Will Page, author of Pivot and former chief economist at Spotify, talks about the dramatic increase in the global value of music – up to $45.5 billion, surpassing cinema. We discuss the rise of music exports from countries like Mexico and Columbia and the accompanying economic boost. We touch on the resurgence of vinyl, and the shift to CRM systems for direct artist-to-fan engagement. We’ve also got a quick run-down of the headlines of the week, and a PR Strategy that will have you running towards the danger.
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Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
Dmitri: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music and tech. I'm your host, Dmitri Viza. I'm also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, the PR and marketing firm that specializes in music innovation.
Tristra: Whoa, whoa, whoa. We are back with the rock paper scanner segment of the podcast. This is Trista Dear Jaeger, chief Strategy Officer at Rock Paper Scissors. And every week, Demitri and I scan the music tech horizon. You can see us with our, our little, um, media binoculars out. [00:01:00] Um, and we compile a weekly newsletter of things we think you should scan too.
And then here on the podcast, we share a few interesting headlines and articles and think pieces that caught our eye in the past week or so. You can sign up for the newsletter to hit your inbox, and then you can listen in here to find out why we highlighted these news stories. So Dmitri, what headlines caught your eye this week?
Dmitri: Well, you know, just going through this scanner this week, there are a couple things that I was interested in from music business worldwide Sphere Entertainment generated $308 million in Q4, missing earnings forecasts, but promises 2025 will be its best year yet. I just think it's interesting when a new experience comes out where a lot of money is being generated.
So yeah, maybe they missed what they were telling their investors, but it's still cool to see that it's a legit. New revenue stream, so that's super cool. There was another article somewhere in here from Music Tech magazine. The mines behind the Las Vegas sphere plan to put mini spheres across the globe.
So there's still expansion plans there, which [00:02:00] is good to hear.
Tristra: of itsy bitsy little spheres, like, you know, for maybe a a hundred cap sphere. Just go in there,
Dmitri: Yeah, it'd probably be bigger than that, but. But we do like spheres popping up in places. Um, so that's pretty cool. Interesting that Billboard wrote that how Trump's tariffs could be devastating for musical instrument manufacturers to see the musical instrument side of the industry hitting billboard kind of a big deal if in the manufacturing side of music, which is,
Tristra: and I don't wanna say we told them so, but that was part of our 2025 prediction, wasn't it?
Dmitri: that was, you're right. Wow.
Tristra: We.
Dmitri: That's why we're scanning the horizon, guys to see what's coming up next. Couple other quick headlines from Music Business Worldwide. Reddit co-founder Alexis Hanian joins Frank McCourt's People's Bid to Buy TikTok. So that's still happening where people are making uh, uh, bids over for TikTok. We'll see what'll happen there.
We're all. Curious what's uh gonna happen. Ink Magazine put out an article about something I hadn't seen yet, ever lost a friend at a music [00:03:00] festival. This startup wants to help and so does its rival, but it's these little devices that you wear around your neck that are like, almost like digital medallions and they're really compasses is what they are.
One of them is called the Crowd Compass. I think they're currently on back order, but like it lights up red for me to go towards Trista and then it Right lights up green for me to go towards Shaylee and it right lights up yellow for me to go towards Eleanor. So like all of us have these devices and we can find each other.
It's kind of just a silly little thing, but, um,
Tristra: air tagging yourself at Coachella or something.
Dmitri: with friends, you know, so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to plot a couple of headlines, but let's dive into something more. Tricia. What caught your eye this week?
Tristra: I was really fascinated by an article that I saw in the Times, the UK Times that is, and it really, it, it caught my eye because it, I'll just read the headline and I think folks will get it. Children turn to audio books as traditional reading falls away. So the piece itself focused a lot on [00:04:00] how the concerns about very young.
Folks reading. So we're talking what people are usually referred to as Gen Alpha. But what caught my eye is what this means for music in that audio is becoming a preferred way to both gather information, to learn things, and to relax the way books used to be for entertainment for many children. A thousand years ago when I was a child, so.
I'm really, really curious to put this on people's radar and see what they think and see how this develops because I really think we're gonna start seeing a very different relationship to audio with the coming generation. So in a survey, this is a UK survey of about 37,008 to 18 year olds, and it suggests that audio content could act as a gateway to reading to stories to.
Books and literature with a 37.5% saying audio books sparked their interest in reading. So that's kind of cool. Boys in particular were very interested in audio books and nearly half of those surveys said that audio helped them understand a story or subject better, and over half [00:05:00] found it sparked more imagination than videos and helped them relax or feel anxious.
So I think there's a huge potential here for audio to play a very different role in young people's lives. And so I just wanna throw that out there.
Dmitri: no, I, it's interesting because whatever youth are doing today, teens will be doing tomorrow and young adults will be doing the next day. So it's very relevant. In fact, tri, it's kind of weird, I, I didn't think about this, but as I was walking to work this morning and thinking about our conversation, one of the articles I pulled out, I was like, I wonder if Siri can just read this to me 'cause I can't read while I'm walking the dog to work.
And sure enough, there's a function where Siri can read you a website. I, I've never seen it promoted or advertised great accessibility feature, but I did that on the way to work and I've had the same thought of how do I get more content into me through audio when I'm doing some something else? So that, that's super interesting.
Tristra: Cool. Now what caught your eye? Dmitri?
Dmitri: Okay, so speaking of which, some of the articles I listened to on the way to work today, there are actually two sometimes what I like about the scanner and, and doing this, this horizon scanning is this kind of [00:06:00] overlap of stories that come out. You'll see one company mentioned from two totally different perspectives in different media outlets.
So our buddy Stuart Dredge over at Music Ally did a, a short piece this week. YouTube now has 125 million music and premium subscribers. And so I wanna talk about that. And then there's another interesting YouTube piece that kind of puts it in context. But basically just the fact, the update that YouTube music and premium is growing because when you get premium, you get music as well.
This is up from a hundred million subscribers. A year ago in February, 2024, which is the last time I think YouTube reported those numbers. And you know, Lyor Cohen has already said that he's trying to outpace Spotify in terms of not only subscribers, but the biggest contributor of revenue to the music industry.
I. So, you know, even though YouTube is broader than music, one of the key leaders there is really specifically trying to grow music to be the go-to thing that, for YouTube to be the go-to place for that. The other interesting thing about it is that [00:07:00] they launched some premium light features now where you can hear music.
Without ads, but other things still have ads or something like that. There's like a slight difference. They're also reporting from Music Ally that YouTube generated $36 billion of ad revenues in 2024, which is up 14.7% year on year. Now, not clear how much of that goes to the music industry, but still seeing both the premium subscription, the light subscription with some ads, and then the purely ad generated, all of it's in growth mode and I guess it's always.
Interesting to just kind of think about what's the future of streaming, because so much of the time in the United States, people talk about Spotify and Apple, and of course YouTube is always in the mix, but it's almost like they're a different culture of listeners in a lot of ways. And then you hear things about like Spotify wants to add video and they start playing with video and other types of content and then you hear be.
YouTube is one of the biggest places to listen to podcasts, so all the ecosystem plays that are happening and Spotify is having to be responsive [00:08:00] to YouTube already has. YouTube's also super social as well.
Tristra: Yeah, and people are using it on their smart TVs and other devices besides just a phone or a
Dmitri: Exactly. That's the other article that I wanted to share from media research. YouTube is winning emerging markets by being social and format flexible. This is Kort. Who's an analyst there at Media who's been writing some great blog posts that kind of widen out. And this isn't specifically about music, but it's really about YouTube's global dominance because of mobile first cultures.
Now, that seems like a silly thing to say, 'cause Spotify, obviously, most people are listening on mobile devices. You can listen on the web or on a computer app. But, but the point is that YouTube's growth has a lot to do with video and TV and how people are consuming watching those formats. And if you look at places like India or Latin America or Africa, there's a lot of places where the whole PC computer got skipped completely or, or even.
The proliferation of mobile phone [00:09:00] smartphones has just been wider than even televisions. So you have a lot of people whose first experience of connected internet media is through mobile devices. And so YouTube in places like India where film and music are. Tied together. There's actually people in India, taxi cab drivers will have actual tablets to listen to slash watch music or entertain writers and so forth.
It's that mobile first acts aspect that's giving YouTube dominance worldwide. Not specifically with music, but with I. Video overall. You also have the whole social component that traditionally in traditional media enterprises in the west, they didn't wanna make it social and inter interactive necessarily.
And YouTube is starting to take up more and more space on the video film, television front, because there's a social component, there's a user generated co component. So. She talks in the articles sort of about this, I don't know whether it's a vertical or horizontal integration. It's some kind of experience integration that takes away the fragmentation that you see in, say, [00:10:00] Spotify versus social media.
So YouTube is competing with Spotify for music, but they're also competing with Instagram and Facebook for social. But that means that if you have kind of an interest in that social interactivity, you can go to YouTube, watch tv, watch film. Watch user generated video creator content and listen to music.
And when you listen to music, you can get live videos and alternate takes and so forth. The kind of thing that maybe Spotify's doesn't want to put bandwidth into, but as a UGC platform, YouTube can allow for.
Tristra: Amazing. Yeah. I think there's another interesting. Point, which is that the emerging market question and what different markets need. We just heard from Sir Lucian Grange in a recent earnings call that UMG really has their site set on emerging markets, and yet there's already so much going on. I'm kind of curious exactly what that strategy is gonna entail.
I mean, obviously UMG has a lot of resources to pour into various strategies, but one interesting piece I think that highlights how a very, a, a deep [00:11:00] understanding of a. Local market can really make a difference in terms of success was by Yanko Rutgers in Fast Company and the header is how Audio Mac became an unlikely Spotify competitor.
And the how is by focusing very specifically on African artists and regional. Content that was meaningful to listeners there and so it's a great piece. Yanko is an amazing writer, subscribed to his newsletter, low Pass. It's one of my favorite industry newsletters. 'cause a lot of Ha, Hannah and media's writing.
It spans the whole gamut of entertainment and text. It's really, really exciting to see that you can have a technology and format strategy like YouTube does, or you can have a very deep content strategy and both of
Dmitri: a really great point. I mean, that's what's happening with a lot of the streaming service. Services, at least in the West, is they all have the same content. So then it becomes like a market share grab or an ecosystem play, but it's not about the content necessarily. Whereas Audio Mac. By being global and having that global influence, as well as playing a little bit with [00:12:00] the user interface in a way that's unique from some of the other platforms, they're able to kind of grow entirely new ways and eventually probably take over features that are useful in say, west Africa, where they're really popular, and bring it to, to the western and northern parts of, uh, the world as well.
Tristra: Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like what a lot of the innovation and things like e-commerce in China have finally seeped into the way Western consumers, uh, buy stuff online. So, yeah. Totally. Alright, awesome. Well thanks so much for diving into these headlines with me, Dmitri. Should we get back to the show? I.
Dmitri: Yeah, this was great. Let's do it. Thanks.
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Dmitri: Everyone in Music Tech has questions about the total addressable market of music, and things are changing so fast that it's hard to keep up. There's one person who has their finger on the pulse of the value of music Will Page is the author of the book, Tarzan Economics, now in paperback under the title Pivot, as the former chief economist of Spotify and PRS for music will pioneered.
Rock omics mixing his passion for music with his expertise and economics. He's lifted the lid on how new media platforms like Twitch and SoundCloud have changed the game by changing the rules and shined a spotlight on Glocalization, showing how and why local artists singing in their mother tongues are [00:14:00] topping the charts on global streaming platforms at Spotify, will launched his ongoing and widely anticipated annual report on the global value of music copyright.
He co-hosts the Bubble Trouble Podcast and he's a regular contributor to BBC Financial Times and the Economist will Page, welcome back to Music Tectonics.
Will: Like a boomerang. It's great to be back.
Dmitri: Nice. So I'm gonna dive right in. Last November you published an article called Music Smashes Box Office Records Global Value of Music, copyright Source to 45 and a half billion dollars Now worth more than Cinema. Well, how big of a deal is this?
Will: It's a big deal. I mean, let's just deal with the number first of all. 45.5 is a number that's closer to 50 than it is 40. And if you go back to when I first published this annual study, a passion project of mine, the answer was 25 billion. So I reckon that when I go back into my back cave this October to perform that calculation, we'll be talking about an industry that has doubled [00:15:00] within a decade.
Let's repeat that. Doubled within a decade. What other media format could claim that? So it's a big number. It's getting bigger and it's twice as big as it used to be.
Dmitri: Well, it seems like the music industry has just gotten into the habit of a doom and glue scenario, but you're kind of saying, Hey guys, wake up.
Will: I am. I want to turn those frowns upside down. So let's just be clear. If we go back to pre pandemic 2019, and I was to say to you, Hey, I think music could overtake cinema, you'd ask, will, you're taking a stupid pill. What are you smoking? I. Back then cinema was 33% bigger than music, 41.9 billion to the global box office, just 31.6 billion to the music industry.
But then look at what's happened. Lockdown came the pandemic waxed cinema, and it's really struggled to recover. And it's striking to think that in 2023, just four years later, the length of time it takes to do a Scottish Honors degree cinema sits at a low [00:16:00] 33.2 billion. And music, as you just pointed out, has topped 45.5 billion.
So music is now 38% bigger than cinema. What I really wanted to do here was just two things. One, to correct those Wall Street charts. You've seen them and your audience knows about them, where they say, here's the value of all the media verticals in the world, and gaming is up here, cinema is up here, video streaming, and down, down, down, down, down.
And music is always last. Music is a sick man of media. Music is a laughing stock at media. Time out. No one's laughing at music anymore. We used to be the sick man, but now we're, you know, at the front of the peck. In fact, I would argue we're actually moving towards leaders. Make no mistake, Dmitri Tectonics audience, it's boom time in music overtaking cinema, and we could overtake a few other verticals on the way up there too.
Second point, just real quick. What does this shift in cinema mean? Dmitri used to spend two hours in front of the silver screen. Now he spends [00:17:00] two hours on the sofa with popcorn watching Netflix dramas. Interestingly, what that means is that music benefits, and I'll keep this super simple, cinema pays less to copyright than Netflix does.
They pay less tariffs, they use less right rights, and they've got less viewers to stress it. Point out Netflix pays higher tariffs twice outta cinema, three times outta cinema. It uses more rights performing mechanical in sync, and it has more subscribers. So forget the music industry for a second and focus on chapter two of my book, the Attention Economy.
Dmitri used to spend two hours in a cinema, and now it's two hours in sofa. Copyright is better off before you roll outta bed in the morning. The music industry is gaining, and this is another wind in the sail of music copyright's valuation, this shift between the silver screen and the sofa.
Dmitri: Okay. Changing gears in the report, you also talk about physical media, vinyl specifically what's going on with [00:18:00] vinyl.
Will: Vinyl's up is up lots and it's all down to my bank account as an avid vinyl collector, as a dj, who by the way, got to number one on mixed cloud last year, the new mix drops this week. I understand the passion for vinyl. I resonate and I contribute towards it. Here's a step for you in 2024. Vinyl generated us record labels alone.
$1 billion. That's a birth. For those who don't understand the Scottish accent, a billion dollars. How surreal is that? Vinyl was supposed to die back in 1991 with a CD coming mainstream. We're now looking at a format that's generating a billion dollars for American record labels, and that is definitely a low end estimate.
We know there are problems measuring vinyl. We can go into that if you want. And it doesn't include the secondhand market, and it doesn't include lots of online physical retailers of vinyl. Two. It could even be 2 billion. Who knows? But fact check. Vinyl is now a $1 billion business and it [00:19:00] keeps on growing and I think this is an incredible story.
And you know, a couple of takes on it, just real quick. One, an op-ed that we can link to in your show notes I wrote with Fred Goldring suggesting to labels and artists, Hey, why don't we do what every other media format does? What, how does a theater sell like a Broadway play? Expensive seats, first tube, seats last.
Why don't you put the vinyl out first? Your super fans will give you 50 bucks for a record and three, four weeks later put it on Spotify. Second, the super fans reveal themselves and self-select the purchase and they'll carry on streaming and it'll all add towards week one sales. So you'll game number one in the charts.
We did that. That was an oped and Billboard magazine. And since then we got a call from Stones Throw Records saying they did it with NX Worries and Anderson Pac project. He put the vinyl out first. Wait three weeks, put on Spotify second. Now, this vinyl came in three formats. One which was $60 deluxe, one which was [00:20:00] $50 premium economy and one which was $40 economy.
Now, whatever you wanna say about this, lemme be clear. Your super fans cannot give you $40 on Spotify, not in their lifetime. It ain't gonna happen. So give up three versions of vinyl at three different price points. I'm gonna ask crazy pants, which version sold out first?
Dmitri: I think you're gonna tell me the $60 version sold out first.
Will: I am gonna say correct. Armando
Dmitri: Yeah.
Will: Dmitri, do you understand what we're staring at here? It's a ling good where price signals quality signals demand. This is super fan 2025. Forget that nonsense about trying to achieve it on streaming. Go back to the platters that matter 'cause that's where you're gonna find it.
And the capacity is there. The supply chains figures itself out. We're ready to go big on vinyl and I'm hearing about this first mover strategy more and more. And I know four other labels that have done it. Averaging about 20,000 press ops. All sold long before week one. Spotify.
Dmitri: It's the perfect, uh, success story for a DJing [00:21:00] economist, I would say in the music industry.
Will: Can I just give you one quick reminder about what makes vinyl so fascinating? In an age of streaming? In an age of streaming, we know that the killer song makes bank and all the filler songs can't pay for a subway ticket because you only stream what you want. It's not a body of work, whereas vinyl, all songs get paid.
The same. So we have a billion dollars of vinyl where every song on the album's getting the same compensation. And my favorite example of this is the movie soundtrack. Saturday Night Fever, one of the highest selling vinyl records in history, I think second only to Thriller. Some people actually argue it sold more than Thriller.
And, uh, that album is famous for one song, one song alone, staying Alive by the Bee Gees, Dmitri, have you ever played Ralph McDonald's? Calypso Breakdown.
Dmitri: No, I don't think I have.
Will: I don't think Ralph McDonald's played Clipsal breakdown, but that song got the same mechanical royalty as a bg [00:22:00] Staying alive. Isn't that crazy?
Dmitri: Yeah. That
Will: So remember, for this audience's benefits, especially, there's people listening to this podcast who invest in catalogs.
This is big time that with vinyl, the filler gets paid same as the killer. That's a key takeaway.
Dmitri: Right. What about streaming? Well, I'm curious, cool to see this conversation about vinyl and your method of using vinyl to reach the super fan and the money that's left on the table, but will labels keep seeing growth from streaming and, uh, what comes after streaming as the driving revenue source for recorded music?
I.
Will: They are gonna see growth, but it's gonna be very lopsided. And I think one thing I give in the annual copyright report is a a quick economic crash course in why it's become lopsided. I talk about the poor south and the rich north, and the volume of streaming. That is when Luminate says volumes and streams are up 25% compared to last year.
That's mainly a poor south phenomena. That's the opening up a new [00:23:00] markets and expansion of existing southern markets. India is a case in point, introducing Africa to the dataset. As a case in point, the growth of Latin America as a case in point, when you look at the money side. The money is really concentrated in the rich North.
I would say 80% of the cash is coming out of North America and Europe. So we're seeing a slowdown where the money is and we're seeing a speed up where the volume is, and that has shown to be confusing in the past. If you go back to last summer, universal stock got whacked, what? 24%. I think one of the reasons why is two weeks prior to their earnings call, illuminate was saying Everything's great.
Half your report, we're all doing gangbusters. And then the analysts look at Universal's numbers and say, you are forecasting just 4% growth in streaming revenue, and this is not taking size. This is purely an educational point. I think what was missing from that dialogue was an appreciation of how the poor South is dominating the volume [00:24:00] picture, but the rich north is dominating the value picture.
It's the rich north that pays your bills. Let's just be clear about that. So that will change. That will take years to change. At the moment, it's a very lopsided picture.
Dmitri: So you're saying there'll be a shift within where the money is coming from in streaming. There will be growth. Growth might not be as fast as it has been up till now. Is that right? Do I have that right?
Will: Yeah, you have and lemme give you a hook that will hang it together for you, Dmitri. This will, this will hit it home to understand macroeconomics. Did you know that in 2025 the GDP of India will overtake Japan? Interesting. Right? Didn't expect to read that, but it will. In purchasing power, parities, India will be a bigger economy than Japan.
Now you step back from macroeconomics and step into the music industry. Can you ever see a day where India's music industry overtake Japan? [00:25:00] What we have there is diverging paths. There's all this talk about macroeconomics and the emerging market markets come to a world of music. A lot of these countries don't have the infrastructure to support their copyright markets.
You, we need train tracks before we can run the trains, and that especially goes for a large s swat of Africa as well where I've been quite involved recently. So I think that's it. It's gonna be a long game before the poor South starts plugging that gap as a rich north grinds to a halt.
Dmitri: And do you see a new driving revenue source for recorded music in a post streaming moment? Is that even something to consider?
Will: During lockdown, we had a lot of post Spotify claims at the Metaverse. Do you remember
Dmitri: Yeah,
Will: Hyper ball,
Dmitri: I was there.
Will: but to quote Richard Kramer's podcast about bubble trouble, that was a definite case in point. I remember McKinsey wrote a report saying that the metaverse would be worth $5 trillion worth more than the GDP of Japan in five [00:26:00] years.
How is that forecast coming? How many people do we see wearing clunky headsets with? Half-hearted impacts, not a lot NFTs that came and gone as well. I think it's not necessarily pointing to a revenue source. Dmitri, I think what we're gonna see in the next chapter, and it's not particularly Revelationary, it's not particularly new, but it's gonna be in the CRM systems.
Which would send your audience to sleep, you know, customer relationship management systems. But think about it, we're seeing artists on mass migrate away from labels towards their owning their own CRM systems. Oasis with Open Stage Lelo is another hot contender for our company in this space as well.
These artists have millions of people in their own CRM systems and they can communicate to them directly. I think as artists start building out CRM systems of their own, it questions a large part, what the label does. In [00:27:00] a good way, labels can become more efficient, perhaps marketing is better served by the artist directly for on behalf of the label.
That can be very amicable and win-win. I. They can grow each other's gardens here. But imagine what the artists can do if you have millions of people in an efficient state of the art CRM system, where if you want to send an email, it goes. Now, if you want to do ticketing, it goes. Now, I think the post Spotify economy is about artists.
Marketing to their own fans, artists speaking to their own fans directly. I think that's gonna be a I, I think it's already a bigger thing than people give it credit for. Bad bunny's just gone to open stage, for example, but it's gonna be a much bigger thing when the capability of these systems starts to expand.
Dmitri: I wanna read something else from the article. Almost a third of all streams inside America are non-American artists suggesting glocalization is happening within the country's multicultural borders. Unsurprisingly, the British invasion of yesteryear continues to [00:28:00] make it. The biggest ex exporter into the US, more surprisingly, is who's second.
Mexico recently overtaking Canada. Looking further down the list of music exporting, countries getting heard inside the us, you'll see another surprise. Columbia is ranked six. Will, what's the significance of this piece that you wrote in the article?
Will: Well, I'm about to bore your listeners stupid talking about Columbian exports to the us but I am not talking about those exports. Okay. I'm talking about music. So tune in now using artist origin data as able to do a pretty nifty piece of data science and artist code all streams in America to ask this imported question, which is.
Of all the streams happening, how many were Mexican artists and how many were Colombian artists? Now, why these two countries? It's because they're poor. At least they're poor relative to the us. The GDP per head of population in Mexico is a quarter of that of America in Columbia, it's a fifth of [00:29:00] that of America.
I think we've been sleeping in this point, so I want to put it front and center to the reader and especially to tectonics audience. What happens? Dmitri baby. What happens when poor artists export their streams to rich countries? I'll tell you what happens. Rich country consumers send those rich country royalties back to poor countries.
So you have this export boost effect and I calculate that boost effect for Mexico and Columbia. I deal with Mexico first in 2023, they, they managed to hijack a good $370 million worth of streams in America. Closer to half a billion and quarter of a billion almost. So that's impressive. Had those streams been back in pure country, Mexico, that'd have been about a hundred million.
So they got a quarter of a billion dollar boost. By getting those streams consumed by rich countries. And this is just one rich country. Okay? There's others too. And everyone's listening to Mexican artists. It's just one example, so you can see the boost effect. [00:30:00] But if I roll it up to Columbia, I think this is where the story gets really interesting.
And forgive me, I'm gonna use round numbers here, but Columbia got about a hundred million dollars worth of streams inside the United States in 2023. Had that been back in pure country Columbia, that'd have been around $15 million, given you a boost of $78 million because your streams were consumed in a rich country and the rich country money flowed back to Columbia.
Now, what makes that interesting, Dimitri, is that means the value of exports to America alone, the net boost effect of exporting those streams to America alone is worth more than the entire Colombian risk industry. Isn't that crazy? Columbia sees America has been worth more than themselves. What would it say to Canada?
What's it gonna say to Sweden? You know, Jay Belvin is sitting there in boar watching these rich country checks pour into a poor country like Columbia. And I think it's not to say make the world a better place, which is what every tech company likes to say, but streaming, you could argue it's [00:31:00] helping alleviate poverty.
Dmitri: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, I could see a lot of shifting over time in those countries as that revenue comes in and transforms that music industry in each local places.
Will: Let's just kick it across a map. Just briefly, let's look at Nigeria. You know, I talk about there being four export countries in the world. America, obvious Britain, thankfully still gist Sweden, intuitively, the great songwriters of Sweden and South Korea. I. Why can't a country like Nigeria be the fifth?
Why can't an artist like IRS star who's what, 22 years old who's watching her streams get to America? What happens when those rich country streams flew back to Lagos? You know, we need to be picking up on these trends. If we wanna be hit to change, we gotta be following this.
Dmitri: Well, there's so much more in this article and in your reports every year. I appreciate you coming to elucidate what's in there. And I think we're getting to the kind of the widening out part here. And I'm curious when you step back from all of this, what should innovators in the music industry take [00:32:00] away from the, the data, from the connections that you've drawn through the report and and where things are going?
Will: We talked about where things are going. If I could give you a headwind and a tailwind. A headwind, which is going to the innovators in the space create issues. All we've had for the past 15 years, if you think about it since Spotify launched in the US, is herbivore type behavior where Spotify's growing apple's growing, Amazon's growing, and YouTube is growing, and Pandora remember them are also growing.
So that's been all nice and easy. I think those herbivores, especially in saturated western markets like Britain and the United States, are now becoming carnivores. That is, we're gonna have to learn how to spell the world's net churn. There's gonna be a point where the only way Spotify grows is stealing some of Apple's customers.
The only way YouTube grows is stealing some of Amazon's customers and vice [00:33:00] versa. I think that's gonna be an interesting period. And you know, a lot of your audience will relate to this. If I say that what we need to learn is how telcos behave. Over there in the US you have an oligopoly of telcos, at and t and Verizon, et cetera, et cetera.
And the only way at and t can grow is stealing some of Verizon's customers. And the only way Verizon can grow is stealing some of at t's customers. We, in this music business, have never written that chapter. We don't even know how to read it. We're gonna have to learn fast because I think we're now in that, that that phase of the game, we're in overtime on that front.
So that's definitely a headwind, that's a cloud that sits above the music industry. As tailwinds grow, you know what's gonna speed this business up? I go back to the definition of global. If I look at United Nations, I think they fly 198 flags outside their building. When Scotland gets its independence, it'll be 199.
But if you look at the IFI yearbook, I think there's only 56 countries covered. When you look at Illuminate's global streaming dataset, what they call [00:34:00] Africa is just South Africa. That's the only country they've got. The point I'm trying to make here is the blanket isn't covering all of the bed. Our coverage of the global music market is insufficient and incomplete.
That's cool. I'm fine with that 'cause we're gonna get better at it. My work, the work of the IFPI who are doing a ton of effort in this space, illuminate, are constantly trying to improve their game as well. We'll get there, but just to be clear, what we call the global music industry is a partial story, and when we complete it, the business is gonna be even bigger.
So when we start the conversation off saying 45.5 billion, if we captured all the missing revenues, I'm more than convinced we are, we're now well above 50 billion as a business.
Dmitri: Nice. Well, this has been great. Thank you so much for diving into this. There's so much more we could be talking about. There's more in the article, which our listeners can check out@pivotaleconomics.com, as well as finding out about your paperback version of. Your book now called Pivot and Keeping up with what you're up to.
Um, this has been great. Thanks so much for joining us again on Music [00:35:00] Tectonics.
Will: Thank you Dmitri, and hopefully I speak at one of your conferences soon.
Dmitri: Yeah, would love to see you.
Emily: Hi, this is Emily McGee, publicist at Rock Paper Scissors. My strategy of the week for you is to embrace the unexpected. We all know that in life in general, things will not always go according to your best laid plans. The real test isn't whether you avoid mistakes. It's how you respond when they happen.
I. Here's an example. I used to lose sleep the night before embargoes lifted on announcements for clients. Even if everything leading up to that embargo lift went well, and I had all of the publications confirming they were gonna run that news, I would still dread the moment because, oh my gosh, what if nothing happens and the news doesn't get picked up anywhere?
And here's the thing, sometimes things don't land the way you expect them to. When that happens, you do have a couple of choices. You could panic and avoid the [00:36:00] problem, maybe take a little stress nap and make it like a tomorrow problem. Or you can do what I learned when I joined an improv troupe for a few years.
You can run to the danger. I jumped into improv initially because of this single lesson in improv. It's not a matter of if you screw up, it's what you do when it happens. No matter how well you prepare, things will never go exactly as planned, and you will mess up spectacularly and the audience will know, so you can't avoid it.
You have to be okay with it. You have to own it, and you have to keep moving forward. And a lot of times, if you can just roll with it, you do get results that are funnier, sharper, or more creative than you could have imagined to begin with. So when things don't go according to plan and pr, the best thing that you can do is to communicate what you're noticing, even if it's radio silence, and immediately get curious about why it's happening.
It's also helpful to simply look at results [00:37:00] as just that. Results. Labeling them as good or bad, or successes or failures can hinder the ability to see a part of the picture that you perhaps didn't see before. And those pieces are really crucial when you go to shape your strategy for your next steps.
And here's the thing, running toward the danger doesn't just get you through the moment. It can actually lead to unexpected advantages as well. When you face the tough stuff head on, you can open the door to possibilities you might not have considered. Sometimes you find something valuable in the mess.
An opportunity or a new perspective or a solution you never would've stumbled upon if you just tried to avoid it. So whether it's on stage or NPR, the key to being proactive is running towards the challenge, not away from it. You might just find something that takes the project in a better direction. I.
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The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.