‘DSPs hungry for African music during COVID-19’

This is according to the executive vice-president of Nigerian record label Chocolate City, Aibee Abidoye, who was speaking during a discussion on the impact of COVID-19 on the music industry. The talk formed part of Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit Global online conference in September. Abidoye was joined by Worldwide Independent Network development director Noemí Planas and the co-founder of Kanjian Music, Xiaoman Zou, who each priovided Latin American and Chinese music industry perspectives, respectively.

“Instead of working with release calendars, we were just looking to churn out as much content as we could in a short amount of time, to bring in enough revenue so that we could keep the business afloat,” Abidoye said. “The DSPs were just hungry to get any content, because release calendars were being held back. So it gave a lot of independent artists, and I would say artists generally from Africa, an opportunity to really put out content at this time.

“Because data is still expensive, streaming has been steadily growing, but was still not a match from the revenue [about 60%] that came from live music and other artist services. Virtual concerts have been somewhat embraced. The question has been what is the revenue model if this is something we’re going to continue? How do you actually charge people if data is still expensive? How many people can you get online? If you’re going to do it, how much money do you actually need to spend? Do you need to get sponsors? So the dynamic for those virtual concerts is still something people are trying to figure out.”

Planas said she expected a 10-year setback for economic growth in her region. “Live concerts are not yet allowed in Mexico or Colombia, apart from some sporadic drive-ins. In other territories they are, but with heavy restrictions that make them financially unviable. Despite calls for government support to support the creative industries across Latin America, their responses have not been sufficient enough with no specific sector plans.”

In terms of the music business in China, Xiaoman's comments were positive. “All things considered, 2020 has been a good year for China’s digital music business so far,” she said citing as evidence the growth of Tencent Music’s paying user tier to 47.1 million. “China’s music business as a whole has not really been affected by the virus.”

The talk was followed by a discussion about the future of streaming after the COVID-19 pandemic. Chartmetric chief commercial officer Chaz Jenkins kicked off the talk, saying artists are still learning how to use live streaming to retain audience engagement. “We’re not really seeing any evidence yet of artists using live streaming to grow their audience base. But it will probably come as people learn to use these platforms more effectively,” he said.

But Jenkins said there had been an increase in the correlation between social metrics, international reach and streaming activity for artists, with fans sharing more music and spending more time on social media. He also suggested that most of these changes were happening with emerging artists. "We have seen more emerging artists really grow their audience this year more than ever before. Right at the very top, it’s almost complete stagnation,” he said.

In mid-September, 29 of the top 200 tracks on DSPs had been released within the previous 30 days, compared to 57 of the top 200 in the corresponding week a year ago. Meanwhile, the average age of tracks in the top 200 in the week of 15 September 2020 was 289 days, compared to 183 days in 2019. Big curated playlists on streaming services only account for about 25% of the streams of these tracks.

Hip hop duo Run The Jewels’ manager and business partner, Amaechi Uzoigwe, who also featured in the discussion, gave an assessment of COVID-19’s impact on the music industry: “When COVID lifts, you’re going to see an explosion of music from the big guys as well as from all these new younger artists who’ve found footing."

Meanwhile, according to a recent report by Alpha Data, 90% of streams go to the top 1% of artists. Music streaming giant Spotify’s figures confirm this. In July, the company announced that 43 000 out of about 3 million artists on its platform accounted for 90% of all streams.