Future Of Music

British Music Rights survey on music consumption of people aged 14-24. The average age of respondents was 22. This is the largest UK academic survey of its kind.

* 14-24 year olds love music - arguably more than any previous generation.

Well I am not quite sure about this one, but lets move on.

* But their consumption of music is changing significantly - the perceived value of sharing, recommendation and copying have all increased.

The world has changed for the digital kids.

* The upshot? Emotional importance does not correlate with spending - especially compared to other entertainment sectors.

* Around 90% of respondents now own an MP3 player. They contain an average of 1770 tracks - half of which have not been paid for.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE - the MP3 player is only about 8 years old.

* 58% have copied music from a friend’s hard drive to their own, and 95% copy music in some way.

* 63% download music using P2P file-sharing networks.

* 42% have allowed P2P users to upload music from their computer. Much of this behaviour is viewed as altruistic.

* 80% of current P2P users would be interested in a legal file-sharing
service - and they would pay for it too.

* The CD is not dead. Even if a legal file-sharing service existed, over 60% say they would continue to buy CDs.

* Money spent on live music exceeds that spent on recorded music

This is all very good news for the music industry.

British Rights Survey

These days there are hundreds of options for acquiring music from free legal download and streaming services. Many of these sites offer streaming and/or downloading options. Some are up there for the love of music, some are driven by advertising and some are building business models behind the scenes. They are alternatives to paid services like iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster.

There are an ever expanding number of these services that offer great music from both established and emerging artists. Free Geekery has compiled an interesting list of 100 of these sources for your music enjoyment. Happy listening.

Hit games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are creating a subtle put profound shift in the way music is experienced, heard, interacted with and purchased. In these environments music is not listened to passively, it becomes an immersive and engaging experience that is changing the nature of the relationship between the hard-core fan and the artist, pulling them closer together in ways that have never been done before.

In the past six months, the number of songs downloaded to the “Rock Band” game has surpassed 10 million tracks, according to MTV Networks, while song downloads from “Guitar Hero” passed 15 million, according to Activision. With more than 100 songs available for download via the “Rock Band” platform, that’s an average of 100,000 downloads per song sold through the game.

The songs that are selling via these video games are a heavy mix of classic rock and metal tracks that account for approximately 80% of sales, but also include new tracks by known and unknown artists trying to break new ground. One example is new metal act Black Tide. When its “Light From Above” CD was released in November, the single “Shockwave” sold only a few hundred copies per week.. The week before being featured as a downloadable song on “Rock Band”, the single sold 1,000 downloads. Two weeks later, download sales doubled. Yet sales on “Rock Band” were 10 times that of those on iTunes and other stores. In the six weeks following the “Rock Band” debut, “Shockwave” sold 6,000 digital downloads via online retailers, compared with an estimated 60,000 downloads via the game.

This is just one example of the way that music is finding new ways to reach an audience - with or without record labels - rising to fill the opportunity. Keep your eyes on the video game space to see how it evolves further as a catalyst for music exploration, discovery and distribution.

Check out this Wikipedia page on the songs available in Rock Band.