Indie Music – Revised Ways.
Music festivals greatly aided the recent spike in total ticket sales, as larger scale venues and multiple artists allow them to expand their audience and charge a higher price at the same time. Meanwhile, average gross per event within the top 100 has fallen in recent years. This suggests less even distribution within the collection. This could also potentially be attributed to the rise of large, sold-out festivals, which bring in enormous amounts of revenue that few, if any, individual acts could earn in one show. As discussed in my blog Indie Music – The Shift in Concert Sector, the rising, often independent, indie bands who perform at festivals, though, gain valuable exposure that might serve to boost recent bottom-up development, not expressed in the top 100 data.
While music listeners enjoy greater selection and lower prices, the value of record sales continue to deteriorate. The negative, statistically significant and economically important coefficient of the time trend variable regarding the value of record sales supports the notion of a downward trajectory commencing at the turn of the millennium. Record labels, which enjoyed an extended oligopoly, no longer have the market dominance to keep their prices at a level above equilibrium with major shifts in areas they once almost exclusively controlled–production, distribution and promotion of music. High correlation between the time trend and broadband penetration, also negative and significant when included individually, variables further implies the importance of the Internet and its broader influences.
An important factor behind online music communities beginning to form is the benefit of social media associated with the rising popularity of the internet. Additionally, the new strategies for marketing, promotion and advertising offered by the internet, allow indie artists and bands to connect directly with their fans and easily distribute their work to a highly expanded audience. One such interesting approach to advertising is to release free music as a means to market your live performances. Another way is to carry CDs with a glimpse of your upcoming work to the festivals and tours where you are performing, to give out to those who are awed by your performance. You can read more about this in my blog Music Festivals. The resurgence of the single song sale format, one that was nearing extinction prior to 2000, was catalyzed by illegal file sharing and subsequently capitalized on with the advent of legal digital distribution. This shift in consumer preference and expansion of their selection, likely creates a more accurate representation of the free market demand schedule for music as fans are more inclined to pay 99 cents for a song of their choice than $10 or more for a full album.
Interestingly, the general welfare of indie artists, who often saw little profit from the sale of their recorded works, does not seem to follow the decline in record sales. As discussed in my blog Indie Music-Historical Movements in Record Sales, from 1973 until the turn of the millennium, value of indie music record sales saw a nonlinear average growth rate slightly below 3% with the most notable dip coming from 1979 to 1985 followed by its largest upsurge between the years of 1986 and 1994. Since only physical indie music was available until the early 2000s, it naturally equals Total Sales in the 20th century. The decline from 1979 to 1985 came at a time of economic recession in the United States when per capita GDP income saw slow to negative growth until 1983. Although there were likely other contributing factors, consumers are less likely to spend excessively during recession. Possibly in response to the lowered demand, the price of audio products also saw a rare decline from 1982 to 1985. The advances of the Internet have made wide distribution of music easy and affordable allowing some to forego the former necessity of signing a record deal. Further, the social media phenomenon and growth of online music communities have allowed rising artists to connect and establish with the appropriate fan base and provided new marketing techniques for already established acts. Some musicians have begun utilizing these new outlets to release portions or, in some cases, all of their music for free as a unique type of sampling promotion for live performance, the main source of income for most artists.
Further I am going to write about revised ways of the indie music industry to deal with the changes that it saw after the advent of the internet. Please share your experiences and I will add them to my future blogs.
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