Last week I put out a $100 challenge to pay the first person that could prove the following paragraph is incorrect:
Globally, over the last 365 days, for all genres combined, for all artists that started performing live in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90, and 00s, cumulatively, there is more revenue being generated from live performances, combined with selling stuff (merch, music, apps, advertising slots, streams, licensing, publishing, etc.), than any other year in the history of the world. Moreover the graph of this number is sloping up and not down.
I asked for verifiable facts that prove that the music industry is not in decline. David Pakman stepped forward and offered the following statement via a comment on my original post:
I’ll take the bait. Global recorded music sales were $39B in 2000 according to IFPI. Last year, they were $17B, a drop of $22B. If worldwide live music box office sales peaked last year at $4.4B, let’s assume they were half of that in 2000. If ASCAP performance royalties peaked at $1B, where are the other $18B of incremental revenue coming from to make up for the decline in recorded music sales? We know it’s not music publishing. Are you suggesting the industry now sells an additional $18B of tee shirts? No way.
I think you owe me $100. There is no way the entire music Industry of recorded music, music publishing, and live music and merch are anywhere near their peak.
Today, I paid David for his facts and his contribution to the debate.
When I wrote the post, I knew for certain that someone would step forward with a pile of facts and statistics. You will find similar posts within MTT Stats.
Although I will argue passionately below, that the unmeasurable music industry is far bigger than we know, I can’t prove it with the same facts and reports that I asked for when I posted the challenge.
After some deliberation, I decided that it would be disingenuous for me to post a challenge asking for facts - that I planned to debate with learned assumptions.
Here’s My Response To David (also from the original post)
David. $18B is a big number to make up for sure. You may be correct. However, I chose the words in my paragraph to equal something that can’t, and probably never will be, measured.
Since the year 2000, the WORLD has gained almost a billion people, 100 million blogs and websites, 100 million films and short videos, millions of minutes of television programming, millions of square feet of public performance space, hundreds of thousands of artists, millions of songs - and it all comes on top of what already existed. Expansion is cumulative.
I read the same reports you do. What can be counted has undoubtedly plummeted. What has grown, and continues to grow, are things that matter (to my statement) that will never be easily counted. There’s no way that you or I can prove that on a country by country, city by city, town by town, neighborhood by neighborhood basis, that 6.79 billion people are not spending that $2.65 per person, per year that you say is missing.
Just look at the country of Brazil for example (190 million people). What can be counted? Not much. Yet Brazil has an incredibly vibrant and growing music ecosystem. We would have to pick apart and debate every country on earth, by revenue source, to prove me wrong.
The only reason I wrote this post was to attempt to pull people off the relentless press that drums on about that which can be measured. The constant bombardment of the negative messages (absorbed by parents and then parroted to their children) are pealing kids away from the industry.
That brings me to the “living wage” argument that Suzanne (Lainson) makes. I will turn the table the same way. How does anyone know that on a country by country, city by city, town by town, neighborhood by neighborhood basis, that cumulatively, that there are not more people making a living wage from music now than there were last year or ten years ago? It’s impossible to measure.
Is my post misleading or fact-bending? Perhaps. However it’s no more misleading than the measurable end-of-the-world statistics that repeatedly appear in the popular press.
I know this for sure: great songs are still being made; people are still making money; people are still getting rich; and nobody knows for sure the extent of it (period).
The measurable music world peaked a long time ago. The immeasurable music world has a long way to go.
Thanks for your comments. I will PayPal you the $100 if you think I am breaking the rules here.
About Bruce Warila and on Twitter