Those Who Will Not Face The Music

in times of distress mankind has traditionally turned to God, but not just to God. History shows that the stress and trials of war, strife and the financial devastations that they have brought in their wake like the Great Depression, have reflected in outbursts of creativity – like music and the arts – and have spawned patrons among the masses. So, European Jazz and Waltz music and the Latin American Ramba and Samba caught the imagination of the world in the inter-war period and Hollywood rose to its prime right through the Great Depression.

In the Indian subcontinent, the great famine of 1943 and the traumatic last lap of the British Raj spawned musicals and stage plays and a whole genre of patriotic songs. All through the regime of rationed food and high inflation of the 1950s, 1960s and right uptill the 1970s, Indians flocked to movie theatres to forget the woes of a life of want in the romantic fantasies conjured up the “dream merchants” of  a rising and evolving world of  Hindi and regional cinema.

The screen heroes of these tales of romance, be it Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar or Ashok Kumar in the north, or M. G. Ramachandran (MGR) and N. T. Rama Rao (NTR) in the south, turned into bankable faces that sustained an industry. With these bankable faces rose a whole tribe of bankable voices like those of Lata Mangeshkar, Kishor Kumar and Manna Dey.

Film playback music evolved as a genre and slowly outshone classical and traditional forms of music in terms of revenue. Today 80 per cent of the recorded music sales in India are from Hindi film playback songs.

The 2008 Crisis
If our hypothesis is that music has tended to be mega cash earners whenever the wheels of industry and manufacturing have slowed, it should be sustained by more recent crises of global dimensions. So, did music turn into a mega cash churner during the 2008-9 global recession triggered by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States?

In truth recorded music sales plummeted during 2008 and 2009, but the slide had begun way before the financial crisis rocked the world. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) data for the period indicates that overall music sales fell by a whopping 30 per cent between 2004 and 2009. Specifically in the wake of the financial crisis, something else happened in the world of music, though.

Music slowly moved out of stereophonic systems into phones and computers. Music went digital and turned mobile. During 2009 digital channels accounted for 27 per cent of music sales, moving up from 21 per cent in 2008. Not counting electronic (or video) games, music was the most significant cash earner for the online and mobile market during this spell, overtaking other forms of entertainment like films , newspaper and magazines. So, yes, music was indeed the prime diversion or source of solace of a world in the grips of a recession in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Cut to Covid-19
So, could Covid-19 and the worldwide slump in business it has induced be killing the commercial prospects of these fantasy havens of mankind? Apparently yes, since movie theatres are unlikely to reopen just yet and cinema producers cannot begin new ventures during the lockdown. Live music performances, which are big revenue earners for vocal or musical artistes, have to be written off too.

Yet even a cursory look around social media suggests that it is indeed music that is sustaining a world so overwhelmingly drenched in gloom. Not only are professional performers singing and playing through the video format, the occasional hummers and ‘bathroom singers’ have begun to post their contributions to the world of sound and lyrics on YouTube and Facebook and seem to be acquiring ‘views’ and subscribers.

Music Streaming
It goes without saying that like movies, music does indeed, dominate the mind space of the home-bound part of the world. How far can the commercial returns of this mass mania be? Music is playing at most times in most homes and usually, music of several genres are playing in the same homes on different devices. So, music streaming is likely to emerge among the winners of the Covid-19 induced slump. We need to only wait for the numbers to show up.

On a global scale, paid music streaming services accounted for 32.9 per cent of the $19.1 billion revenue of the recorded music industry in 2018, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. During 2019 the revenue from streaming services grew by 22.9 per cent, when the total revenues of the recorded music industry grew by 8.2 per cent to $20.2 billion. Revenue from music streaming was $11.4 billion, making up more than half of the cumulative revenue of the industry for the first time in 2019.

The growth was driven by a 24 per cent increase in paid subscription for music streaming – a phenomena that reflected in all markets across five continents. World over, music streaming acquired 341 million paid users at the end of 2019 – or shortly before the world downed shutters to most activities and movement beyond the home.

Shift in Venue
Sure, music must have stopped playing on car stereos during morning rush hours or on the office computer at lunch break. Even though data is still hard to come by, an easy guess is that music – be it Shreya Ghoshal, Sunidhi Chauhan from the Hindi filmdom or Taylor Swift, Maroon 5 or Adele from across the seas – is definitely playing on home computer systems at all hours, from the kitchen table to the study room.

The streaming services available within India are also an even mix of desi hues and foreign complexions – from market leader Gaana (of the Times Internet stable) and JioSaavn (Reliance Industries Limited) to the Swedish Spotify, the US Apple Music and YouTube Music.

As the European Union Commissioner Phil Hogan told the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) on 3 June, “Digital is already our present.” He then went on to assure the recorded music industry, “and as you know, under this Commission, it is one of our absolute priorities for the future.” Hogan’s address on ‘Global Music and Global Trade’ at the annual general meeting of the ICMP came two months after 37 music industry organisations wrote to the European Union, seeking “sustainable public support and structural policies at the EU, national, regional and local level to consolidate the music ecosystem and help it thrive again in all its diversity.”

In its 3 April missive to the EU, these organisations perhaps spoke for the music industry the world over when they said, “As borders close, venues as well as festivals suspend their activities, performances are cancelled, group activity is stopped, shops close and new releases are put on hold, the entire creative value chain is stalling.”

Live performances, which make up a part of the revenue of the music industry in India too, are definitely off the radar for the moment. Recorded music sales may not be as robust as they were in the years gone by, but public expenditure on music streaming could scarcely fall behind in times when most other sources of entertainment are beyond reach.

So, the odds are that the end of the year will bring happy tidings from one industry at least, both in India, where revenue from recorded music sales grew by 18.7 per cent in 2019 – and around the world. The losses from live performances and sales in record labels, let us assume will be balanced to an extent by the earnings of music streaming services.

As Hogan said in his concluding remarks, “Ladies and gentlemen, music is being consumed more than ever before and it remains central to our lives.”

1. Leaders in the Music Streaming Business in India

1. Who Made Most Music in 2019