By Keith Nelson Jr.
Happy New Year! Eight days late, but with every new year comes another twelve months to see the technology and music industry complete change. To keep you ahead of the curve here are our top 5 technology trends that will change music In 2014.
Video on Demand
CBS, along with parent company NBC Universal, are testing out the profitability of advertisements for video on demand content. Since 2007, advertisers pay for the first three days a show is released, but a recent Nielsen study stated 60% of U.S. TV households had video on demand. In addition, CBS stated 50% of all their digital customers who use video on demand used it for TV viewing. In today’s market where relatively new streaming services such as Netflix are set to surpass the number of paid U.S. subscribers for cable mainstays like HBO, television networks and cable providers are as desperate for new revenue streams as record labels.
Enter Bruce Springsteen. The Boss and CBS agreed to debut songs from Springsteen’s 18th studio album High Hopes after a January 5th and 12th episode of CBS’ “The Good Wife” with the album streaming on CBS.com for free before its January 14th release. No word yet on the details of the monetary compensation with this deal, but with the upcoming surge in video on-demand advertising and other video streaming services such as YouTube implementing ads in offline videos, television’s music distribution potential will grow exponentially. Robert King, co-creator of The Good Wife even painted a picture for The New York Daily News of what the future of music integration into television shows:
“What we hope to do in the future is bring [songs by various artists] into the plot itself. We’re looking at one plot where the case revolves around the song itself and the lyrics inform the plot.”
Wearable Technology
In the last decade, mp3 players and smartphones transformed the mobile music listening experience into one of immense convenience. In the next decade, the listener will become the mobile music listening experience with the surge of wearable technology. Wearable technology is relatively new and yet more than half of consumers are aware of the new form portable technology according to research firm NPD Group’s Wearable Technology Study.
Fully funded Kickstarter wearable technology project Woojer is a silent device that reproduces low frequency sounds to create full body sensations during music listening with any quality pair of headphones. When placed on certain predetermined points on one’s body the same chest rattling feeling the bass of speakers at a live show delivers can be controlled by the user. With wearable technology creating added layer of fan engagement, artists could start creating music to create a desired emotional reaction and finally have a tangible vehicle to channel those ambitions.
Cars = Mobile Devices
Earlier this year, Google formed the Open Automotive Alliance with its members, GM, Hyundai, Audi and chipmaker Nvidia “committed to bringing the Android platform to cars” according a recent press release on the group’s official website. Google’s Siri rival, the digital personal assistant Google Now recommends, updates on quickest routes unprompted and keeps tabs of personal habits. This same service, when integrated with YouTube’s upcoming music streaming service and cloud based Google Play Music, your car could curate a music playlist for the driver based on weather data, prior listening habits and even destination. Add in the fact that one of the Open Automotive Alliance members, Audi, announced a self-driving car for under 40 mph driving and the car is set to be the next evolutionary step in mobile music listening.
The burgeoning popularity of automotive mobile operating systems could have immense monetary opportunities for artists as it opens a previously untapped revenue stream. In the (very recent) past, artists would release music at retailers, on their website, This past July, Jay Z and Samsung noticed that nearly twice as many Americans listened to music on their mobile phones in 2012 as they did in 2011 and struck a deal wherein Samsung would pay Jay Z ($5 million) to release his Magna Carta Holy Grail album directly to a million Samsung Galaxy owners through its own app. With Pandora planning to begin placing ads in cars this month and partnerships like Jay Z and Samsung’s, the cars may become market to distribute music for independent and major label artists of unprecedented levels.
Social Music
From November 2012 to November 2013, four artists (Eminem, Drake, Kendrick Lamar and 2 Chainz) each charted 10 songs concurrently on Billboard, a first in the history of Billboard. Why? This happened because In October of 2012, Billboard changed their Hot Country Songs, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, Rap Songs, Hot Latin Songs and Hot Rock Songs charts to include began tallying data from streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora and iHeartRadio. Three months later, The Streaming Chart was born and YouTube views were added to the streaming data to chart music.
French music curation start up Wyd has a similar attitude towards music curation as it introduced its recommendation engine in March of last year connecting users with each other, bloggers, musicians and others with like interests. The advantage Whyd posseses is that it pulls content from a wide range of sources such as YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and others. One of the cornerstones that new music streaming service from Trent Reznor, Dr. Dre, and Jimmy Iovine, Beats Music will be based on is expert playlist curation as opposed to computer generated suggestions (a la Pandora). Human music writers and musicians will compile playlists based on their likes with freelancers compiling thousands of music playlists for certain types of people such as a teenage country music listener or a 50 year-old hip-hop lover.
Reimagining Physical Media
It’s 2014: cloud services allow near unlimited streams of music, you can wear your mp3 player on your face and vinyl sales experienced its greatest growth since 1991 last year, for the sixth straight year. However, physical media is proving slow to eradicate even with CD sales dropping by 12.8%, over 113 million units were still purchased. With millions of users losing terabytes of personal data after federal prosecutors seized all of Megaupload’s assets in 2012, the added level of control over your data that physical media affords explains its staying power.
Flash Crystal transfer media to a smartphone with a simple tap on the phone with the Flash Crystal. Flash Crystal can also transfer a smartphone to a desired website, such as an artist’s Bandcamp, where the music can be streamed and downloaded directly from the user’s smartphone. Innovations such as Flash Crystal could marry the nostalgia and reliability of physical media with ease of use, as it uses Near Field Communication to transfer media, a technology that is increasingly becoming more common. In 2013, 285 million NFC-capable phones were shipped and more than 500 million NFC-enabled devices will be in use by consumers worldwide by the end of 2014 according to ABI Research. The resurgence of physical media and hand-to-hand distribution for independent as profitable resources could be products of this growing trend.
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