WATCHING NEW MEDIA PLAFORMS REPLACE OLD MEDIA SYSTEMS • PPM RATINGS FOR THREE GREAT MUSIC CITIES

Vinyl is written in stone.

 I think if it’s made it for 120 years now,

 it’s here forever.

– Jack White

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words but an InfoGraphic can put things into perspective.

Such is the case with a post we saw on Paul Marszalek’s TheTop22 blog [link]. 

Marszalek's post reported the news that gross revenue for recorded music actually went up slightly in 2017. Plus, the sale of vinyl records hit 25-year high ihat year.

But even with increasing revenue and the popularity of vinyl, Marszalek said making a living is still difficult for people in the music business

Marszalek: “From roughly 1997, the music business plunged from an all-time revenue high of $21.5 billion to $6.9 billion. That’s one hell of a collapse. The industry tried everything (ringtones anyone?) to replace CD revenue, which accounted for more than 95% of revenue in 2002; nothing stopped the slide until subscription streaming took hold.”

To illustrate his point, Marszalek used the groovy chart on the right that shows 40 years of music industry revenue by platform.   

The chart, created by Visual Capitalism [link], shows the rise and fall, and now a slight rise, in recorded music revenue.

We love this chart because it makes its point by mapping the revenue impact various devices from vinyl to 8-track tapes.

Compact discs (“CDs”) made a lot of people a lot of money for two decades. CDs made analog cassettes obsolete. But CDs stumbled when their price-per-unit went north of $20.

Then, Napster came along and everything quickly changed. CD sales plummeted. It is hard to compete with “free."

As the next chart on the right shows, the battle now is between physical and digital formats. 

Physical systems, like CDs, vinyl records and cassettes are objects that a person can hold. This makes them easy to price and hard to steal. Digital is different because it is easy to copy and hard to monetize.

 

The next chart of the right shows the year-by-year revenue gains by three big audio streaming providers. It took a while, but music industry learned that subscriptions are a good way to charge consumers.

Music vendors like Apple Music, Spotify and pandora know that streaming audio is a better way to control digital files than downloads.

There are still a lot of problems with streaming services, particularly the compensation of artists, but there is hope on the music biz horizon.

NIELSEN RATINGS FOR THREE GREAT MUSIC CITIES: AUSTIN, NASHVILLE & MEMPHIS

Austin is not only an amazing music market, it is a unique radio city. 

Influential commercial music stations such as Alt Country KOKE-FM and mainstream AAA KSGR are still doing there thing despite their corporate owners.

The real action in Austin now is in the noncom part of the dial. Sun Radio, appearing in the ratings as KDRP, is truly a homegrown phenomenon.  

Sun consists of five low-power signals stitched together and powered by passion. KDRP is one of only two stations in the nation that air fulltime Americana formats. (You will meet the other further down in this post.)

KUTX, airing AAA music with an Austin beat, is doing very well. Sister station, NPR News/Talk KUT leads all other Austin stations – commercial and noncom – in AQH share. We keep Classical music KMFA on the chart even though they haven’t subscribed to the Nielsen ratings since 2016. They are that good at what they do.

Overall, the number of estimated weekly listeners to the three noncommercial stations was up 5% in Fall 2018 compared with Fall 2016.

Nashville is another town where excellent radio has been happening for years. 

WSM-AM played a seminal role in the development of Country music. Today WSM-AM isn’t even listed by Nielsen.

Nashville is also home to the other station with a fulltime Americana format: WMOT. 

Let’s put it this way, WMOT is no Sun Radio. 

We don’t know all the reasons that Sun does so well and WMOT does not. 

One of the big differences between the two stations are the ownership and motivation of the management.

Sun Radio (KDRP) is owned by a not-for-profit organization with no ties to any larger institution. On the other hand, WMOT is owned and subsidized by Middle Tennessee State University. Sun is hungry and WMOT is well fed. Motivation often delineates winners from losers.

Estimated weekly listeners to the five rated noncom stations were down 2.8% in Fall 2018 compared to Fall 2016.

Then there is Memphis, home of the worst performing NPR member station in a PPM market: WKNO. 

We call WKNO The Weakest Link because it is an embarrassment that devalues the rest of the entire public radio system.

WKNO has been performing poorly in the ratings for over three decades. 

Even WQOX, an oldies station operated by a suburban school district has more listeners and probably more influence. In a perfect world, CPB and NPR would replace WKNO with a better operated station. The system would thank then if they did.