Warner Music Group’s (WMG’s) Steve Cooper not too long ago said that the foremost is now not financially depending on superstars – which is, in fact, fairly a unique factor from not being culturally depending on them, however we’ll get to that. For a serious’s CEO (exiting or not) to make such a declare is each daring and a mirrored image of the fact on the bottom. In truth, it’s a pure milestone in a development MIDiA recognized years in the past: fragmented fandom. As streaming audiences and consumption fragment, so does the influence of superstars. As with any transition, the shift isn’t linear and there’ll proceed to be extra Olivia Rodrigos and Billie Eilishes, however they are going to be fewer and farther between, and crucially, they are going to be smaller than their pre-fragmentation friends.
Superstars getting smaller is music to the ears of impartial labels and artists alike, however it’s removed from the loss of life knell for large labels. Instead, it merely displays the brand new surroundings through which they may function. Indeed, Cooper stated WMG is pursuing a “portfolio” technique “across a bigger number of artists” to scale back monetary “dependency on superstars”. This comes after BMG’s CEO, Hartwig Masuch, stated of their newest outcomes: “The extraordinary thing about our first half result is that we grew revenue 25% with virtually no hits”. Having no superstars doesn’t imply having no hits, as an alternative it means extra, smaller hits.
In 2019, MIDiA wrote that “Niche is the new mainstream”, that the water cooler moments of the linear period had been being changed by cultural moments. Audiences are in other places at completely different instances, with algorithms delivering them completely different personalised content material. Concepts, reminiscent of ‘song of the summer’, have gotten completely different for everybody. Each listener has their very own track of the summer time. In the period of fragmented fandom, water cooler moments throughout the plenty, the place everybody heard the track on the radio on the similar time, are changed by smaller teams of individuals discovering pockets of likeminded followers the world over.
The consequence for artist advertising is a progressive shift from ‘carpet bombing’ mass media in an effort to construct artist model attain, to campaigns that, as an alternative, attain actual followers with laser-focused focusing on. In the previous mannequin, a famous person artist was a family identify, with mum and pa simply as more likely to know them as their children. But what was the worth of mum and pa understanding the artist in the event that they weren’t the target market? It would possibly play to the artists’ egos, but it surely was an inefficient spend of promoting funds. Now, focused advertising reaches the shoppers who care. The result’s smaller, however extra passionate, fanbases. This is advertising to construct followers quite than audiences. It is only a disgrace that western DSPs are constructed for passive audiences quite than fandoms. That might want to change. DSPs paradoxically triggered the fragmentation, however they don’t present the mechanisms for artists and labels to profit. A cynic would possibly argue that that’s by design.
Indeed, the fragmentation of listening that streaming is pushing consumption in the direction of the center, away from the superstars, as Music Business Worldwide’s Luminate chart for streams of the US top-10 tracks exhibits.
For the superstars who’re used to mega-fame from the pre-fragmentation days, a brand new launch’s efficiency can appear to be diminishing success when measured by conventional metrics – simply ask Beyonce. But, as a result of fragmentation means it’s more true followers that have interaction with the music, the cultural relevance of those smaller hits can really be larger – once more simply ask Beyonce.
There are, nevertheless, further issues. As we’re presently in a transition part, pre-fragmentation hangovers are muddying the streaming waters. Pre-fragmentation hits stick round for longer on streaming as a result of that they had the pre-fragmentation model attain. Since they benefited from the old-world mainstream media publicity, their hits reduce by way of on streaming in a manner that newer ones typically battle to. These pre-fragmentation hangovers have the impact of fragmenting new hits even additional as they take up a lot of streaming’s consumption. The result’s that streaming isn’t a lot a stage enjoying subject as a subject of all ranges.This transition part will play out, and whereas it does, there’s a world of alternative for artists and labels that may harness the deeply held fandom that fragmentation creates.
The rise of scenes
The most fun knock-on impact of fragmentation is the rise of scenes and micro scenes. In the previous world, shoppers had a restricted vary of issues with which they might establish themselves, as everybody was watching the identical TV, studying the identical magazines, listening to the identical radio, and purchasing in the identical outlets. Now, shoppers can construct their very own id from an ever extra numerous set of attributes, throughout vogue, music, TV / movie, video games, politics, and so forth.
As my colleague Tatiana Cirisano put it:
“The result is that scenes are becoming more complex and splintered. Consider the seemingly endless range of subcultures on TikTok, from #cottagecore to #EGirl, or the Instagram account @starterpacksofnyc, which has garnered more than 64,500 followers by crystallising super-specific, yet eerily-familiar, personality types.”
This rise of scenes is what’s going to form the way forward for advertising, with scenes changing into the brand new territories, transcending borders and cultures. Superstars will get smaller, however they may get higher at monetising their superfans (this is the reason Taylor Swift’s Universal Music Group deal features a broader vary of rights than simply recordings, as her gross sales had been solely going to go in a single course). Superstars aren’t lifeless, they’re altering, develop into smaller and fewer, nicely, tremendous. It is an inevitable second-order consequence of streaming splintering listening and the good labels will harness the development quite than attempt to struggle it.