Jay Gilbert: Trends that will drive the Music Business in 2025

We asked a handful of the new music industry’s finest to share the top trends and technologies they see gaining steam and shaping music and the music business in 2025. Today, Jay Gilbert shares his thoughts.

Hypebot readers know Jay Gilbert as the co-host of both the Music Biz Weekly podcast and Your Morning Coffee podcast and newsletter.

Few in the music business have Jay’s multi-faceted knowledge as a major label alum, indie music marketing and label services provider and a journalist.

Here are Jay Gilbert’s three trends that will drive the music business in 2025.

FANS ARE THE NEW CREATORS

Generative AI platforms and tools are enabling fans to co-create music alongside their favorite artists, blurring the lines between music consumption and creation.

Younger generations, who have grown up with technology, view music creation differently than previous generations. These fans are no longer content to passively listen, they want to participate by speeding up, slowing down, reverbing, breaking out stems, remixing, interpolating and reimagining tracks by their favorite artists.

Online communities (e.g., Bandlab, Discord servers, Reddit forums etc.) are fostering collaboration among fans to share tools, techniques, and inspiration.

Look for a new revenue streams from commercialization of fan-made content.

A PLAYLIST IS NOT A MARKETING PLAN: DRY STREAMS, VINYL & FANDOM

In 2025, vinyl continues the long road back from fandom to consumption. Look for “pre-release” campaigns with premium vinyl coming weeks ahead of streaming as predicted by Will Page & Fred Goldring in their Billboard guest column, How Vinyl Can Harness the Influence of Superfans, “with streaming, you merely press your thumb on a piece of glass. Owning, holding and displaying a curated vinyl record with unique artwork has much deeper meaning to a fan.”

Fans today are drinking from a firehose of new music being released each week. Spotify announced in October that they were seeing 105,000 tracks added to the platform daily on average. If you take into account platforms like Soundcloud and YouTube, some experts estimate that number nearly doubles.

Last year, Luminate tracked 184 million tracks (ISRCs). Of that number, 152 million had 1,000 or fewer plays (86%) and 46 million had ZERO plays (25%). The barrier to entry has disappeared. Less than 4% of those tracks were released by the majors yet they make up nearly 64% market share. It’s easier than ever to release music globally yet harder than ever to rise above the noise and clutter to achieve audience growth and real, sustainable engagement.

Vinyl is ownership, streaming is access. Fans want both.

DIRECT TO CONSUMER (D2C) REVOLUTION

There are so many benefits to developing a robust direct-to-fan relationship, not to replace traditional “middlemen” like labels, distributors, retailers and DSPs, but to supplement them. D2C can take the form of website sales, venue sales, fanclubs, and crowdfunding.

There are a lot of great platforms to get you started like Bandzoogle, Bandsintown and Bandwear.

Artists and their teams are finding a lot of freedom in the products and experiences they offer D2C. They also gain greater control over pricing / margins, capture valuable fan data to foster direct to fan relationships.

More Trends that will shape the Music Business in 2025

Bruce Houghton on 12/26/2024 in Music Business | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: DIY musicians, music, music business, music industry, music marketing, musician, musicians, Spotify

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