The music industry was deeply upset by the arrival of the Internet in our homes and the democratization of streaming. Physical support no longer exists among young people of generations Z and Alpha who grew up with YouTube, Spotify, Deezer and now Tiktok. In just twenty years, digital has transformed the way of listening to music, but also to discover and create it.
In 2000, the musical market only worked exclusively thanks to physical format, especially CDs. According to Statista, its revenues represented, on a global scale, $ 21.3 billion. Since then, downloading and streaming have passed by, allowing access to a library bringing together the almost integrality of existing music for free or by paying a monthly subscription.
Streaming, now very widely favored by listeners, replaces the physical format each year. In 2022, these supports only represented $ 4.6 billion (around 4.2 billion euros) in revenue, compared to 17.5 billion for streaming (around 16.1 billion euros).
The other obligatory passage for artists – in any case for so -called popular music – these are social networks. The Chinese giant Tiktok stands out as the platform which today allows you to unravel with the general public and expose its music to musical labels on the lookout. In addition to having given birth to several planetary tubes, the network has become a global platform, allowing as much to learn as to discover new artists. Thomas Cerha, head of the music center for Tiktok France, affirms to the magazine Strategies that “80% of users discover new music on the platform”.
Zapping and eclecticism
This new situation affects consumers as much as creators and imposes on the music industry a real in -depth mutation. In an article published by France Culture in April 2022, this new functioning is described as encouraging artists to “Adapting their creations, creating songs that capture attention in the blink of an eye, imagining shorter titles, which can be used as a image support”. A transformation that is not new. Popular music has long been bending to the modes of broadcasting, as was the case with the appearance of the radio and the pieces formatted for the FM band.
How does this functioning mark music consumption among young people? As with videos or reading, here everything is a matter of attention. Listening to a whole album or long songs of several minutes seems to be an archaic tradition. Today, the new listeners bathe in the infinity of music at hand and quickly pass from one piece to another, from one artist to another.
Therefore, the Playlists of the Z or Alpha generations are often very eclectic. The British magazine The Week reports the figures for a survey carried out in 2020 by Youth Music/Ipsos Mori on this subject. In a panel of 1,001 young people aged 7 to 17, each had to appoint their three favorite musical artists. Respondents cited 633 artists spread over more than 300 genera. A richness and a diversity that seems to act the bursting of genres in thousands of niches, where everyone will peck as they please.
Certainly, we can regret the capacity for attention, listening to an entire album as we once watched a film without interruption (or without watching your smartphone), but are these mutations really an evil for culture? These new trends do not at all mark a disinterestedness of youth for music, as can be the case for reading. In the same survey, 90% of those questioned said they had listened to music in the previous week.
In addition, the music industry seems to be doing rather well. According to its figures for the year 2024, the International Phonographic Industry Federation (IFPI) claims to weigh nearly $ 30 billion (27.6 billion euros) around the world. As growing results in which streaming is the main responsible. As for the quality of music, this is another debate.
