The music industry in 2021. A few insights…

Without out a huge preamble or some clever introduction about the sucky year that was 2020 and the hopefully less sucky year that 2021 could be, here are some fairly general and pretty specific thoughts about the music industry and some trends to watch for as we start the new year:

1. The popularity of podcasts will continue to cannibalize music streams worldwide. What??? You say… Yes, Billboard reported that music streams went-up marginally while the number of new paying subscribers grew. The culprit? Podcasts and video games. Even in lockdown, we have seen that there are a finite number of hours a day that your average listener will stream music. Also, there has been a huge push by the streaming platforms to push listeners to podcasts (which are far cheaper for them) so, music people are turning to podcast people. Finally, I could write pages on the importance of video games and how their growth happened despite the pandemic. The future of entertainment are video games. The video gamers are going crazy during the lockdown.
2. Artists will be releasing singles versus albums across the musical spectrum — not just pop or hip hop. This has been a trend in pop music and hip hop for some years. But now, we are seeing classical, jazz, new age and even country artists releasing singles instead of albums. The album isn’t going away. However, artists need to…