Additional Reading:Social Media, Traditional Media and Music Sales

By Samuel McNamara

Summary...

This article demonstrates the growing importance of social media in the marketing and consumption of both mainstream and niche targeted music sales. These generalised types of listeners both discover and consume music in very different ways - explained on slide five - with some listeners still using traditional forms of media, such as radio, television and posters.

Digitally distribution of music, including streaming on applications such as Spotify Music, is becoming more and more popular at the song level, with the majority of mainstream listeners downloading their music, rather than buying physical copies. This is less apparent in album sales, which could be explained by the significant increase in single releases, and the opposite for album releases.

Summary...

Facebook and Twitter are two modern forms of social media which are being used more and more at the marketing stages for releasing music. This tends to be more useful when promoting music to niche audiences as adverts can be personally tailored and ensured to be targeted at the correct audience, boosting sales to a difficult-to-approach consumer group. YouTube, however, breaks this trend as it is increasingly being used by mainstream audiences for music discovery and to a greater extent than other social media sites.

While digital downloads have increased, it is still not enough to cope with the 14.2% (in 2010 alone) decline in physical sales - resulting in a revenue loss for recorded music of $1.5 billion. This could be explained by the high levels of piracy made possible because of the internet, which was never as strongly apparent with physical releases.

What impacts music marketing?

Song/album ‘buzz’.

Radio PlaySong/album sales.

Music sales, and what impacts this is illustrated by the diagram to the left.Most consumers are heavily influenced by the repetition of music on traditional platforms (eg. radio play) as well as the ‘buzz’ generated pre-release - often achieved online through the use of social media.

All three factors to the left effect one another, including themselves. Song/album sales do in theory impact song/album sales. This can be explained by the fact that if a song is released and consumed by a small group, who then create an online ‘buzz’ due to positive feedback, this will naturally lead the song to become more noticed and to be played more on radio stations, eventually increasing the song/album sales.

How is music discovered and consumed?

The most apparent difference is in how music is discovered - with mainstream audiences still finding new music through traditional media platforms such as radio and television, and niche audiences discovering through social media. Social media will be crucial to the marketing agencies as they allow for a niche audience with common interests to be targeted.

The majority of albums are still sold as hard-copy CD’s, whereas more recently singles/individual songs are more frequently being digitally downloaded. This is arguably because fewer people are interested in discovering new artists and the emphasis is placed on individual tracks, such as those in the charts.

Albums Songs

Discovered: Traditional MediaConsumed:CD’s

Discovered: Traditional & Social MediaConsumed:Digital Download

Discovered: Social MediaConsumed:CD’s

Discovered: Social MediaConsumed:Digital Download

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