music biz
With more than 2,000 attendees converging on Atlanta for the annual Music Biz conference at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel and Convention Center Galleria, Music Business Association president Portia Sabin opened day 2 by reminding everyone of the “guiding belief” behind the Music Business Association and its conference — while revealing the conference will return to Atlanta next year.
“We’re all better together,” Sabin proclaimed. “We know we can achieve success and overcome any challenge in our way when we come to the table with open minds, foster collaboration, and develop solutions that truly support one another.”
Sabin pointed out that the music industry has become truly global in the past several years and, corresponding to that, international music companies now comprise one-fifth of Music Biz’s membership. What’s more, she said 15% of the attendees at this year’s conference (which runs from May 12-15) are from outside the U.S: “That’s 250 individuals, representing 168 companies and over 30 countries, ranging from Vietnam and Australia, to Japan and Egypt,” she said.
Trending on Billboard
In order to better represent its membership and the global music industry, “we’ve embraced this shift by hosting our virtual Passport series — free webinars that dissect issues in music markets across the globe — as well as expanding our traveling Roadshow series with our first international event in Toronto this past March,” Sabin added.
Finally, Sabin pointed out that in preparing to hold the conference in Atlanta over the last year, Music Biz hosted a number of mixers and meetups to “build relationships with Atlanta’s vibrant music business community. Most recently, we partnered with the Mayor’s Office of Film, Entertainment and Nightlife for an event at City Hall, to connect local & global music professionals and preview some of the programming we offer at our conference.”
After holding the convention for the last 10 years in Nashville, the Music Biz conference is going on the road again, just like its antecedent organization, the National Assn. of Recording Merchandisers, did for decades by moving the annual convention to various cities. However, Sabin revealed that Atlanta will host the convention again next year, too, while thanking the city and the hotel for supporting it.
“Thank you to the team here at the Renaissance for making this year’s event possible, and to the city of Atlanta for being such gracious hosts ever since we announced plans to bring our conference here in 2025 and 2026,” Sabin said at the beginning of her remarks to attendees.
At the Music Biz 2025 conference in Atlanta, the “Let’s Get Physical” segment opened with a panel featuring Luminate’s director of partnerships, Chris Muratore, who shared the latest industry insights around the continued success of Record Store Day.
One of Muratore’s slides pointed out that in the last 10 years, there have only been a dozen weeks in which album sales reached the 1 million unit mark, and Record Store Day was responsible for five of those weeks, with most of the other million-selling weeks coming during the year-end holiday season.
Staying with the panel’s theme of updating the industry on “Indie Retail Sales Data,” Muratore explained how Luminate — which shares a parent company with Billboard, Penske Media — has evolved its approach since partnering with StreetPulse to gather data from independent record shops.
Trending on Billboard
Muratore — who was joined by Coalition of Independent Music Stores executive director Andrea Paschal and StreetPulse CEO John Weston on the panel — began with a brief history lesson, explaining how Luminate’s predecessor, SoundScan, first began tracking indie retail data back when physical music was the only game in town. At the time, around 300 independent stores reported sales. However, the weighting system used to extrapolate sales for the entire indie sector hadn’t been updated since it was first implemented in 1991.
When Luminate began its collaboration with StreetPulse in 2024, it was only after it had made the controversial decision to end weighting for indie stores at the end of 2023, resulting in widespread industry resistance.
By June 2024, Luminate struck a deal to collaborate with StreetPulse on collecting indie retail sales data and assembled a dedicated data team to develop a new, more flexible and efficient weighting model to replace the outdated system. As part of the partnership, Luminate initially gathered sales reports from 200 indie stores, with the number growing to around 250 stores by the end of 2024, according to Muratore.
For her part, Paschal acknowledged that Music Biz president Portia Sabin “was very involved in bringing us all together.”
Muratore noted that, through its partnership with StreetPulse, Luminate continues to expand its network of reporting stores, now surpassing 400 locations contributing sales data. “We think we have identified another 100-plus stores to bring on by the end of the year, so we will have over 500 stores reporting sales,” he said.
In order to get to 500 stores, Weston thanked labels and distributors for pointing out retailers that should be added. Then, speaking to store owners, he pointed out that one of the challenges is that every store owner runs their business “a little different.” “There is a reason you are called independent because you are all different,” he noted. “So if you are not reporting to us and want to, we need to know what kind of POS system you have.”
While Luminate may reach 500 reporting stores — roughly one-third of the estimated 1,500 independent U.S. shops selling new physical music — by year’s end, that one-third likely represents about two-thirds of total physical sales volume. Conversely, the remaining two-thirds of stores that aren’t yet reporting likely account for just one-third of the volume. “That’s because we know who the tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 stores are,” Muratore explained.
Also, as Luminate and StreetPulse add stores, the new weighting system is flexible enough to accommodate the new ones coming on without distorting the sales picture.
Using the new weighting system, Luminate apparently backfilled the weighted numbers back to the beginning of last year because Muratore reported that in 2024, while physical sales were 77.8 million, the largest segment was indie retail, which collectively sold 23 million album copies of vinyl and CDs, representing 36% of physical sales.
Breaking it down, Muratore noted that of the 44.4 million vinyl albums tracked by Luminate in 2024, independent retailers accounted for 17.3 million — roughly 36%. And indie retail continues to gain ground, particularly in vinyl sales: In just the first four months of 2025, indie stores were responsible for 5.7 million of the 13.1 million vinyl units sold, representing 44% of total sales, he said.
As for CD sales, last year indie stores collectively accounted for 5.4 million of total U.S. sales of 32.9 million CD copies, or 17% of CD sales. So far this year, indie stores account for 1.8 million units of the 8 million CD sales recorded so far — or 22% of CD sales.
Focusing on Record Store Day, Muratore emphasized the importance of recognizing who’s buying physical music today. Unlike the early days of the vinyl revival, he noted, it’s no longer just older people driving sales of physical music — and Record Store Day clearly reflects that shift.
Muratore reported that the top three Record Store Day 2025 titles were Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight” single featuring Post Malone, which led with 59,000 copies sold; Malone’s Tribute to Nirvana with 12,000 copies; and Gracie Abrams’ Live From Radio City Music Hall, which moved 11,000 units.
Muratore further emphasized the shift toward a younger demographic in physical music buying, noting that a recent Luminate consumer survey found that 25% of vinyl purchasers are under the age of 25. He went on to urge labels and music distributors to make sure “they put the right product out for who the consumer is for physical,” adding that the younger physical music buyers wanted Swift and the Wicked soundtrack album.
“We have to pay attention to who is showing up in the stores because it has changed drastically,” Muratore said. “If there were more allocation, this could have been the biggest Record Store Day ever.”
With the Music Business Association getting ready to hold its annual conference for the first time in Atlanta after nearly 10 years in Nashville, some longtime attendees thought the move might diminish turnout. But the organization’s president, Portia Sabin, says the event (May 12-15) is on track to match last year’s total attendance of 2,200 industry executives. More importantly, she adds that sponsorships for the convention are outpacing last year’s numbers.
That’s a crucial factor, because this conference — and others the organization hosts throughout the year — provides about 60% of Music Biz’s revenue, according to its most recently available 990 form, which nonprofit organizations are required to file annually with the IRS. For the year ended Sept. 30, 2023, $1.85 million of Music Biz’s $3.07 million in revenue came from its programs, while another $1.214 million came from membership fees, contributions, and grants. That revenue supports the organization’s staff, which consists of 10 employees, as well as covers the expenses of its operations, including its Nashville office and events.
Since taking the helm in 2019, Sabin has led the organization’s evolution from a trade group focused on music merchandisers into one that serves the broader music business. As part of that mission, she has helped the organization grow into an international force, with executives from 168 overseas music companies coming to Atlanta for this year’s conference. She has also worked to diversify the organization, increasing the presence of women and minorities on its board of directors, which has been expanded to 25 members to ensure Music Biz represents all sectors of the industry. “We’re always trying to be inclusive here,” she says.
Trending on Billboard
In preparation for this year’s event, Billboard caught up with Sabin to discuss what attendees can expect.
So are you and the Music Biz Assn. staff ready to rock and roll?
We are so ready to rock and roll!
How is the conference shaping up so far?
It’s shaping up amazingly. Our sponsorships are off the charts—way over what we budgeted for. Our hotel has been sold out for months, and all the overflow hotels are sold out too. So it’s shaping up great.
Where does attendance stand compared to last year?
We’re on track — about the same as last year [when 2,200 attended]. Attendance at this conference is always a little unpredictable because people book their hotels really early, but many wait until after South by Southwest to register. It’s just how it is.
Why did you decide to move the conference to Atlanta after nearly a decade in Nashville?
Multiple reasons. One was that I wanted to return to the older model where we moved around to great music cities, like Atlanta. The music industry is in many great cities in America, it’s not all just Los Angeles, New York and Nashville. Another reason was financial. Nashville has become increasingly expensive, and we didn’t want to raise conference fees or see hotel room prices skyrocket. So, we really wanted to keep costs down for our members and for our attendees and keep make sure the conference is reasonably priced.
What’s the makeup of this year’s attendees?
When I was hired in 2019, the board expressed that they wanted Music Biz to become a global organization that reflects the fact that the music industry is global. I think we’re really achieving that. A lot of people from overseas have gotten excited about the conference—they’ve seen it as a value add to their business. This year we’ve got 256 attendees from 168 companies coming from overseas.
Is the Trump-era tariff chaos affecting attendance?
There may be a person here or there who feels like they are not willing to travel at this time. But, we saw a similar thing the first year back after the pandemic, right? Then some people said, ‘Listen, I just can’t travel, and just I don’t feel safe.’ I feel like there’s always something going on where some people won’t attend for one reason or another.
Beyond the international presence, how else has the conference evolved over the last five years?
Our fastest-growing membership sector is tech, which I think reflects what’s going on in the industry as a whole. And it’s different now. Ten or 15 years ago, tech companies entered music with no real understanding — they were like, ‘I’ve got a cool idea for an app.’ And it was just dumb stuff that was not needed. Now, they’re more informed, trying to solve real problems. We’re seeing real solutions with real benefits. But now [the tech] people got more with the program, and they are like ‘let’s learn about the music industry and then figure out what problems need to be solved.’ So we’re seeing people coming into the industry with real solutions that give benefits to various players in the industry. Our tech sector has grown a lot.
What other changes have you seen?
Since I’ve been here, we have really worked hard to be more inclusive. So we have more publishing members now. We have people from the live sector—ticketing and touring. It’s become abundantly clear that the music industry has to work together here. We can’t just silo ourselves like maybe once we thought we could, 25 or 30 years ago.
From a publishing perspective, the CMOs (collective management organizations) seem to be getting a lot of attention this year.
Our programming is totally crowd-sourced, so we open the call for proposals, and then we just work through the proposals. The interest in publishing at the conference is huge, and we got a lot of proposals for CMOs programming this year, and a lot of it was coming from European members. So we have some really great, high level attendance from those folks. People were very excited about publishing and we even have a dedicated publishing track this year that’s sponsored by EMPIRE.
You mentioned a growing tech presence. Does that have its own track too?
One of the new themes is “new tech trends” and its programming that focuses on the new stuff that is happening in tech that people can learn from. For instance, one panel I’m really excited about is “From Piracy to Profit: What Adult Entertainment’s Digital Revolution Can Teach Us About the Future of Music.” This panel sounds really futuristic but it’s also about learning from other sectors in digital entertainment.
Will there be programming for DIY artists?
Yes, absolutely. We offer a special ticket price of $49 for artist and we give them a full day of programming on Monday (May 12) where they can get information on making and running a business and it’s topped off with the Spotify party at night.We also do the Roadshow were we visit 3-7 cities a year. We just did one last month in Toronto, as our first international show.
What other programming highlights can you share?
We have a new track called Human of Music, focused on workforce well-being. Another favorite is Workflow Workshop, which focuses on what we do and how we can do it better. And we are still doing the “Let’s Talk Physical” track, which we also do quarterly through online webinars. At the conference it will be on Monday. And there is always the Record Store Day Town Hall [on Wednesday, May 14]. We love the retail sector; it is very near and dear to my heart. We try to support that sector as much as possible.
Is there an AI track this year? What about metadata?
Last year we did a track on AI because it is just so ubiquitous. This year we said, let’s just intersperse it through the programming. So in every track there is at least one panel that’s got something to do with AI, because that was just what was submitted when we made the call out for programming. As for the Metadata summit, because there are so many other pieces, it’s become like the Metadata Technology and Rights Summit; and that’s on Wednesday morning.
You crowd-source your panel programming, but how do you evaluate the success of sessions afterward?
One thing I want to say about the surveys is people would sometimes say the panelists were great but the moderator was boring. So over the last two years, we have been offering moderator training pre-conference, just to improve their skills. We did it in April with a professional moderator trainer, and it’s free for a moderator on the program.
Having attended for years, I know the hotel layout really matters. How does this year’s venue stack up?
This year’s hotel, in my opinion, is more conducive for the conference than the JW Marriott in Nashville — because it’s just really straightforward. You walk in and there’s a big lobby, then you go up the escalator, and there’s a big atrium, and that’s the central hub of where everything will be, with the programming panel rooms branching off from there. That central hub, sponsored by Downtown, will have seating and tables; it’s the sort of place where everyone can hang out. Downtown will have a DJ there at different times of the day, which is awesome.
Will there be live music?
Yes! Every evening event features music. The Spotify-sponsored welcome bash on Monday night will have live performances. The Wednesday night Bizzy Awards, sponsored by Warner Music Group, will also feature live artists. Performing artists include Kayla Park and Yami Sadie.
Will there be a trade show floor?
No, but there will be companies displaying what they do in spaces around the central hub. We call that “activations” and they are all filled.
How are you handling the private meetings that are a big part of the conference?
The private meetings will be happening. All the meeting rooms sell out quickly. We know that is a big thing for people so we structure our programming and try to build it so there is a block open for lunch and other meetings. And while we love the panels, there are other ways for people to interact. So this year, we have a bunch of round tables. We have sync round tables. We have women’s leadership round tables. We’ve got the Startup Lab, where startups can meet with [potential] investors and with people who have been in the industry for a while who can act as advisors for startups.
Now the big question: where’s the bar?
There are two bars in the lobby—one is a standard hotel bar, and the other is a sunken bar sponsored by TuneCore.
Last question. Last year, you said the Atlanta conference would feel like summer camp. Is that happening?
Well, I bought some footie pajamas so I can walk around the hotel in them. And yes, it will feel really summer campy because every floor is going to be filled with just our people so it will be a lot of fun.
The Music Business Association has announced the agenda for Music Biz 2025, set for May 12-15 at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly. This marks the first time the conference will be held in Atlanta, as part of a new rotating host city model, following a decade in Nashville.
The change, announced last March, is inspired by the Music Biz Roadshow series, which has connected industry professionals with local artist communities like Memphis and Chattanooga since 2022.
New events include a First Timers’ Meetup on May 12, allowing newcomers to connect with Music Biz staff and board members, followed by first day-capping party sponsored by Spotify. The State of the Industry breakfast on May 13 will explore global consumption trends and industry outlooks. Multi-panel discussions like Humans of Music and Workflow Workshop will focus on workforce and operational improvements.
Trending on Billboard
The Music Biz Roadshow returns on May 12, with support from The Mechanical Licensing Collective and Made In Memphis Entertainment, to help artists and their teams optimize revenue streams. Tech-focused pros can attend events such as the Startup Lab on May 12, Startup Round Robin on May 13, and the Music Tech Hackathon on May 15. Additional summits include Let’s Talk Physical, Music Security Summit, Publishing Summit, Music & Money and the Indie Label Summit.
The fourth annual Bizzy Awards dinner, sponsored by Warner Music, will be held on May 14, honoring late Twitch executive Cindy Charles, who died in a tragic traffic accident in October, with the 2025 Presidential Award, and Digital Data Exchange with the 2025 Impact Award. Finalists will be announced in February, with winners recognized at the event.
Music Biz president Portia Sabin expressed excitement for this year’s expanded agenda, highlighting the industry’s strong hand in shaping the program.
“The task of building a comprehensive, four-day program for our Annual Conference becomes harder and harder every year thanks to the innovative and compelling panel ideas contributed by our ever-growing global community — it’s a good problem to have!” said Sabin. “We’re proud of how the agenda for Music Biz 2025 came together, and we can’t wait to welcome both new & returning faces to our event in this year’s new host city.”
In 2025, the annual Music Biz conference will be held May 12-15 at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel.
The conference attracts more than 2,300 music industry executives each year and has been held in Nashville for nearly a decade. The 2024 conference kicks off this week in Nashville, running from May 13-16.
Music Business Association president Portia Sabin announced the new dates and venue during her address during the Music Biz Brunch at the Music Biz conference on Tuesday morning (May 14), held at the JW Marriott Nashville.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Sabin previously told Billboard that the conference’s move from Nashville to Atlanta was inspired by the September 2022 start of the Music Biz Roadshow program, which has previously traveled to cities including Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.
“With the Music Biz Roadshow, we bring our members to different cities across the U.S. for free educational programs for artists and musicians,” Sabin told Billboard. “We got inspired by doing that because there are so many great music cities out there in the U.S.”
Trending on Billboard
Beginning in 2025, the Music Biz event will revert to the way the conference had been scheduled when it was then-called NARM, when the conference frequently shifted to a new city.
“We will be on probably a two-year schedule, staying in a town for two years before going to another town,” Sabin said. Sabin noted that the conference could potentially be hosted in cities including Miami and San Diego in the future.
The Music Biz conference’s panel lineup for Tuesday (May 14) includes a wide range of topics currently impacting the industry, including neighboring rights, metadata, catalog sales and the growing popularity of Latin music in sync.
In 2013, the organization formerly known as the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) rebranded as the Music Business Association. The conference spent four years in Los Angeles before relocating the conference to Nashville in 2015. The Music Business Association headquarters continues to be based in Nashville.
The annual Music Biz Conference will move from its current Nashville home to Atlanta in 2025.
Specific dates and venues for Music Biz 2025 will be announced later. The conference will continue in its usual May timeframe.
Music Biz, which attracts more than 2,300 music business professionals each year, has been held in Music City for nearly a decade, and returns this year, from May 13-16.
“We’ve had a wonderful 10 years in Nashville. We love Nashville,” Music Business Association president Portia Sabin tells Billboard. “It’s been such a great place for us to grow and we are so appreciative and are very much looking forward to this year’s conference in Nashville.”
The move was inspired by the September 2022 launch of the Music Biz Roadshow program, which has traveled to cities including Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.
“With the Music Biz Roadshow, we bring our members to different cities across the U.S. for free educational programs for artists and musicians,” Sabin says. “We got inspired by doing that because there are so many great music cities out there in the U.S.”
Atlanta felt like a natural evolution for Music Biz. “When we first brought the conference to Nashville, it was a smaller version of what it is now. We feel like Atlanta has that growth potential,” Sabin adds, noting that music industry professionals from more than 30 countries attend Music Biz each year. “Atlanta has that great international hub airport, which will make it easier for people from abroad to get to [the conference]. We are excited to showcase another great American music city.”
Trending on Billboard
In 2013, the organization formerly known as the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) rebranded as the Music Business Association. Following a four-year stint in Los Angeles from 2011-2014, the Music Biz conference has been in Nashville since 2015. The Music Business Association headquarters continues to be located in Nashville.
Beginning in 2025, the Music Biz event will revert to the way it was scheduled in its NARM days when the conference frequently moved to a new city.
“We will be on probably a two-year schedule, staying in a town for two years before going to another town,” Sabin says, noting the conference could potentially be hosted in cities such as Miami and San Diego in the coming years.
“And I’m sure we will be back in Nashville at some point,” Sabin adds. ‘Nashville’s a fabulous city and we are so grateful to have been here for 10 years. We’re looking forward to this year’s conference in Nashville. Atlanta has so much going on in terms of the music industry there, and I think it has somewhat been overlooked in general. It’s a great spot to have the conference and have this important group of people showing up to do business there.”
Last year, Pandora started to get suspicious about the streaming activity of a prominent act. “This is a top artist by every measure,” George White, senior vp of music licensing at SiriusXM and Pandora, said during a panel at the Music Biz conference in Nashville on Wednesday (May 17). Some of the interest from Pandora users was clearly genuine. But at the same time, the platform picked up “abnormalities” — “lots of quick skips,” White noted, and “very unusual ratios of radio listening to premium listening” — along with “social media sites actively posting tutorials for how to game the Pandora system and teaching potential users how to drive those streams even higher.”
“This is challenging and more difficult to detect because it’s under a background of legitimate activity,” White continued. And he said that Pandora is seeing more of this type of behavior around “established artists.”
White was one of 11 different speakers across a two-hour, three-panel fraud extravaganza — which covered a lot of ground, jumping from bot farms all the way to thieves falsely claiming publishing ownership on songs to collect money that belongs to someone else — at Music Biz. The tone stayed upbeat, though the message was glum and occasionally paranoia-inducing, with lots of talk about cybercriminals hacking into the accounts of innocent unsuspecting users for nefarious purposes.
“We’ve been seeing lately that as technology advances, the fraud is supercharged,” said Mona Simonian, a partner at the entertainment law firm Pryor Cashman. It’s important that “people start really recognizing how much money is at stake here,” she added. And as Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s former “click fraud czar” (real title: head of global product for trust and safety), put it: “It’s always a little bit scary before you get your arms around the problem.”
While some panels stay general, these three sessions (an interview with Ghosemajumder about the ubiquity of fraud, “52 Flavors of Fraud,” and “Fraud Use Cases: What Can We Do?”) brought some hard numbers to a fraud conversation that often remains frustratingly diffuse, because the behavior is difficult to quantify. White had his Pandora case study. And Andrew Batey, co-founder and co-CEO of the fraud detection company Beatdapp, came armed with numerous examples and a boatload of graphs.
There was the account that recorded 33,500 plays in one week. (“The average user has a few hundred to a thousand plays a week,” Batey said.) There was the user with 96 devices “playing from 47 cities in 17 countries in the same week,” a geographical impossibility for even the most devoted jet-setter. There was the group of thousands of accounts all targeting the same songs with 155-ish plays a week, and the batch of 53,000 accounts playing around a dozen acts to camouflage the one artist whose numbers they’re actually trying to inflate.
If this behavior continues undetected, it represents “billions [of dollars] that are being sucked out of this industry,” Batey said. This sentiment was echoed by Christine Barnum, chief revenue officer of CD Baby: Fraudsters are “diluting the pool for everyone.” (She spoke about ways for companies to improve their fraud detection capabilities on a budget, including using ChatGPT to help write programs that can detect anomalous activity.)
Why the upbeat mood, despite the grim news? For years, many music executives, especially in the United States, were unwilling to publicly acknowledge that fraud was a problem. The fact that there was a 120-minute block — enough time to watch two episodes of Succession, quipped Beatdapp co-founder and co-CEO Morgan Hayduk — devoted to the topic at a major music business conference is indicative of an attitude shift. “I’m so happy there’s a room full of people talking about fraud,” Barnum said.
White was similarly optimistic. While recent studies have concluded that around 80% of fraud is financially motivated — grifters running bot networks to white noise recordings, for example, rather than the work of actual artists — White said, “We’ve seen enormous strides in identifying that [activity] really early.”
“I won’t say that’s in control; it’s an issue that requires ongoing investment,” he added. “But it’s at least something we feel like we have a handle on.”
In a presentation at the Music Biz conference in Nashville on Wednesday (May 17), MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano revealed the company’s predictions about the future of music streaming. Namely, the firm suspects that music streaming revenue growth, which has been in the double digits for years, will slow to the single digits, eventually cooling off from about 10% growth in 2024 to 3% growth in 2029.
“We’re in a crazy time for competing for consumer attention,” said Cirisano during the presentation, titled Where Does Streaming Go From Here? She noted that after the pandemic subsided, content providers of all kinds — from music to gaming to video — have had to accept that more traditional, in-person activities are absorbing large amounts of time for consumers once again. “The era of build it and they will come is starting to come to a close,” she continued. “You need to give people reasons to spend time on your platform.”
As part of the return to in-person experiences, MIDiA Research has found that background consumption of entertainment is on the rise, with 18.1 hours of background consumption in the first quarter of 2021 having escalated to 20.6 hours in the second quarter of 2022.
Traditional streaming services — Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and other competitors — also face competition for users’ attention from “non-[digital service provider] streaming,” or platforms where music is part of the experience but not its sole focus, such as Peloton and TikTok. “We are starting to learn that non-DSP streaming is not just additive, it might actually also diminish the cultural capital of [traditional] streaming,” said Cirisano.
While the cultural capital of streaming reached a fever pitch as Spotify editorial playlists, like Rap Caviar and New Music Friday, became many listener’s go-to source for music suggestions, MIDiA’s data suggests that that “soft power” is starting to wane, giving way to sites like TikTok which promote what Cirisano called “lean-through” music consumption.
This can be a positive thing, she explained. While “lean back,” or background, consumption — such as pre-programmed playlists and radio play — is on the rise, young people are also more likely than ever to not just “lean forward” (meaning they program what music they listen to themselves) but to “lean through,” which Cirisano defined as creating social content, curating content and re-creating content with music. MIDiA has found that the average 16 to 19-year-old spends 3.7 hours per week creating content as of the fourth quarter of 2022. More than ever, young people want to be actively playful and interactive with their music, not just listen to static playlists on streaming — though that form of listening will still surely persist.
To Mark Mulligan, MIDiA’s founder, this is a repeat of history, said Cirisano. Prior to recorded music, live bands’ music would be impacted by the audience in front of them. Now, this has taken on a new form in the age of social media, AI and at-home recording technology, signaling a return to interactivity present throughout the long history of music — and marking a change in appetite from the “isolating” and “hyper-personalized” nature of today’s popular music streaming services. “This new generation wants to be more actively involved in music… I think you’re going to have an advantage if you’re an artist that is comfortable engaging with your fans,” said Cirisano.
MIDiA Research has also found that with the emergence of hyper-personalized algorithms on streaming and social platforms, listenership fragments significantly. This leads to superstars having less of an impact, making it harder for that class of artists to earn a fruitful living from just streaming alone. In tandem with creating content and forging brand partnerships, however, these bigger names can capitalize on their fandom. This atomization of the mainstream is also pushing DSPs to differentiate themselves by, for example, focusing on genre, like Apple Music Classical, or targeting audiophile listeners, like Tidal.
In the future, MIDiA’s data suggests that next-generation platforms will create three-sided marketplaces that operate as self-contained virtuous circles. Audiences will consume music, some fans in the audience will also create using the music, and that consumption and participation will signal the algorithm and distribute the music to new fans.
UPDATE: This story was updated May 17 at 7:59 p.m. ET to note that music streaming revenue growth — not music streaming subscription growth, as incorrectly stated in a previous version of the story — is expected to fall to 3% by 2029. It was also updated to note that background consumption of all entertainment, not just music, is on the rise.
When executives from across the United States and international markets convene in Nashville May 15-18 for the Music Biz 2023 conference, they will connect with a trade organization widening its reach, with a leader boasting credentials that are uncommon in the music industry.
Portia Sabin, who became Music Business Association president in September 2019, brings to her role a Columbia University doctorate in anthropology and education and savvy that she gained from a subsequent 13 years as president of the respected independent label Kill Rock Stars and eight years as host of music business podcast The Future of What.
It’s no wonder that Sabin has cultivated an esteemed fan club of music industry professionals, including the heads of other trade groups.
“Because of her background and her personality, she’s got analytical and creative skills to put fresh ideas out there, and she’s not afraid to push the envelope,” says Mitch Glazier, chairman/CEO of the RIAA.
“She remains focused on educating and improving this business, pushing for growth and inclusion while helping others to navigate the challenges that come with never-ending technological and economic change,” says Michael Huppe, president/CEO of SoundExchange. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for Portia as a strong and insightful voice in the music industry.”
Highlights of this year’s Music Biz conference will include four days of panels and workshops, keynote addresses by Kobalt founder and chairman Willard Ahdritz and leaders of the Black Music Action Coalition, as well as the second Bizzy Awards to recognize companies and individuals who are making a difference in improving the global industry. The 2022 Music Biz drew over 2,100 attendees from across some 750 companies, with 8% of participants coming from outside the United States.
“Running a label made me get very interested in the business of the music industry,” Sabin says of the road that led her to her Music Business Association role. “I was also on the board of A2IM [the American Association of Independent Music] for 12 years, on the board of the RIAA for a couple years, on the Recording Academy Board of Governors in the Pacific Northwest for six years and I also started a podcast about the music industry in 2014, so I had a lot of interest in the business itself.
“It’s a fascinating industry,” Sabin continues. “There’s a lot to know, and it’s also one of those weird ones where everybody thinks it’s easy from the outside until you get involved in it. We really saw that in the tech boom, starting about 10, 12 years ago, when all these tech people came into our sector saying, ‘I don’t know what your problem is. We can make lots of money,’ and then one by one they have disappeared. The only ones who stuck were the ones who bothered to learn and respect the music industry.”
Portia Sabin
Nashville Corporate Photography
Originally comprised of music wholesalers, retailers and distributors, the Music Business Association had already begun to broaden its scope during the tenure of James Donio, Sabin’s predecessor — a shift indicated in 2013, when the organization changed its name from the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) to the broader moniker it has today. Continuing that expansion was one of Sabin’s early priorities.
“We’ve made a concerted effort to be inclusive, to reach out to companies that are coming in, like tech startups, that are doing cool things and solving problems that people have,” Sabin says.
The music business, she notes, is “an ever-changing landscape, and I think it’s one of those things you have to be comfortable with when you set out to have an inclusive trade association.”
Today, the Music Business Association has several initiatives to more broadly serve the music industry. For example, the Music Biz conference has added programming that focuses on the touring and ticketing industry “because that part of our business has always weirdly been a little bit separate,” Sabin says. “I certainly found out when I was running a record label that that whole live side was sort of its own animal. The booking agents are over there, the promoters, the big talent agencies.”
But the pandemic highlighted the fact that the music business “is an ecosystem and we all rely on each other, and when one goes down, the whole goes down,” says Sabin of the live sector. “So we have made a big effort since 2019 to get those folks involved.”
The conference’s programming style has also evolved. “We have discovered the power of creating tracks for discussion,” Sabin says. “It helps people get more in-depth knowledge. If you’re going to do three panels on a topic, one right after the other and everybody is having the conversation together, that makes it stronger, so we’re doing quite a lot of tracks at this year’s Music Biz.”
MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano (center) at the UMG Mixer at Music Biz 2022.
Graham Dodd
Sabin’s desire for a larger tent extends beyond the types of companies that make up the Music Business Association. Achieving a more inclusive board “was a huge goal for me,” Sabin says. “It has taken us four years, but now we’ve gotten to 52% people of color on the board, 57% women, as well as a nice, wide range of diversity in company type. I think that’s also really important.”
“She formed a diversity, equity and inclusion committee pretty much immediately, so that was a core element of building and reconsidering the organization,” says Downtown Music Holdings chief marketing officer Molly Neuman, who recalls that Sabin’s early priorities included making the organization’s board more diverse and expanding the voices heard at its events. “That was in place when George Floyd was murdered and we had Blackout Tuesday and all the things that happened in the summer of 2020, so we already had this core unit considering these things for the industry, but we were also in a position to offer mutual support as well as long-term plans.”
That commitment to inclusion was illustrated recently when the Nashville-based Music Business Association issued a statement decrying anti-LGBTQ+ bills passed by the Tennessee Legislature.
Broadening the scope of the Music Business Association also includes an effort to increase the involvement of younger music professionals. “We have a programming track called #NextGen_Now, and we tried our first physical event with them [in March] in Nashville,” Sabin says. “We had a cocktail mixer and it was incredibly successful; they all had to be kicked out at the end of the evening because they were enjoying themselves too much, which is great.”
The association is also reaching students through its #NextGen_U initiative. Like its predecessor, NARM, the Music Business Association has continued to offer scholarships to help the next generation of music business executives.
“The programming that we did online for them was very successful over the pandemic and we continued to do those through as recently as February of this year,” says Sabin. “We think it’s easier for students to attend a two-day virtual conference for $39 rather than flying and getting a hotel room. We also have an academic-partner newsletter now that we send out monthly.”
Willard Ahdritz
Paul Brissman
Another recent Music Biz outreach echoes NARM’s almost-forgotten 1970s-era playbook — the Road Show.
“For the vast majority of our members, their clients are actually artists and musicians and Music Biz [previously] didn’t provide any forums for them to get in front of those people,” Sabin says. “So I put together what we call the Music Biz Road Show. We usually partner with a trade association in a city and go for a day and do a mini Music Biz, where we put on some panels, maybe a fireside chat and a cocktail hour. The local trade association brings a couple hundred local artists so our members get to get in front of their actual clients, the people who they actually want to meet. And we get to do educational programming for those folks. It has been very successful so far.
“We’ve had them in Atlanta, Portland, Ore., and Memphis and we have them coming up in Huntsville, Ala., New Orleans and Miami,” Sabin continues. “If my staff doesn’t kill me, I would like to have at least one a month.”
Amid such outreach, what are the priorities for this year’s expanded Music Biz conference?
“I think everyone is always interested in what’s coming next, so I think generative [artificial intelligence] is a conversation that people really want to have,” Sabin says. “Because our conference is crowdsourced, it’s really fun to see what topics come in over and over and which ones fall by the wayside.
“For example, we had the highest number of [programming suggestions] that anyone can ever remember receiving, like 326 proposals this year, and there was only one on [non-fungible tokens]. So you can tell that’s no longer of concern to the membership.”
But a perennial concern remains: “What are the revenue streams that are out there and how do we capture them? That is what the internet has done for the music industry; it has created boundless opportunities, with this scary downside of, ‘How do [creators] collect [revenue for their creations]?’
“I feel like the music business has always been playing catch-up to technology,” Sabin adds. “A new technology comes along and we spend 20 years figuring out how to get it monetized properly, and by that time another technology comes along. But it’s happening so much faster right now and I think that’s the central interest of our membership, and that’s really what we are.”
This story originally appeared in the May 13, 2023, issue of Billboard.
-
Pages