes and trends. With this article, taking music as an example, we can observe how fast this industry is changing and what we will witness further by listening to our favorite playlists in the headphones. 

Since the Internet entered our lives, the music industry has evolved faster than ever before. Each year we sign up for new platforms, and the media are becoming more popular, creating growing up new idols and changing the way audiences connect with artists. Meanwhile, new technologies are putting creative tools in the hands of people who didn’t have access to them before. 

Predicting the music industry’s future in this fast-paced world is not an easy task. Still, in this article, we’ve tried to understand what the future music industry will bring us and how technologies affect its changes. 

A.I. can Shape the Music Industry

 

The development of A.I. will automate some expensive, time-consuming, and complex music writing and advertising processes, cutting out intermediaries and democratizing the industry. 

Democratizing Music Creation 

A.I.-based composition tools (Amper, Popgun, etc.) and voice synthesis can change how music is distributed and help create high-quality, professional-sounding themes. Millions of musicians worldwide might get a chance they have never had before. 

The transition from mass consumption to mass creativity is coming. These days, kids who grew up playing Minecraft are going through that stage; they’re entertaining themselves with creativity. A.I. will give them new creative tools to boost this process even more and start entertaining other people.

Now technology allows more individuals to make music for the first time, and increasingly, this is happening due to artificial intelligence. Such technologies include voice synthesis tools like Replica Studios and AI-assisted compositions like Boomy or Bronze, which enable people to go from creation to distribution and then monetize their creativity in a record time. 

With this pace of technological development, every child in the world will be equipped with all the tools necessary to become a global pop star in the next 5 years. They would not need to be in New York, Los Angeles, or London to do so. Instead, everyone will get an opportunity to make it happen from anywhere. 

Another trend is the further democratization of the music creation process with high-quality software available on mobile devices or in the browser for a pretty low price. Artificial intelligence makes it easy to create great themes. Automation will transform music marketing as the music market is getting more and more crowded.

Even today, all artists have to compete desperately with their colleagues. As of 2022, over 60,000 tracks are added to Spotify every day – and there are all the reasons to believe that this number will only grow. Creating music with artificial intelligence will open up new possibilities-but as the number of songs grows, audience attention will remain a limited resource. 

More Income and Better Ads 

A.I. will make it easy to create and deliver the right messages to the target audience at the right time. As a result, the music business can help artists reach their audience more effectively and thus generate more income.  

A.I. is capable of anything in the advertising and marketing fields and will continue to play an increasing role in improving advertising campaigns and generating more income for artists.  

Advertisers can already use A.I.’s capabilities to tailor better ads to audience preferences and tastes. Algorithms will use customer data to show adaptive advertising content tied to a particular moment, location, and user, allowing branded content to seamlessly fit into our consumption patterns. More personalized advertising will generate more ROI and income for artists who wisely choose when and what message they want to send to their audience.

Machine Learning Will Change Everything 

Music production, event planning, playlist recommendations: machine learning will make it more efficient and streamlined. It can create better recommendations, help more people create music, make energy grids of live events more powerful, improve rights holder’s identification and royalty distribution, and transform the music environment into something very different. 

Machine learning is the future fuel, changing everything from metadata management and music composition to how people listen to music. 

The Way We Consume Music Will Change 

Music consumption through voice and smart speakers will change how we consume music. Voice requests allow listeners to effortlessly listen to music that matches their current mood or preferences without interacting with text-based interfaces and switching albums or playlists. 

Local Repertoire Flourishes in the Era of Streaming 

The democratization that defines today’s music streaming trends will be more about local markets in the future – music consumption will be different than what we see today. This new flow of streaming users, coming from all over the globe, will increasingly focus the music industry’s attention on local repertoire. 

The next billion streaming consumers will probably not come from developed urban cities but rather from rural areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America with a more profound interest in local repertoire and talents. Both streaming services and record labels will have to reshape their value proposition, pricing structure, and user experience to meet the new demands. 

Developing Generative Music Through Contextual Playlists 

Contextual playlists will change the way people search for music, and generative music (themes created by algorithms and computer systems) will increasingly satisfy listeners seeking mood-oriented playlists. People use music to complement their life moments, leading to new opportunities and challenges.  

How do you stand out when most music discovery happens in the background? How do you identify and gain real fans rather than people who add one of your songs to their playlists? How does this compete with other actions, i.e., listening to podcasts, meditative soundscapes, or generative music? Generative music will continue to improve as more entrepreneurs and investors come into this space for opportunities. 

Apps like Endel have already gone viral in Japan. We can predict that other solutions will emerge – for instance, meditation apps can use generative algorithms to create playlists with ambient music, such as nature sounds. 

The Post-Album Era is Coming 

It’s no news that the streaming economy has unbundled music, and the album formats have been on the decline for several years. But, of course, albums aren’t going anywhere – even millennials still use this format, as a recent Deezer study found. 

However, listeners increasingly discover new music via recommendation algorithms and streaming platforms’ playlists. Therefore, traditional albums will play only a supporting role in the coming years, while the song will take the central part and become the main component of music creation and promotion. 

People will have many different formats to work within the post-album world. For artists, it’s more interesting than it might seem at first glance. They will be celebrating the idea of getting out of the album cycle. There have already been many artists who put their soul into the album, working on it for two or three years, then they release it – and two weeks later, no one can remember that it even existed. Now we’re going to see a lot more creativity in this matter, which is incredible. 

Convergence of Different Media Fields  

The barriers that once existed between different types of media and creative industries such as music, fashion, and film are now vanishing, and this trend will continue growing soon. 

For instance, record labels invest more and more in biographical and documentary films about their artists (e.g., “Bohemian Rhapsody”); game companies collaborate with artists on in-game music concerts (e.g., Fortnite x Marshmello); major artists launch their own fashion houses (e.g., Rihanna x Fenty); some artists even host their cooking shows (e.g., “In the Mix with Matt FX”).  

Platforms like Amazon and Apple are not only broadcasting music but also financing and broadcasting T.V. shows and movies (which, along with Netflix, are beginning to replace traditional studios). In addition, emerging music brands are breaking the mold of conventional major labels by combining different areas of media and creative endeavors into a single brand of artistry, such as:

• 88rising, 
• COLORS, 
• Thrice Cooked Media, 
• Lyrical Lemonade,
• Trap Nation.

These music brands are using diversification and blending boundaries, and already serve as a far more compelling example for future music companies than does any major label. 

The Attention Economy has Reached its Peak 

Ten years ago, the new media content platforms competed for users’ free time. Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and the like are growing as they take over users’ free time. These were moments when people were looking out the window, during their everyday commute to work, etc. However, in 2022, the attention economy has peaked, and there isn’t much free time left. 

You can see for yourself how diverse content platforms and services have successfully captured all public attention of the consumer – which means that the further growth of any platform is possible only through the decline of other platforms, as the consumer must be convinced to switch their attention from one platform to another. 

Music has to compete with other formats constantly. Videos, games, and social media eat up a lot of time. Now podcasts are taking more and more away from music, so you have to look at the competition as being everything – that’s how it works in the attention economy. 

The post-peak attention economy is a big issue for music and the main reason why the music industry needs to collaborate more with other platforms and formats, such as video and games. 

Crossover Between Music and Games 

With the advent of such platforms as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch, the music and gaming industries have overlapped. 

Collaboration and fusion of genres: the “memes” hypothesis 

TikTok and similar apps allow consumers to use and repurpose music in unique ways, breaking down barriers between creators and genres. It already exists in the underground electronic scene, and in the coming years, it will affect other genres as well. 

Interesting effects are born from such collaborations as the “music like memes” trend: someone has a musical idea relevant to their scene or digital community. The creators put together a track, upload it to the Soundcloud platform, and share it with a community (like on Facebook or Telegram). The members then pick up the idea and iteratively develop it through edits, remixes, mashups, etc. It’s widespread in the “internet genres” like nightcore, but we can also observe the rise of moombahton around 2010 and most other electronic niche genres since then. 

The Financial Side of the Music Industry will be Separated from the Artistic Side 

In the past, producers and labels had full rights to make decisions for the artistic part or influence it. But with the advent of social media, artists now have the option to create a personal brand and communicate directly with their audience without any interference from labels and producers. In the future, this will lead to labels becoming more like venture capital funds, dealing with financial issues while the artist and their manager focus on artistic direction and brand creation. 

A.I. technology increasingly allows pop stars to be discovered earlier and communicate exactly how they feel to each other, transforming today’s pop industry. Of course, future artists will still need labels and producers to get exposure and manage careers. But it’s more likely that labels will become like venture capitalists in the music industry, investing in talents. 

We’ll see exciting new models emerge: 

• artists with subscriptions, 
• better community management,
• monetization in small and medium-sized businesses. 

The team around these businesses keeps changing – it still includes managers, labels, and streaming platforms, but  the formula is different.

As Artists Become More Influential, so will Music Managers 

Social media and streaming services like Spotify and Pandora have shifted the balance of power away from labels toward artists. But conversely, music managers are managing more and more aspects of an artist’s career. 

The new music ecosystem will allow managers to increase their power in developing artists by acting as promoters and additional D.A.’s rather than promoting an artist’s interests. 

More and more managers are taking back their authority to manage things directly, realizing that their operations need a solid structure and team. Setting up the workflow of managers and the organizational side can dramatically change the financial destiny of many artists, yet few are still discussing this issue. 

Conclusion 

The Internet has fundamentally transformed the music industry over these 20 years, and we are still only in the early stages of that transformation. Democratization and collaboration will become the standard: artists will create professional-quality music right on the spot. Streaming platforms will conquer more new markets, giving millions of people unlimited access to music. The current trend of democratization will be maintained by emerging markets rather than the traditional ones that dominate in the industry today. 

Artists will reach out to their new audience, both in faraway lands and at home. Music will be used and transformed in increasingly creative and unique ways. The old barriers between media will collapse. If you look closely, you can already see all of these changes in full swing, and to look into the future, you need to understand the changes happening right now. 

It’s essential to realize today’s trends and how they reshape music creation, promotion, and consumption. In this context, the music industry will evolve in the coming years. A good understanding of these tectonic developments is the key to success in such a rapidly changing industry as the music business. 

 Data and information are provided for informational purposes only, and are not intended for investment or other purposes.