The Music Industry Grew 8% In The First Half Of 2016, Thanks To Streaming
First of all thanks to Hugh McIntyre for this article.
While times have never been tougher for the bank accounts of many musicians, the music industry is growing again, and the future looks bright for recorded music, and the thanks belong almost exclusively to streaming sites.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) released its 2016 Mid-Year Report this morning, and the numbers are encouraging, which is something the business is getting used to once again. The recorded music industry—that is, money made from selling or streaming song and albums, and which does not include publishing rights, ticket sales, merchandising, or other avenues—is up to $3.4 billion in revenues for the first half of 2016, which is a very promising number. The business has grown 8.1% since the same time period in 2015, which is the strongest growth seen since the late 90s.
While the sale of digital downloads, albums, and all things physical are certainly still important, they no longer compare to the money being brought in by the multitude of streaming services, which have quickly become the driver for growth and exactly what the industry needs more of.
The first half of this year saw revenues from streaming music sources climb 57% from the same time period last year, and the amount earned is now up to $1.6 billion. That figure means that streaming now accounts for 47% of all recorded music revenue. The category was only responsible for 32% of the same kind of revenue during the first half of 2015, so it’s clear that the growth is both increasing sharply and incredibly important.
When it comes to streaming, everything seems to be climbing upwards, from the dollars brought in to the amount of subscribers to the number of players in the game. In fact, both revenues from subscriptions and the number of subscribers have doubled from the first half of 2016. Revenues from subscription services alone passed the very important $1 billion milestone for the first six months of this year, which marks a first for the vertical. Paid subscriptions, which the industry values above all else, are up 101% to 18.3 million in just the U.S. alone, and that’s a figure that is sure to continue to rise.
Many in the music industry still argue that streaming is hurting the industry overall, but numbers show that the bleeding has stopped, and the business is finally on the upswing. Gains made in the streaming sector have more than offset the losses when it comes digital downloads and physical CDs and vinyl, and the more companies that begin offering streaming packages, the better. These figures take into account revenues brought in from on-demand platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, internet radio services such as Pandora and Sirius XM, as well as those sites that don’t require subscriptions, like YouTube and Vevo.
The entire digital market is now up to $2.7 billion in revenues, which makes up almost all of the recorded music industry. Digital revenues, be they from streaming or the sale of albums or songs not on a physical format, are now responsible for 80% of the overall music business, which is up from 74% in the first half of 2015.
Spotify’s subscriber numbers are leaving Apple Music in the dust
Although it's facing some stiff competition, it looks like Spotify has found a way to keep its paying user base growing.
A little over a year ago, back in June 2015, the world's most popular music streaming service counted 20 million paying subscribers. That number grew to 30 million by March this year. Earlier today, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced that more than 40 million users are paying for Spotify services.
Looking at the growth, it's impressive to see Spotify doubling its paying subscribers in 15 months and gaining 33% more subscribers in less than six months.
To put things into perspective, Apple Music now counts 17 million paying subscribers. If we're to compare Spotify's numbers with those of Apple Music, Spotify is doing really well. Sure, Apple Music only launched back in January, but following a massive initial wave of users, Apple's streaming service was actually slower in growing its paid user base. Back in April, Apple Music counted 13 million subscribers, meaning that it only added 4 million paying users since then.
Back when Apple Music launched, many industry watchers were quick to anticipate that Spotify will have a tough time maintaining its lead in the music streaming service niche. Nine months later, however, the numbers show that despite the iPhone maker's insane marketing budget, brand recognition, and iTunes popularity, Apple Music isn't winning hearts as fast as Spotify.
Jay Z-owned Tidal announced back in June that it counts 4.2 million subscribers. Some previous rumors claimed that Apple will eventually buy Tidal and integrate the service into Apple Music, but those rumors have been recently denied by an Apple executive.
Anyone who listens to commercial radio nowadays has probably been hit with the impression that a lot of pop music sounds very similar. It’s easy to dismiss this complaint as a gripe of the old and the cynical, but science actually bears this out: pop music has indeed been pretty homogenous throughout its history and is becoming ever more so.
In one 2014 study, researchers in the US and Austria analysed more than 500,000 albums, across 15 genres and 374 sub-genres. The complexity of each genre of music over time was compared to its sales. And almost always, as genres increase in popularity, they also become more generic.
In itself, this does not mean much – since genres and subgenres are always emerging. It may be considered a truism that a genre becomes accepted once its rules are defined – and once the genre is established, deviation will result in a new genre or sub-genre. For instance, funk emerged as a new genre out of soul and RnB, with a far stronger emphasis on rhythmic groove and the bass.
Another study, in 2012, measured the evolution of Western popular music, using a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which contains vast amounts of low-level data about the audio and music content in each song. They found that between 1955 and 2010, songs had become louder and less varied in terms of their musical structure.
These are trends – but the perception among many listeners is that this homogenisation of music has taken a big leap forward in recent years. And there are a couple of important technological developments that have made this happen.
The loudness war
Dynamic range compression is the (usually automated) continual adjustment of the levels of an audio signal, primarily intended to reduce the variations in loudness. Its overuse has led to a “loudness war”. The musician who wants a loud recording, the record producer who wants a wall of sound, the engineers dealing with changing loudness levels during recording, the mastering engineers who prepare content for broadcast and the broadcasters competing for listeners have all acted as soldiers in this loudness war.
But the loudness war may have already peaked. Audiologists have become concerned that the prolonged loudness of new albums might cause hearing damage and musicians have highlighted the sound quality issue. An annual Dynamic Range Day has been organised to raise awareness, and the non-profit organisation Turn Me Up! was created to promote recordings with more dynamic range. Standards organisations have provided recommendations for how loudness and loudness range can be measured in broadcast content, as well as recommending appropriate ranges for both. Together, these developments have gone a long way towards establishing a truce in the loudness war.
Auto-Tune
But there’s another technology trend that shows no signs of slowing down. Auto-Tune, which a surprising number of today’s record producers use to correct the pitch of their singers, actually originated as a byproduct of the mining industry.
From 1976 through to 1989, Andy Hildebrand worked for the oil industry, interpreting seismic data. By sending sound waves into the ground, he could detect the reflections and map potential drill sites – in effect, using sound waves to find oil underground. Hildebrand, popularly known as “Dr Andy”, studied music composition at Rice University in Houston, Texas and used his knowledge in both areas to develop audio processing tools – the most famous of which was Auto-Tune.
At a dinner party, a guest challenged him to invent a tool that would help her sing in tune. Based on the phase vocoder, which covers a range of mathematical methods to manipulate the frequency representation of signals, Hildebrand devised techniques to analyse and process audio in musically relevant ways. Hildebrand’s company, Antares Audio Technologies, released Auto-Tune in late 1996.
Auto-Tune was intended to correct or disguise off-key vocals. It moves the pitch of a note to the nearest true semitone (the nearest musical interval in traditional octave-based Western tonal music), thus allowing the vocal parts to be tuned.
The original Auto-Tune had a speed parameter which could be set between 0 and 400 milliseconds and determined how quickly the note moved to the target pitch. Engineers soon realised that this could be used as an effect to distort vocals and make it sound as if the voice leaps from note to note while staying perfectly and unnaturally in tune all the while. It also gives the voice an artificial, synthesiser-like sound, that can be appealing or irritating depending on your personal taste.
This unusual effect was the trademark sound of Cher’s December 1998 hit song, Believe, which was the first commercial recording to intentionally feature the audible side-effects of Auto-Tune.
Like many audio effects, engineers and performers found a creative use for Auto-Tune, quite different from the intended use. As Hildebrand said: “I never figured anyone in their right mind would want to do that.” Yet Auto-Tune and competing pitch correction technologies, such as Celemony’s Melodyne, are now widely applied (in amateur and professional recordings – and across many genres) for both intended and unusual, artistic uses.
Its became so prevalent, in fact, that these days it is expected almost universally on commercial pop music recordings. Critics say that it is a major reason why so many recordings sound the same nowadays (though the loudness wars and overproduction in general are also big factors). And some young listeners who have grown up listening to auto-tuned music think the singer lacks talent if they hear an unprocessed vocal track.
It has been lampooned in music and television and on social media, and Time magazine called it one of the “50 Worst Inventions”. But if anything, both its subtle, corrective use and overt, creative use continues to grow. So if you can’t tell your Chris Brown from your Kanye West, it may be down to Dr Andy.
How Many Streams Does It Take to Earn $1? Take a Look…
It takes 776 streams on YouTube to earn a dollar, and just 32 on Microsoft Groove. On SoundCloud, you’ll need 766 streams to earn $1, while it only takes 96 from the SoundCloud GO premium service. In between, there are streaming music services Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Rhapsody, TIDAL, Google Play, and VEVO, all paying wildly different sums for the same exact song.
Why the polar extremes? We’ve been receiving — and posting — lots of streaming payout information on Digital Music News, only to learn that payouts aren’t normalizing over time. Instead, they’re become more divergent over time. Just recently, an independent hip-hop and r&b label shared an entire statement with Digital Music News, one showing multi-dollar payouts from Microsoft Groove (via Xbox), and almost worthless payouts from YouTube (take a look).
Now, the latest streaming music data dump come from an independent rapper, who will remain unnamed but leaked his/her payout spreadsheets to industry executive Wendy Day.
Here’s the breakdown:
Service
Per Stream Royalty
# of Streams = $1
Microsoft Groove
0.031113139
32
Soundcloud GO
0.01037594
96
Slacker
0.006153846
163
Tidal
0.0054
185
Google Play
0.005278658
189
Apple Music
0.005103035
196
Deezer
0.00510566
196
Rhapsody
0.004579501
218
Spotify
0.003589881
279
Vevo
0.002071429
483
Aspiro
0.001676301
597
Soundcloud
0.001305585
766
YouTube
0.001288172
776
A few quick notes on this data. TIDAL is part of Aspiro, acquired by Jay Z last year, but we’ve noticed in statements that ‘Aspiro’ usually refers to the older service, and ‘Tidal’ the newer service, with payment lags to blame. Tidal has received lots of complaints over delayed payments, but the actual payouts seem to be on the upper range of competitors when they do arrive.
Also, this doesn’t have anything from YouTube Red, which is a recently launched premium service. The scattered data we’ve gotten on YouTube Red shows higher per-stream payouts, but total subscriber levels are rumored to be extremely low. The same applies to SoundCloud Go, which is SoundCloud’s premium attempt, though interestingly, GO is now starting to appear on royalty reports.
Keep in mind that Apple Music is entirely subscription, though payouts on the three-month free trial are markedly lower. Spotify also has a free and paid tier, with the paid tier paying multiples over the free tier. Unfortunately, those tiers weren’t broken out in this royalty statement.
How Mark Korven Avoided the Temptations of Temp Music to Score 'The Witch'
The first rule of composing: don't sacrifice your own creativity in an attempt to emulate the work of others.
Robert Eggers' The Witch has been the runaway success story of the year so far and an ideal model for low-budget filmmakers everywhere. It's brought in over $40 million in box office sales around the world, a staggering sum for any independent film, even one distributed by a powerhouse tastemaker studio like A24.
The reason? Horror is as popular a genre as any out there, but Eggers' colonial twist brought a vision so complete that any serious film audience has found it impossible to ignore. An essential ingredient in gluing that vision together was Mark Korven's haunting acoustic score. It features the vibrations of instruments we've never heard before, which have been orchestrated to feel "like a 99-minute nightmare that sits on your chest like a sack of lead."
No Film School got a chance to hear about Korven and Eggers' collaboration as well as check out a few of the composer's unique instruments at TIFF 2016earlier this week during a special masterclass held at the industry conference. Here are a few of the highlights from the conversation with Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes, in which Korven stresses the importance of steering your director away from temporary music, and more.
Keep an ear to the ground
"Like a lot of kids, I started out playing in basement bands," Korven explained when asked how he got his start. "I used to break dishes on the second floor in my mom’s kitchen because we were playing Black Sabbath in the basement."
Korven had his first film fall into his lap accidentally. After not quite cutting it as a performer, "as soon as I found myself in the position of responding to visuals, I thought, 'This is where I should be. This is where I fit.'"
Don't let the director get attached to temp music
When Korven was first starting out, he remembered "there was no such thing as temp music back then, or there was very little of it, so you were forced to use your imagination. You watched the visuals and whatever started coming into your mind, the score would come out of that."
Things are quite different now. He explained: "As is so typical for composers nowadays, you're reacting to the temp music, because typically the director’s fallen in love with the temp music. Editors will throw in temporary music while they’re cutting and quite often they get overly familiar with it and often they fall in love with it. So you’re in the position of trying to beat the temp music or trying to find a sound like the temp music. That's been a real problem."
"Temp music makes for lazy composers."
Taking that temp music and create something better
So how do you beat your director's obsession with temp music? "It’s really difficult," said Korven. "Sometimes it gets to the point where I hear if they’ve been cutting for months and if the temp scores been in for four or five months, I know it's pretty well useless trying to get them unwelded."
The strategy he's found successful is to "understand what they're reacting to, what part they’ve fallen in love with, and try and achieve it some other way."
"Hopefully," he stresses, "I can go beyond their temp music. So that’s what I always set out to do. How can I do better than what they’ve presented me in the beginning?"
A double-edged sword
While he warns of the dangers of using temp music, Korven also acknowledges its utility. "Temp music is really a double-edged sword to me," he said, "but most composers just hate it completely. If I’m working on a film and have no idea what to do—I’m just at a complete loss—having some interesting temp music can steer me."
This works, of course, as long as "the director can let go of it," Korven said.
Temp music makes for lazy composers
"Sometimes you get bad temp music," Korven said. "The director falls in love with it. You’re forced to toe the line and go along with bad music. That's the worst case situation. Temp music really makes for lazy composers; in a way it, makes my job easy because it takes me out of the process. I sort of just have to copy what’s there, collect my paycheck and go home."
But Korven doesn't want to phone it in. "You’re never going to do this amazing creative thing—you never allow the possibility of what the score might have been—if you do that."
The solution? Hire your composers early in the process
Korven isn't naive in his endeavors as a composer. "I understand that these days, editors and directors need temp music," he admitted. "The editor needs temp music to get his cut approved." So he provides a solution: "What I'd like to suggest to people is to hire your composer early. Get them to pull from their own library of music. Use the composer's music and go from there instead of pulling from a John Williams score or whatever. For me, that’s the lesser of two evils."
It's clear that with this sort of experimentation, Korven fit right into the sort of feel that Eggers was going for with his period horror piece. Their collaboration was almost as unique as the instruments in which Korven used to score the film, itself.
Eggers' constraints quite literally set the tone for the film
"We had a lot of guidelines or sort of rules on what we could do musically. Everything absolutely had to be acoustic, there could be no electronics of any kind. So that was a bit of a struggle. And the other thing, everything had to be very very dissonant almost all the time." It's these sort of constraints however that led the pair to find a totally distinct and fitting sound.
"Typically when I would write a score," Korven explains, "You would have moments that are very consonant. There would be release and then there would be tension. But he wanted it to be like a ninety-minute nightmare that sits on your chest like a sack of lead. The other thing he didn’t want, he didn’t want any sense of melody at all, so he didn’t want traditional melody, he didn’t want traditional harmony, he just wanted something completely out there."
Set up the score so your director can knock it down
Korven revealed that the soundtrack to The Witch was largely improvised. "I knew that I had to keep things very, very loose because Robert was very much a hands-on director," he said. "I mean, when you see a Robert Eggers film, it truly is a Robert Eggers film. He is totally the mastermind. It’s his artistic vision that I was trying to help realize. So I wanted to keep things very, very, loose, very improvised, so that he could move notes around whenever he wanted."
The majority of the collaboration took place in the movement along the timeline. "I sampled a lot of the instruments that I play so that we could place them on the timeline and Eggers could sort of move notes around all he wanted," said Korven. "I needed maximum flexibility when I was working, so it was a long process."
Korven's instruments
So, what sort of instruments did Korven use to attract Eggers' attention and give The Witch its unique sound? Take a look at the videos below. (Though they all feature the same images, the videos start at different points in the performance, showcasing different instruments.)
The Waterphone
The Waterphone was invented by Richard Waters. The creator's website describes them as "stainless steel and bronze monolithic, one-of-a-kind, acoustic, tonal-friction instruments that utilize water in the interior of their resonators to bend tones and create water echoes. In the world family of musical instruments, the Waterphone is between a Tibetan Water Drum, an African Kalimba (thumb piano) and a 16th century Peg or Nail Violin."
The "Apprehension Engine"
This one felt less like an instrument and more like an invention. Korver explained that he just received the final product the morning prior to this demonstration, and it's something that he got custom-made for the purpose of scoring horror films. The "scary sound instrument" he invented is a wooden box featuring strings, four metal rulers, an e-bow, spring reverb, a toggle switch, as well as various magnets and springs
The Nyckelharpa
The Nyckelharpa is the instrument that won Korven the job with Eggers and is featured heavily in the score to The Witch. It is a 16th-century Swedish string instrument that resembles the strange offspring of a violin, harp, and piano.
This idea starts about a year ago, when I heard that they (Fox) will make a new season for Prison Break.
Well, since then I've been waiting for Fox to release the first teaser.
As soon as the teaser came up I did a download of it. As the teaser I saw is a little long about 2 minutes, I decided to cut some scenes to get something about minute.
Mean while, I was putting several ideas on paper such as "actions songs" and "drama songs" and doing some experiments with combining instruments.
The final result you can see and heard on my youtube channel or on my teaser below. I use on total 6 soundtracks.
I hope you join the soundtracks. Any comments (Good or Bad) will be welcome, I'm always open to improve my skills. See you Soon!
In 2017, Square Enix will release a high-definition remaster of Final Fantasy XII: International for the PlayStation 4. Those playing the game can choose between two soundtracks: the original PlayStation 2 version and a re-recorded soundtrack created for the HD remaster.
For the original version of the soundtrack, composer Hitoshi Sakimoto was forced to simplify his music to accommodate the limitations of the PlayStation 2. For this version, he was able to re-record the soundtrack with high-quality instruments and in 7.1 surround sound to finally realise his original vision while taking advantage of current sound production capabilities.
The trailer above features the new versions of “Dream to be a Sky Pirate” and “The Sky Pirate”. They’re relatively conservative arrangements of the originals, but considerably improving the quality of the sound. The samples suggest the new tracks were produced through a hybrid approach, blending instrumental performances with modern samplers, as with Final Fantasy X HD.
