The Future of the Music Industry for Performance Artists.

As the creation, production and distribution of music has progressed thanks to advances in technology musicians and other performance artists have had to move to live performances to earn revenue form their material. With live performances shut down for now what is the future for performance artists confined to home.  

Technology over the last two decades has moved so fast that the traditional routes to market for artists and their material has changed completely. The barriers to entry have mostly disappeared, there is no longer a requirement for recording contracts with corporate publishers or the supply chain for the distribution of physical products (records, cassette tapes or CDs). The music publishing industry has become a level playing field that allows artist to write and publish their material quickly via just about any platform. The rise of resources like YouTube, Soundcloud and Spotify have enabled artists of any calibre to publish material.

Through these publishing platforms the virtual audience can access just about everything that has ever been published. Popularity of any particular music or artist will gain traction on these publishing platforms whereas the less popular or more obscure artists will not. These platforms often use AI or algorithms to place music and genres based on user listening habits. If the popularity of a particular artist grows it does open doors for additional coverage in other media.

Some of the older more traditional performance artists may have been slow to embrace the advancement in technology and taking advantage of publishing platforms and social media. For artists that embrace what technology can do for their material they are likely to be among those that emerge from the coronavirus pandemic in a stronger position. Embracing technology enables live streaming performances and although the revenue earned from streaming is significantly lower than performing in front of a live audience at a music festival it does provide the online audience with a live performance experience and keeps the artist in the public eye.

When live performances return, hopefully later in 2021, those artists that continued to stream live performances and release new material on publishing platforms will likely be the winners and most in demand artists. One thing is for sure is that future gigs, tours and music festivals will likely be hybrid affairs allowing those unable to attend in person to experience the performance streamed live to their own listening device.

This may be a simplistic view of where music is heading and there will always be numerous other factors that complicate the picture, however, what is true is that technology has been a driver of the music industry for some time and yet somewhat accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. 

For any live event organisers planning their 2021 events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need to plan every aspect of their event. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors guestlists and ticketing.

Photo by Arianne Cresta Corpuz from Pexels

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