Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll

Traditional media is haemorrhaging its lead as music discovery platform

I'm emerging briefly from hibernation again, as I'm astonished at how this Myxer report's findings on music discovery are being reported. The research is based on a US sample of people who download mobile entertainment.

"We think some of the responses will surprise you, especially when it comes to user preferences regarding traditional media channels (such as… live concerts, radio, and television) and how they influence the consumption of digital media," say the report's authors. Elsewhere MusicWeek's spin is that "social media trails behind traditional media as a music discovery platform."

Well, yes, social media (and new media like Pandora, which is less social) is behind radio and TV. But the word "trails" seems to imply that social media is underperforming. Far from it. Compare these figures with a survey from a few years ago — admittedly with a different sample, and different way of putting the question — and you start to get a sense of how fast social and new media are catching up on the traditional platforms.

First point. If you'd presented the same question and the same options eight years ago, the aggregate for radio, TV and live concerts together would have been 100% — because the other options didn't exist. Now the aggregate is 62%. That's a big decline in a few short years. (And no longer does any platform have more than 50%, showing the fragmentation of discovery channels.)

Second point. In terms of market share, or "attention share", the figures are actually worse than that. I assume the survey asked people what their principal or preferred discovery platform was. The published report doesn't make this clear, but I can't see any other way that the total of all the figures in the graphic above would come out at 100% — because we almost all discover music via multiple channels. So even the 62% figure hides a lot of other diversion of attention and influence away from traditional media. Chances are that many of those who rely principally on radio are now supplementing that with social media channels, which they couldn't have done in 2002.

So the surprise for me in these responses is not that social media is still behind traditional media, but how close behind it is, and how quickly it's catching up. That's what I think justifies my use of "haemorrhaging" in my title.

One last thing. Let's remember that music radio has been around for the best part of a century now. It's a mature form, and generations of experience have taught us what works well and what doesn't. (Despite that, a lot of it still sucks — especially, I'm told, in the US.) But when it's done well, radio can be an extraordinarily good platform for music discovery. If pushed to choose just one platform, radio is almost certainly the one I'd pick.

iTunes, MySpace, Facebook, Pandora, Twitter — these services are all in their infancy, and we're all still adjusting to them, learning what works well and what doesn't. If these services can persuade 38% of listeners that they're the best music discovery platform while they're still in proverbial short trousers, imagine how big a bite they will take out of traditional media when they grow up and become good!

Fan culture and public service: media versus broadcasting

All through last week the smart people at BBC Radio Labs published a series of research summaries under the heading "fan cultures in radio".

The research projects covered different forms of fan participation around radio, from message boards, listeners to an avuncular breakfast DJ, and a long-running soap opera. The one I was waiting for — and which will possibly be of most interest to readers of this blog — was the relationship between 'specialist' music programmes and fans, by Andrew Dubber and Tim Wall.

The published summary doesn't give us much reporting of the actual behaviour of specialist music fans (any chance of a fuller account being made available, I wonder?), but focuses on the range of orientations of the BBC to meeting the needs of these fans:

Drawing on our examination of the fan activities of specialist music enthusiasts, and the way BBC staff who serve their interests conceive their professional practices, we think such a shift would allow discussion of the difference between a 'one-to-many', centre-to-receptive-audience model and the 'many-to-many' forms of communication that are more typical online. More to the point, the term 'broadcasting' pretty much just means radio and television, when in fact recorded popular music is a media form in itself.

The myth, science and craft of music discovery

Marc Cohen writes a challenging post on The Myth of Music Discovery. Citing a Digital Music News report of two venture capitalists agreeing that "the next big thing is going to be music discovery", Marc says this ought to be enough evidence that it won't be.

Having written a book which takes music discovery as a pointer to the changes in the forces shaping our cultural lives, you wouldn't expect me to be disinterested, or to be able to avoid rising to this bait. Perhaps that's just more evidence to support Marc's argument. But let me try and engage with his points anyway.

Marc reports evidence that radio remains the main route to music discovery, but online channels are growing in their influence. This is now a fairly well-established trend (here's one previous post supporting this, and another). He concludes from this:

people don't seek to discover new music — it just happens. They don't listen to the radio, watch TV or talk to friends for the purpose of discovering new music. This is a byproduct of the intended object of the interaction.

For some — actually I'd concede it's the majority — this is true. But sweeping generalisations about what "people" do or don't do are not helpful to our understanding here. There is a minority who do seek to discover music. These are the 'savants' and 'enthusiasts' in the classification I use. The thing is that a minority within this minority are quite influential for the rest of the "people". They are the first movers in the interactions from which discovery is a byproduct. And they're proud of it. They take kudos from people reading the blogs in which they assiduously document their new finds, and from the buzz they build on social networks.

The dynamics of discovery include a whole ecology of social recommendations, automated recommender systems, happenstance and serendipity — and the interactions between all of these influences.

[Update, 26 April 2008: Marc has posted on the reaction and I have commented, so see there for further discussion.]

MusicTank Event: Too Much Choice?

In a couple of weeks, on 3rd October, I'll be taking part in a panel discussion organised by MusicTank here in London, about the role of experts and filters in helping us sift the massive quantities of music being produced. Here's an extract from the blurb:

Most people would agree that choice is a good thing, but there is a flipside to this vision of a musical consumerist's paradise. While aficionados and geeks might relish the challenge of judging vast swathes of music for themselves (choosing, aggregating and selecting between an array of filters, e.g. Pandora, Pitchfork, online communities), would more casual consumers (and thus the public majority) not prefer a bit of guidance, not just in terms of the music itself but also in terms of which filters are to be trusted?

I'm looking forward to meeting several of my fellow participants. First and foremost, Tom Robinson is giving the keynote. Tom is probably still best known as a songwriter and performer, though in the last decade he's become a well-respected DJ and radio presenter. In that respect, you might expect him to back the role of 'gatekeepers'. However, he has also been critical of the mainstream music business and has praised MySpace.

The changing role of broadcast and presenters in discovery

There's an interesting feature on BBC Radio 4's Feedback programme this week, which addresses the multiple on-demand means by which young people explore music.

It includes an interview with a 17-year-old who describes how he switches between radio (to which he listens for 1-2 hours per day), online and other media (which consume another 10 hours a day), and what he looks for in a presenter. Then there's a response from the Head of Programmes for Radio 1, whose target audience is 15-24 year olds. He talks about "spread-betting" by making content available by traditional broadcast, podcast, interactive TV, and leaving the audience to choose which of these they prefer. He could have mentioned Radio 1's foray into Second Life, as well. In terms of presenters, he draws a distinction between "mood broadcasting" at specific times of the day, as distinct from "trusted guides" who are filters specifically for discovering new music.

The feature runs for ten minutes, and you can hear it for the next seven days via this link (RealPlayer plugin required). It starts 16 mins 45 seconds in.

Why unsigned bands are the new pixie dust

The announcement of a new Coca-Cola/iTunes partnership highlights as one of the key features that, "In the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland unsigned artists will have a venue to upload songs, giving them potential for broad exposure on the site through artist highlights, European podcasts available on iTunes, and invitations to play at Coke sponsored European festivals."

It's interesting that mainstream services are now featuring unsigned bands as one of their selling points. The BBC aims to be "the destination for unsigned bands and young musicians to turn to for support" (source: official briefing), and already has a dedicated unsigned microsite, including a podcast. The Financial Times interpreted this as a response to the buzz-driven success of bands like the Arctic Monkeys, in which MySpace may, or may not, have played a key part. MySpace's parent company seemed to think so too, being quoted, "That the BBC is openly saying that it wants to create rival [sic] to MySpace shows there is no end to their commercial ambitions." (It wasn't openly saying that, but that's News Corporation's reporting standards for you.)

What's going on here? Shouldn't these major corporate players be focused on providing high-quality filters so that they can guarantee high quality music for their users? Why make a point of featuring unsigned music, when we all know that the bad unsigned music is even worse than the bad music on major labels, and there's quite a lot of it?

Radio is not dead as a means of discovering music

How many times do we hear about the death of terrestrial radio? Both The Future of Music and The Long Tail offer a gloomy prognosis, with listener numbers apparently at a 27-year low in the US. This trend isn't so clearly reflected here in the UK, where several factors are different, including a strong legacy of commercial-free music radio and a growing terrestrial digital sector that offers niche programming (satellite radio isn't likely to be viable in Europe). Even in the US, according to new research from Bridge Ratings, terrestrial radio remains the most common place that people go to discover new music. See their recent press release for a larger version of this graphic.

Forty five per cent of their sample identified terrestrial radio as their preferred means of discovering music. Even if you take out the older 35-to-54-year-old group, and include just people aged 12 to 34, this percentage drops slightly to just over 35%.

There's a seductive myth that discovery is driven by MySpace and filesharing these days, but the figures don't support terminology as strong as 'driven'.