Music Business

Jesse Kirshbaum: Trends driving the Music Business in 2025

Jesse Kirshbaum: Trends driving the Music Business in 2025

Jesse Kirshbaum operates at the intersection of music, technology. Today he joins Hypebot’s select group of industry leaders sharing their perspective on trends driving the music business as we enter 2025.

by Jesse Kirshbaum of the Nue Agency

We’re hitting the halfway point of these roaring twenty-twenties and it’s fascinating to see how fast things are transforming. It feels like we’re headed into a boom year with big opportunities.

At Nue, we typically try to create and react more than predict, but it’s the year’s first post, so we’ll bend the rules. Predictions are a fun way to explore possibilities and provoke discourse. Below, we’ve given you our early 2025 forecast and POV on where the biggest opportunities may be:

Creator Economy Defines the Twenty Twenties: The greatest opportunity comes when entrepreneurs first build communities (cults, even) and then layer in products and services later. The model for a creator-led business is this: build trust, drop your cost of acquisition with a high lifetime value audience, know your customer, build a media machine, and then build the product.

TikTok – Too Big To Disappear: All eyes should be on this, but let’s be honest, the decision won’t happen on January 20th. It will be pushed into Trump’s jurisdiction and it’s not his top priority. We’ll see what happens in Q2, but more time will create more opportunities for a plan to keep TikTok alive in the U.S.

The Grammys & Disney: This is the last time we’ll see the Grammys on CBS for a while. The House of Mouse now has streaming rights for ABC, Disney+, and ESPN. This is a paradigm shift and could be a boom for music in the world of Disney. If you can’t picture an homage to music’s biggest stars at Disneyland by the end of the decade, you’re not using the power of your imagination.

Super Fine: That is the theme of The Met Gala this year. When you put Anna Wintour, Pharrell, Lebron, and A$AP Rocky on a committee to pay homage to a dandy era of black culture, there’s no question you’re going to set the tone for style in 2025.

The Color of The Year: It’s official, the COTY is Mocha Mousse and we can expect to see it make inroads in culture. Travis Scott, always ahead of the trends, lit it up with his drop over the break. Putting Dennis Rodman in the commercial was a nice touch of nostalgia (and controversy).

Nostalgia 2005-2015: The nostalgia pendulum swings back every twenty years, so in 2025 we’ll be looking at 2005 for comfort. Can you say trucker hats, skinny jeans, and layered polos? How ‘bout Western shirts, cargo pants, and iconic tees? This generation’s rap is largely indebted to that era’s rappers, including Future, Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert, and the rockstar hip-hop surrealists of the 2010s.

Health & Wellness: This trend is set to accelerate. It’s been on the rise for some time (thank goodness), but this year we will see mainstream adoption and regulation. It’s a bad year to be a Fruit Loop, lemme tell you. But it’s a good year to focus on longevity, a space in which big players will emerge. Choose your gurus wisely!

Mergers & IPOs: It’s been a relatively tough few years for venture capital. Beyond a few choice IPOs like Reddit, nothing has gone well. But that’s about to change. Expect a lot more mergers and IPOs to take shape in 2025. From there, we’ll see a re-conglomeration of streaming and disintermediated media.

Music IP Grows: There are so many opportunities to make music IP and create new hits. In 2024, we got the Bob Marley & Bob Dylan biopics and a slew of other music docs that were fantastic. There’s much more coming in that vein, but there are also other smart ways to create brands, games, art, destinations, and experiences from the vast war chests of music IP.

Record Labels Enter Growth Mode: The last year was about cutting costs, harvesting profits, moving out old guards, and setting up the next era. I’d bet on every one of the majors to show big growth and stocks at all-time highs this year.

Music ETF: With record labels soaring, Spotify flying high with streaming prices continuing to go up, and Live Nation thriving – thus avoiding a Ticketmaster breakup (for now anyway) – it’s a good time for the public music markets. Meanwhile, the private market is rolling as more and more music-tech startups are launching and getting funded. The big macro question is who is going to create the Music ETF. ETFs are buzzing and not just in Crypto. If you believe in music like I do, you know that music stocks are going to have a good year. A music ETF seems like a smart, enviable way to get retail investors into music.

Music Goes D2C & Engages the Super Fan: The music industry has been going through intermediaries forever (Tower Records, Spotify, Ticketmaster), so who are the actual customers? By now, we know that all fans are not created equal. The artists who own their fan base relationships own their message. Artists’ teams often don’t really know who is doing the buying, but I look at the Grateful Deads, the Dave Matthewses, the Beyonces, and the Taylor Swifts of the world to understand the new Artist-to-Fan-to-Community model. Once that’s mass-adopted, it will be replicated by brands outside of music as well. Yes, OREO has super fans, too, and they make a killing selling directly to them.

Web3 Hides The Wires: Crypto is going to be wild this year because once regulation comes, the game will change forever. So, expect the builders to build at record speeds as we need use cases for this to sustain. Surefire problems that Web3 can solve in music are: fan club dynamics, ticketing, AI royalty tracking, and metadata. It’s already happening, you just don’t know it’s blockchain anymore.

Virtual Influencers: I look at them like lab diamonds. They are easier to make and more accessible. The data shows the younger generation cares less and less about “the real thing.” Expect more and more virtual influencers to infiltrate the mainstream until something pops and it becomes part of the new normal.

Livestream Shopping: Someone is going to crack this code in America. It works so well in China and it’s a matter of time before it hits here. Does adding gamification help? Do live content streams? If Amazon doesn’t crack this code in 2025, I’d be very surprised. Move over QVC.

Artists Launch Their Own Sneakers: I never thought I’d say this, but it’s a tough time to be Nike. NBA stars are creating their own shoe lines and customization technology keeps growing and getting better. The majors are going to have to buck up as artists start making more interesting and functional footwear that sets a new trend and makes Air Maxes feel dated.

Authenticity > Synthetic: In a world where everyone is using ChatGPT as their thought partner, original ideas are at a premium. Nobody wants to hear your robot podcast or read your LLM LinkedIn post. Authenticity is the highest frequency and a powerful gravitational pull.

Chaos Marketing > Blanding: The days of brands looking the same and neatly fitting together as iPhone icons are over. With new tools and AI, customization is going to be easier and more normalized, leading to an era of hyper-individualism. Every brand logo is going to pop and get crazier. Anything that cuts through the norm – 3D branding, AR/VR, avatar lighting – is going to be en vogue. I’m obsessed with mascots. Jingles will regain prominence.

Act Global & Think Local: America’s biggest exports are culture and technology, but there are still a lot of opportunities at home. Still, the greater growth potential is overseas. Everyone knows about the opportunities in The Kingdom, Africa, and South America, but I honestly feel like China is still a huge opportunity for breakthrough growth. I’m hopeful for an import/export relationship to create win-wins.

Experience Economy: People are starving for IRL connection points, communities, non-traditional events, shopping experiences, and other retail moments. This is a hot space that everyone wants to take part in one way or another. I’m less interested in a concert these days, but give me a curated adventure with a group of like-minded people.

The New Luxury: Do people care about having more stuff? The greatest luxuries in a hyper-connected world are time and nature. Email, text, and social media have made everyone busy. How you create time for yourself and what you do during that time is the new streetwear. Being unplugged is cool. In 2024, the Surgeon General’s warning about social media was announced. In 2025, there will be age restrictions on social media. Take heed to this. Time away from your phone is so important, even if it makes you irritable and gives you withdrawal symptoms at first.

Wrapped Mania: Spotify changed the world with their data-sharing badge of honor, Wrapped. Apple Music and Amazon have followed. Even though it feels like oversharing, it’s also a great tool for artist discovery and self-expression. Next year, everyone will have a wrapped – from your favorite restaurant app to Uber. Learn about yourself and share your data with pride.

Tech To Watch: This is going to be an explosive year for tech. In 2025, we will start to see Neurolink make major waves and Meta Glasses content to make a bigger mark. 2024 belonged to Waymo and their self-driving cars are going to be everywhere before we know it. Culture drives mass adoption of technology and the people decide which features take off and which don’t, not just the algorithms.

Every baby born from 2025 through 2039 will be part of Generation Beta. Geez! Gen Y, Z, and Alpha sure grew up fast. Welcome to the world, Gen B.

I know you’re all just getting back into the swing of things and have plenty on your plate, so take it with a grain of salt. I always say to focus on your to-do list, not your inbox, but we’re always an email away if you want to share some feedback or bring us on board to help you strategize your next blockbuster campaign.

music business in 2025

Bruce Houghton on 01/08/2025 in Music Business | Permalink | Comments (0)
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