Tag Archives: Digital

Music Industry Blog

Where Have I Been?!

So this is the time when I all of a sudden realized that I’ve been gone from my blog for years. The last posts I’ve made before this one are from 3 almost 4 years ago.

Things have been changing for me fast. I definitely need an urgent update on my website regarding resume and everything else. After 3 amazing years working at Tencent Music Entertainment, I have been moving on attending Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California for my MBA degree, and no, I ain’t moving to California just yet. I’m staying in China for now waiting for the world figuring out what’s up so that I don’t have to carry the world’s uncertainty on my own shoulders. One thing I learned from my yet very short career life is to never stress about stuff you simply can’t do anything about, otherwise you drive yourself crazy in the middle of the night, your mental health really goes down the drain, then it’s all sadness and gloominess and it’s not fun. If you are like most people feeling desperate, useless, and sad during this pandemic, just remember we are all like you and you’re not alone, but all we can do is waiting for the world to heal. It’s a slow progress but it’s happening. It might seems that we can never move on anymore but we will. We always move on, slowly but surely. At the end of the day, it’s all very cheesy but it’s true. The true kind of cheesy.

Now the cheesy stuff is out of the way, I figured I should talk something about music. I found it really funny—when you are working in the business, you tend to keep your mouth shut and stop talking about the industry or music altogether for variety of reasons. But I figured that, since now I’m in school again, what is gonna distract me from all the boring business cases and papers (sorry professors) and endless zoom meetings (IKR?!)? Talking about music again. Duh.

Just in time to distract me from my final exams studying sessions, I’ll continue to write about music and the business, blending with a bit of my own insight, music taste, past experience and b-school knowledge (hope I’ve gained some, just to make my parents feel a little better for the astronomical $$$ they’ve spent on my education 🙂

One other thing I also realized is that, we should talk more about music. Really. There are so many business blogs out there, but no one talks about the music, which is a shame. We talk about ranks and numbers and streams and whatever. It’s all shiny stuff and people get all lost and try to figure out how to jump on the next bandwagon and hit a better number. It’s such a simple concept but so easily forgotten: the core of great sales is a great product. I mean, I can come up with a thousand ways to promote a track, but at the end of the day, music is what we are here for. The core of “music business” is really the “music,” isn’t it? Despite how music taste is all subjective, someone needs to be talking about the quality of the product: music—the songwriting, the production, the vocal, the stories and emotions, everything, which I feel like nobody does. So I figure I’ll do a little bit of that as well.

I love to be back, and stay tune for more.

Music Industry

Is Physical Still Worthy?

Long answer short, yes.

People always have different opinions about physical copies of music, aka CDs. The general view of bloggers, music professionals, customers, colleagues, even my college friends, is that physical will soon be gone or is already “dead”. Is it really true?

I want to take a hard look at this. In my mind, any channel of distribution needs to serve a purpose. Because music is so accessible through Internet nowadays, physical copies have to do more than just delivering music. That “something else,” which should be a unique feature of a physical copy, needs to trigger a connection between the art and its audience. The unfortunate truth is, increasing numbers of music consumers don’t feel that the physical CDs they get from record shops can deliver such value. The extra cash they pay seems to be worthless. Then of course, all of us would like to pay less than 10 bucks a month for streaming whatever songs we want. Sweet deal for us, bad news for the music creators.

One of the interesting things I found is that I only see physical sales dipped so much in the western music industry markets. Put aside how the Internet is so much faster and more commonly used in western countries, I want to know why, in other major markets, physical sales can do so much more that sometimes it increases. I want to use Japan as an example, since I was a crazy J-pop fan when I was a teenager, and I want to talk a little bit about my experience as a customer. Oh, just to give you a little bit of background, Japan is the second largest music market in the world, only behind the United States. Data wise, 85% of music sales in Japan are physical in 2014, and digital had even experienced a decrease during that year, according to Forbes.

Japan’s music industry seems very different from the ones of United States or Europe. That realization came to me when I moved to the United States and bought my first CD in US dollars. I knew it because I had a “Really? That’s it?!” moment. You may ask, well Sandy, why you felt this way?

It’s very simple. It’s just not enough. I felt like the dollars I spent on that CD was not worth what I was getting. When I was a teenager in China, most of my spending money went to CDs on a regular basis. Ha, my parents were definitely not the happiest during those days. But my point is, there were more content than just a plain old CD: postcards, stickers, short letters, handwritten notes, invitation to the fan club, coupons for the next concert… you get the basic idea.

Even better, specifically for J-pop music, there was and still is the tradition of releasing an early, limited / deluxe edition for each CD (aka 初回限定盤, in Japanese Kanji). I was obsessed with collecting those. It usually included even more content than the ordinary version, even for the singles. Sometimes it’s physical goodies, sometimes it’s an additional track, sometimes it’s a “backstage” or “in the studio” video, but there was always something more to look forward to and be excited about. Of course, it normally cost me about 1/3 more to get this early, limited, deluxe edition CD, but it made me feel so special as a fan. Through owning all of the goodies that suit the theme of the CD, I felt like I got to know the band and understand the music a little better. It made me more attracted to the work and the personalities through this beautiful art. Every CD was a sonic, visual, and emotional experience. It delivered way more than the pleasure of listening quality music. In the good old days, I was probably the happiest teenager I could be when I saved up enough to buy a new J-pop CD.

I think it’s a little sad that, many artists, managers, and companies in western markets are not taking full advantage of physical copies; it’s always just a thin little piece of CD. Instead, they switched their main focus to digital, merch, tour, social media promotion, so on and so forth. It’s great that these other things work out, and I’m by no means saying to eliminate those strategies. But what about the music itself? What about the excitement, the connection, the sense of understanding one another, and the feeling of belonging somewhere that can be communicated through music? That little something extra, which can lift this great excitement to another level, really says a whole lot and goes a long way. It’s almost parallel that in our Internet era, people ask “what’s the point of handwritten letters?” The Internet is great, but it’s just a tool. It works like a machine and pumps out information, data, music, whatever. But because we are all just facing our screens, it takes so much effort to come off as genuine and show our true personalities. So why don’t we do just a little more with the physical CD that can easily connect artists with fans? It’s tangible. When we open up a CD, it’s a magical connecting moment. It’s nice. We love it. Of course, making extra stuff is going to drive the sales price to increase. But if I love you as a fan, I gotta want to get to know you and touch your soul. A little extra expense? Not so much of my concern anymore.

You may understand me a little better now. When I got my first CD of an American band, I bought it for almost 13 dollars, with 10 tracks and a thin little lyrics booklet. Yeah, there were some gorgeous, obviously photoshopped pictures here and there, but they didn’t say much about either the music or the band. I guess sometimes, we all try a little too hard to look pretty.

 

Forbes on Japanese Music Sales http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2014/09/21/85-percent-of-music-sales-in-japan-are-cds/

Global Music Industry Share Data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_music_industry_market_share_data