As 2024 is coming to an end soon, the market for music promotion has only increased. With the enhancing popularity, here are the top music marketing trends you cannot miss!
The industry of music marketing is huge and the popularity of music promotion is increasing day by day. This came from realising that digital streaming has made it easy for talents to reach every corner of the earth. At the same time, this has also grown some insane competition, which is why every artist is now looking for personalized, unique, and effective music marketing. According to different surveys, making it big in this streaming era without going viral from a marketing push on any social media application is nearly impossible.
2024 also saw some of the most unique, thoughtful, and impactful music marketing trends in the industry. From the integration of AI to bit-sized music videos, the trends are evolving. So, let’s look at the top music marketing trends that are ruling 2024.
1.AI and its normalization
According to Collins Dictionary, “AI” is the word of the year, and it is hardly a surprise why. Artificial Intelligence has disrupted any and every industry, including our daily conversations. In 2024, AI and AI tools have become a general part of the music industry and have become more normalized than before. With the increase of AI tools and technology in the music industry, hopefully, there will be clearer laws regarding copyright and AI. When it comes to music marketing trends, artists now are accessing more AI tools in their marketing campaigns, streamlining things. This further makes things easier for smaller artists as they can focus on the creative aspects.
2. The change in social media usage
Social media is no longer where you post your upcoming music or concert pictures. It has become more like a concert hall, where you perform, do meet-and-greet, and everything else. Social media platforms like TikTok, and Instagram, which are video-based are not just growing, but they are changing the rules of marketing. This makes these platforms extremely essential for musicians as well. Artists are now harnessing the power of these platforms and their followers to not just showcase their music, but to connect with their fans, sometimes even sell the merchandise directly. The new rule is to get social!
3. More focus on community
As mentioned before, social media platforms have become a crucial part of music marketing strategies in 2024. This also gave more focus on communities where along with the growing economy, superfans have become more important than ever in a musician’s career. There is currently an oversaturation of music and content. So the music industry professionals or musicians are more focused on building a community for themselves. This also includes building a connection with superfans over other marketing strategies. So, now rather than seeing their fans as a whole community, artists are focusing on superfans, whom they identify by their willingness to support the said artists and their musical adventures.
4. Streaming services domination
Streaming platforms have been a strong shift to digital marketing. In 2024, the importance of streaming platforms and good performance there have only increased. It is not just about making playlists anymore. Spotify and other audio streaming platforms have added more interactive features to their applications, so the possibilities are endless. Spotify’s latest efforts to collaborate with its playlists have given a new marketing technique to musicians. The playlists generate a lot of streams daily and getting in those playlists would help boost a song’s stream count a lot. The streaming platforms are now also boosting the visibility of these artists to dedicated and sometimes brand-new listeners.
5. Hyper personalization
One of the major music marketing trends in 2024 is hyper-personalization and AI’s usage for it. When it comes to big data, analytics, and most importantly, advertisements, AI is being used more than ever to give listeners a customized experience. Marketers now have the opportunity to redefine their advertising techniques and hyper-targeting the audience with not just music releases, but also merchandise, tour, and event recommendations. Now, these recommendations have also become more precise than ever.
With big data algorithms and social media platforms evolving alarmingly, these customized content recommendations are boosting conversion rates. They also play a major role in developing the audience for a musician. With this marketing technique in the market in 2024, we can only hope we will get to witness more creativity and innovation regarding AI in marketing!
6. Subscriber-only content
In 2024, different streaming pay-out models and two-tier licensing are huge deals. So, naturally, there is a growing focus on subscription-only content that musicians and their teams are monetizing. This is one of the most prominent music marketing trends that is quickly gathering popularity among mid-tier artists who are looking for an alternative revenue stream. There is a high chance that even DSPs will get involved in this hosting market, which is based on subscriptions. However, it is still unclear whether the artists would like to use a third-party provider, specializing in this kind of content.
7. Bite-sized video format
It is quite known that in the last two decades, human attention span has decreased. Our attention span has gone down drastically, from 12 seconds to 8.25 seconds. So, platforms are now prioritizing short yet engaging content, even for musicians. We can call these content mini masterpieces that are perfect to catch the attention of thumbs scrolling up and down on a social media platform and turning them into loyal fans. Now, with the DSPs getting into short-form video content games, video content’s dominance on the internet has only increased, and became even widespread in 2024. This means this short video content is not going anywhere. So, the music marketers have decided to profit off of them and include these bite-sized video content in their music promotional campaigns.
Other than these new trends, in 2024, we also got to see the arrival of Augmented Reality. Utilizing this, several virtual concerts were held in 2024, which have established themselves as paradigm-shifting phenomena. Eminent musicians like Imagine Dragons, Mariah Carrey, Elton John, David Guetta, Lil Nas X, etc. have all participated in this bandwagon of virtual concerts. This is also likely to get more popular as viewers in virtual concerts have control over their viewpoint, as opposed to traditional concerts.