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Blockchain Technology

• Selling band merchandise online: Many popular and upcoming bands or

musicians sell merchandise such as sweatshirts or t-shirts with the band

logo or a line from a famous song, caps, magnets, backpacks, notebooks,

laptop covers, badges and so on.

• Selling beats or sub parts of a song: Some beats or sample notes from

recorded songs are sold to other artists, such as DJs and sound engineers,

who mix these beats to get a remixed version from a bunch of other songs.

9.12  IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON MONETIZATION

IN THE INDIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY

There has been a major impact because of Internet usage and high usage of the

streaming services worldwide. This chapter focuses on the impact in the Indian

market.

The structure of the Indian music industry can be divided into three main core

business entities: The live industry, the recording industry and the publishing indus­

try. In the next few lines, revenue collected in each of these three business units

is explained. The live industry is wide-ranging and disjointed, and hence, precise

details are difficult to get. Based on the data from the Indian Music Convention,

PwC data and the discussions from industry, the total revenue in live business is

$280 million. Out of the $280 million, $84 million is accounted for by ticket sales,

and the remaining $196 million is from the collective revenues obtained from brand

sponsorships, private events, merchandise sale and so on. The recording industry

is the one that deals with the recording labels, like T-series, Sony-music, Lahari

Music, Tips, Times Music and Venus, to name a few. Reports from the International

Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) say that the revenue generated by

the recording industry in 2018 was $153.1 million, of which $105.64 accounts for

revenue obtained from streaming out of the total recording revenue. Around 80% of

the music recorded is for films. The publishing industry is still in its initial stages; a

proper publishing pipeline is under development. As of 2018, the songwriters’ and

composers’ royalties make up less than 1% of the total industry’s revenue.

The total estimate of the revenues from all the three business units adds up to

$443 million. Figure 9.5 below shows the distribution of the total revenue collected

from the music industry.

The two historical players, Gaana and Saavan (JioSaavan – 2018 merger), had

their highest number of streaming users around 2015–2016. Until 2015, the digital

revenues had been stagnant for the past 5 years. From 2015 to 2018, there was a

growth of 210% in the digital revenues owing to the sudden surge in the number of

people using the Internet, thus making the streaming services an established player

in the ecosystem. According to one report, as of December 2018, the number of users

of streaming services in India was 150 million. Figure 9.6 shows the trend of the

digital revenue from 2013 to 2018 in millions of US dollars.

In recent years, many music streaming services have become popular in India,

some of them being Gaana, Amazon Music, Wynk, YouTube Music, Google Play