Accessing content in multiple ways: why physical and digital can co-exist
Since I started my career in digital some 17 years ago, there has been one clear and resounding belief in the industry; content consumption via physical means is in terminal decline. It’s been all too obvious in newspapers and magazines and almost complete in the DVD market and in an advanced stage in music. It’s often been presented to me as fact that “music streaming is killing the physical sales”.
Vinyl
However, a new piece of research suggests otherwise. The Entertainment Retailers Association has recently published their report “Multi-channel music research report” and it provides a fascinating insight into how people are actually consuming music content when there’s a choice of so many different ways to do the same thing.
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated
Firstly, despite its demise being widely pronounced since the early 2000’s, radio continues to be one of the biggest methods for consuming music in Britain today. Over a third of us are regular radio listeners. This is borne out by the health of the radio industry which continues to hold huge influence over fundamental decisions in the music industry, such as who has the right to broadcast music prior to its official release date.
Secondly, despite peaking in around 2000 or 2001, the humble CD continues to hold sway over all other forms of music consumption, with around a fifth of the UK enjoying CD’s and regularly buying them. This is only marginally ahead of music streaming done by those people free-of-charge at 19%.
Thirdly, a whacking two-thirds of Brits listen to at least two separate music formats. This group of 66% of music listeners, access music by both streaming and either CD, vinyl or digital download.
To have and to hold
Of all these findings, the most intriguing is the huge number of people opting to combine their listening habits across multiple channels. The notion that one form of digital consumption can trump all other physical forms is actually wrong. Not only this, but according to the people questioned in the research, as a result of streaming music, they actually buy more CD’s than they would otherwise. In many cases this is due to the fact that streaming is used as a method for discovery which then leads to a physical purchase. The same is happening in the book world. As the CEO of a UK book publisher recently told me, the ebook world is prompting people, once they have read the book digitally, to then buy the actual book as something they would like to keep.
This leads perfectly into the resurgence of vinyl records. Although the total consumption of vinyl records in the UK amounts to only around 2% of total music sales, there is a growing trend around the value of this physical format. How many times have you been at a dinner party, enjoying a playlist only for the food to finish and your host to reveal an immaculate set of vintage combination of amp, turntable and speakers and polished new/old records? The dropping of needle onto shiny, black record. The familiar crackle as the needle makes contact before the first chord is struck. The whole experience from the sleeve design to the amp controls speaks to our desire to own content in a physical form. We may live in a sharing economy, but the fact is, people still want ownership and attach great importance to something tangible and visually appealing.
Stepping up
Following some stern comments from the likes of Beats founder Jimmy Iovine about the Freemium model (where consumers are allowed free access to the content catalogue and subsequently encourage, but not forced to pay) it seemed perhaps we were going to witness the end of the freemium model. The model remains the method of choice for service such as Deezer and Spotify who have resolutely refused to offer a different catalogue in paid vs free despite repeated pressure to do so.
However, one very clear finding from the latest research is that almost half of respondents cite their path to paid streaming as being via access free. Another myth-busted? For now, at least it seems so.
Tyranny of choice
Of all the challenges consumers face the no.1 issue raised in the research and the one which most music services have not solved, is how to navigate such a vast amount of content. Deezer holds a catalogue of over 40 million tracks. It would take approximately three human lifetimes of continuous listening to get through this amount of music. I consider myself to have pretty broad tastes when it comes to music, but even I would hesitate to listen to some of the more unusual genres contained in a catalogue of this size. Without the efforts of our 50 editors worldwide, and our personalised recommendations through Deezer Flow - a catalogue this size is almost impossible to navigate.
In these circumstances, it’s not surprising that this remains one of the key issues which consumers consider the biggest challenge. It’s very much the responsibility of the whole sector to try and solve it, and quickly.
Conclusion
From everything described above, it seems impossible not to draw the conclusion that old media like radio, CD’s and vinyl are all here to stay. At least for now. Streaming is most likely, not killing the physical sales market, but enhancing it. It’s not too late to listen to those streaming audio - they are pointing the way of what is the most pressing question - how to identify the music they like when there’s so much to choose from? We’re certainly living in a multi-channel world and if true there’s much that could be learned from how people actually want to consume not just how we think they should.
Now pass me that mix-tape.
Christian Harris is vice president-Northern Europe at Deezer. He tweets @Chalfont14