Blog #6

After learning about the 2019 IFPI Global Music Report, I believe that the future of music will be all digital when it comes to purchasing. According to ifpi (2019), “Overall digital revenues grew by 21.1% to US$11.2 billion in 2018, crossing the US$10 billion mark for the first time ever and now accounting for 58.9% of total recorded music revenues. Within this format, the picture was varied with streaming pushing growth up strongly (increasing by 34.0% to US$8.9 billion), while downloads saw a decline of 21.2%, dropping to 7.7% of the total market.” The digital streaming platforms are already very popular but are going to continue to grow and reach more countries. I believe this will also lead to more artist getting together and launching their own platforms like tidal. I believe this because “Paid audio streaming in particular was again a key driver (+32.9%), with almost all markets reporting growth in this area. Digital now makes up more than 50% of revenue in 38 markets” (ifpi,2019). Artist could get together and claim you can only listen to their new music on a certain platform and once they get the numbers they want, then release it to other platforms. This is a tactic that Kanye west used when releasing his album “The Life of Pablo.” After this I believe that live still be very popular, but i think as we advance in technology so will live performances. There is already a technology where you can put a hologram of an artist on the stage in a live performance, but this will advance even more. I think that with digital streaming reaching more and more people, there will be more of a demand for concerts. This will lead to 100% hologram concerts in different places all over the world. So artist can be in more places at one time increasing the revenue.