Since the early days of illegal downloading and the infamous Napster, the streaming music industry has made tremendous strides. Today, streaming music has become an effortless and seamless experience as people can press play on whatever speaker or headphones they have and listen to their favorite artists, all within a few touches at their fingertips. The IFPI estimated that people, on average, spend 20.1 hours per week listening to music in 2022, an increment of almost 12% compared to 18 hours in 2019.
As the industry progresses, streaming services such as Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Youtube Music have become household names. These developments have revolutionized the way people interact with music. Now, people simply have to pay a small monthly subscription, and they would have endless options for music spanning the world’s genres, languages, and cultures. They can create personalized playlists and share music with their friends with just a few more taps. That’s why artists found it reasonable to invest in Artistpush Youtube promotion, Spotify, Tidal, or other promotion services.
Technological developments have changed the way we live our everyday lives. Traditional albums and CDs were once upon a time everything consumers needed. Over the years now, it has been facing a decline in sales. Innovation will lead to consumers wanting more, and the industry landscape may shift again. With the increasing demand for music streaming services, mainly due to the ongoing impact of Covid-19, app makers are increasingly emerging and striving to cater to this expanding market and seize a share of the industry.
Key Technological Trends Growing in the Music Streaming Industry.
As the market becomes increasingly saturated with competitors, personalized content and customer engagement will be critical factors for streaming platforms to have the upper hand. In other words, a platform that can identify and offer exclusive content tailored to the preferences of its users, keeping them engaged and loyal to its brand, will have a competitive edge. With that, there are a few ways to implement personalized content on a music streaming platform.
Instead of these streaming platforms only keeping consumer data for that purpose, Spotify came up with an exciting way of showing it off and making data-driven content for their users with its yearly Wrapped feature. This is where Spotify creates personalized lists that summarize their user’s listening habits over the past year, presented to them in a visually appealing format. It shows users information such as their minutes spent listening, and top listened to songs and artists, genres discovered, and more. Users love this feature as it is somewhat of a trip down memory lane and a summary of how their year went by. Spotify loves it because it creates engagement for users who share their personalized wraps on social media, indirectly a form of free marketing.
2. High-Resolution Audio or HiFi audio
Without question, music is primarily an auditory experience. Most people are content as long as they can hear it and are more concerned about the availability of their demanded songs. However, they may not have yet experienced or embraced the appreciation for HiFi audio that audiophiles have. However, according to a study by MusicWatch, high-quality sound that matches that of a recording studio is the second most important factor for users after music availability. It was also discovered that this preference is growing and is more prominent in younger people. This could mean that there is a possibility that a focus on sound quality will influence future demand for music.
The term HiFi stands for high-fidelity, which describes the accurate and high-quality reproduction of sound. Many streaming providers offer music that doesn’t sound good because it is heavily compressed to minimize the bandwidth required to stream over the internet. By doing so, it essentially deprives music of its enchantment, making it sound flat and dull. As technology advances, internet bandwidth to consumer homes and mobile devices is improving at an ever-growing rate and becoming more affordable. This trend gives users a higher chance of enjoying HiFi streaming wherever they are. It’s a market yet to be fully explored but holds significant promise for the future.
3. Smart Speakers
The brains behind a smart speaker are Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs). Currently, Google Home and Amazon Alexa are the key players in this sector, and they can easily pair with other music streaming platforms to carry out user commands. Smart speakers provide users a different way of consuming music by enabling continuous listening in the background without much user engagement, unlike requiring physical interaction with music platforms or wearing headphones. This allows users to effortlessly blend music into their daily routine while helping them with specific tasks without interrupting their activities by engaging with the technology.
A study carried out by AudienceNet shows that 73% of smart speaker users believe this technology has revolutionized how they experience music. They report a noticeable increase in the amount of time spent listening to music, suggesting that smart speakers have impacted their overall habits in music consumption. The demand for these products is increasing, as indicated by smart speakers’ steadily rising market revenue. The market was valued at 7.64 billion US dollars in 2019, 16.13 billion US dollars in 2022, and is projected to reach 25.94 billion US dollars by 2027.
4. Social Media Integration
Social media has undoubtedly become an inseparable part of our daily lives. Of 8 billion people in the world, over 56% of them are actively using social media. Social media allows people to connect, entertain themselves, develop interests, and more. Communities are created, and people are more intertwined with each other more than ever. Companies use this in many ways, especially for marketing and advertising. However, the relationship between music streaming and social media is a lot deeper than that and has now become such a critical element for one another. Whether it’s social media platforms with music streaming elements or music streaming platforms with social elements, the two have become deeply intertwined.
Social media platforms such as TikTok pushed the careers of artists such as Lil Nas X, Doja Cat, and Olivia Rodrigo to go viral and have top-charting songs. Even incredibly old music was able to re-enter the trending charts and be introduced to younger generations, all thanks to the power of social media. A feature that led to this success is, for example, TikTok allowing people to include songs in their videos or to post ‘duet’ videos with other people, including their favorite artists. This feature has not only created high levels of engagement for TikTok but has also increased the exposure and listeners of countless artists simultaneously.
