What Does the Future Hold? 4 Music Trends & Expert Predictions for 2023 (And Beyond)

The music industry is evolving faster than ever. Each year new platforms and mediums skyrocket to prominence, minting household names and reshaping the way audiences connect with artists (see: Tik Tok and Lil Nas X). Simultaneously, new technologies put creative tools into the hands of people who previously couldn’t access them.

Predicting the future of the music industry in this rapidly-evolving landscape is tricky. We’ve had the chance to discuss music trends shaping the future (among many other things) with the music industry executives we’ve interviewed on our Music Biz podcast. This article offers a series of viewpoints and perspectives to give you a collective (though not definitive) outlook of the future of the music industry. 

We want to thank all the participants of our Insiders podcasts and give a special shoutout to Cherie Hu, Bas Grasmayer (MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE) and Darren Hemmings (MD of Motive Unknown) for their time and contributions that allowed us to put together this article.

This article was originally written in August 2019, and updated in early 2022 to account for the latest trends in the music business.

1. How A.I will shape all the aspects of the Music Industry

The development of A.I. will automate a whole host of expensive, time-consuming, and complicated processes across music creation and advertising, cutting out the middlemen and democratizing the industry.

The democratization of music creation

A.I. tools like A.I-mediated composition (Amper, Popgun,...) and voice synthesis will change the way music distribution works and make it easier and more affordable for thousands of musicians all over the globe to create high-quality, professional-sounding music.

“It’s a transition from mass-consumption to mass-creation. These kids who grew up in Minecraft are coming through, they entertain themselves by being creative. [...] A.I. is just going to give them new creative tools and let them create whatever they can imagine.

Stephen Phillips, CEO of A.I. lab Mawson

“I am personally excited about technologies that will enable more people than ever before — people who would never have considered themselves "artists" — to make music for the first time, often with the help of artificial intelligence. Such technologies include voice synthesis (e.g. Replica Studios) and AI-facilitated composition (e.g. Boomy, Bronze) tools that will enable people to go through the funnel from creation to distribution and then monetization in record time.” 

Cherie Hu

“The other thing I'm super into is that I think every kid in the world in the next two or three years will have all the tools they need to become a global pop star. (...) From anywhere on the planet: you won’t have to be in New York. You won’t have to be in L.A. You won’t have to be in London. You could be in Ghana and you could be a global superstar. I think it's like two years away.” 

Bob Moz, MD of Techstars Music

“The other trend is the further democratization of music creation through high-quality production software made cheaply available on mobile devices or in-browser, and often has some type of AI-assistance, making it easy to create something that sounds good.” 

Bas Grasmayer (MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE)

Automation will reshape music marketing as the music market grows more crowded

Even today, artists have to compete with an enormous amount of other artists. As of 2019, over 40,000 tracks are added to Spotify every single day — and there’s every reason to believe that this figure will continue to grow. The AI-enabled music creation will open up the gates even further — but as the number of songs continues to grow, the audience attention will remain a finite resource. 

That is a massive challenge — especially for record labels that have to make right bets, while the music market grows increasingly saturated:

“So, in the next 1-3 years, the big success stories in music will be marketing technology. Maybe this is an opportunity for Soundcharts. Maybe it’s an opportunity for the Feature.fm-s of this world — or anyone who can give a sense of automated tools, with attribution, that would allow to put more songs through the system. To know what’s working sooner, and to know which are the songs to invest in on the bigger scale — because they’re already working. 

That is a huge challenge for labels, that have previously been quality over quantity operation. Now they have to be a quantity optimization type-operation — and they still have to do the quality bit on top” 

Keith Jopling, Consulting Director at MIDiA Research.

More income and new, better ads for artists

A.I. will also make it easier to create and deliver the right messages to the right audience at the right time. On the music business side, it will help artists reach their audience more efficiently, and thus, drive more income. 

“Having seen what it is capable of around advertising and marketing already, I suspect that A.I. will come to play a larger and larger role in finessing ad campaigns and delivering more revenue back to artists.” 

Darren Hemmings, MD of Motive Unknown

Advertisers can harness the power of A.I. to better tailor ads to the preferences and tastes of listeners. Algorithms will use consumer data to display adaptive ad-content linked to the specific moment, location, and user, making branded content fit seamlessly into our consumption patterns. Better personalized ads will generate more ROI and more revenue for artists that will target the communications to reach the right audiences at the right moment.

 “I can start recommending content to you as a user, because I can see what people around you are listening to by virtue of proximity, or day of the week, or the day time of the day. I mean, I might not listen to EDM at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, when I'm getting ready for work, but come Friday evening at 7 pm — I'm totally into it. So, just the behavioural patterns of users. And so I think, more and more, the advertising is going to become smarter, and the branded content is going to become smarter, and it's going to become far more relevant.” 

Catherine Lückhoff, founder of NicheStreem

Machine learning will change everything

Music production, event planning, playlist recommendation: machine learning will make it all simpler (and more effective). 

“I'm excited about machine learning and its many implications. It can create better recommendations, help more people make music, make energy grids of live events more efficient, improve the identification of rights owners and royalty distribution, and transform the medium of music itself to something different”  

Bas Grasmayer (MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE)

Machine learning is the fuel of the future, that will transform everything — from metadata management and music composition to the way people listen to music. 

2. How the way we consume music will change

“Voice-mediated music consumption and smart speakers will change the way we consume music” 

Bob Moz, MD of Techstars Music

Voice queries will allow listeners to effortlessly listen to music that suits their immediate mood or preference without having to interact with text interfaces and toggle through albums or playlists.

“What do you play when the person says “play a sad song”? My son's 9. He talks to Alexa non-stop all day. He has no concept of albums. He has no concept of media brands. He has no concept of playlist thing or groups of songs. His relationships are with Alexa and with the artist or the song name. He is [...] discovering things in the voice environment. And [that is] a whole thread in music right. How do we prepare for voice? What's the metadata looks like? What's the tagging look like? How do we read emotions there?” 

Bob Moz, MD of Techstars Music 

The rise of the local repertoires in the streaming age

The democratization driving today's music streaming trends will be linked to the local markets. In these developing territories, music consumption will be different from the one we see today. This new flux of streaming users coming from all around the globe will increasingly place the music industry’s focus on the local repertoire.

“The "next billion" streaming consumers are arguably not going to come from Western markets nor primarily from developed, urban cities, but rather from more rural areas in Asia, Africa and Latin America with deeper interest in local/regional repertoire and talent. Both music streaming services and record labels will have to retool their value proposition, pricing structure and user experience to meet these distinct needs (e.g. low-data plans, multi-tiered pricing, local/regional languages and customs).” 

Cherie Hu

Some of the local markets will experience rapid, significant shifts as a result of complexity of their current system:

“And there's going to be this transition. It's probably going to be abrupt. It's only going to happen once, this big shift. […] Despite how difficult and complex Japan is, the language, the business culture, all these differences; [...] this change has to happen. It's inevitable, so it's just about how that's going to happen. In Japan, nobody knows but everybody's just trying to position themselves.” 

Goshi Manabe, President of Trigger Entertainment Network and the LA-based International Rep & Advisor for RecoChoku

Generative music will rise thanks to contextual playlists

Contextual playlists will transform how listeners discover music, and generative music (music, created by algorithms and computer systems) will increasingly cater to listeners looking for mood-specific playlists.

“People are using music to augment their moments and days. This leads to new opportunities and challenges. How do you still stand out when much of music discovery happens in the background? How do you define and win real fans rather than people who just add one of your songs to their playlists? How does this behaviour compete with other behaviours, like listening to podcasts, meditation soundscapes, or generative music? Generative music will keep on getting better, as more entrepreneurs and investors enter the space, sensing opportunity.” 

Bas Grasmayer (MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE)

We’ve already seen apps like Endel going viral in Japan, and we can predict that other solutions will emerge — for example, meditation apps might employ generative algorithms to power their ambient playlists.

The album will continue to decline, and the post-album era will take hold

Now, that’s not news to anyone — the streaming economy has unbundled music, and the album format has been in decline for years in a row. Now, we are not the ones to proclaim “the death of an album” — that’s an exaggeration to say the least. The album is not going anywhere — even the millennial demographics are still engaging with the format, as the recent Deezer study revealed. 

However, music listeners increasingly discover new music through recommendation algorithms and playlists across streaming platforms. In the coming years, traditional albums will play a supporting role — while the song will take center stage, and become the staple of music creation and promotion. 

“I think the song has become the thing — and, obviously, video is very important as well. Both of those formats are being augmented differently. The song has been multiplied in various different ways: it’s been remixed, we are seeing more acoustic versions, more producer versions of every track. 

In a post-album world, you’ve got so many different formats to work with — I think it’s probably more exciting for artists than we think. I think artists are going to celebrate the idea of stepping out of an album cycle, where you work on this thing for two or three years, and it is expected to last for the next two or three years. I mean, we’ve seen artists who have put life and soul into an album for two or three years, they drop it — in two weeks, no one can remember it even happened. I think we’re going to see a lot more creativity around that, which is great.”

Keith Jopling, Consulting Director at MIDiA Research.

3. How different areas of media will start to converge

Barriers that once existed between various media and creative industries like music, fashion, and film are now melting down, and this trend will only quicken in the future.

“Record labels are investing more in biopics and documentaries around their artists (e.g. "Bohemian Rhapsody"); gaming companies are partnering with artists on in-game musical concerts (e.g. Fortnite x Marshmello); major artists are running their own fashion houses (e.g. Rihanna x Fenty); some artists are even hosting their own cooking shows (e.g. "In the Mix with Matt FX).” 

Cherie Hu

Platforms like Amazon and Apple not only stream music, but finance and stream television shows and films (which, along with Netflix, are beginning to displace traditional studios). Cherie also spoke about new music brands that are breaking the mold of traditional major labels, melding various different areas of media and creative endeavors into a single brand of artistry:

“In my view, new music brands like 88rising, COLORS, Thrice Cooked Media, Lyrical Lemonade and Trap Nation that embrace diversification and border-blending will serve as a much more compelling blueprint for future music companies than any major label will.” 

The attention economy has peaked: music will face increasing competition from other entertainment formats

Now, 10 years ago new media content platforms competed for consumer’s spare time. Spotify, YouTube, Netflix and alike have grown as they took over the consumers available time and unaddressed attention. Those were the moments of people looking out of the window, their daily commute and so on. In 2022, however, the attention economy has peaked — meaning that there’s not much in terms of that down-time left.

Various content platforms and services have successfully taken over the entirety of the consumer's available attention — which means that the further growth of any platform is only possible through decline of others, as the consumer shifts their attention from one platform to another.

“The biggest competition that music faces is other formats. We see it all the time with the analysis we do at MIDiA. Video is eating up more time, gaming is eating up more time, social is eating up more time. Podcasts are eating up more audio time away from music. So you’ve got to look at competition as being everything — that’s how it works in the attention economy. We all know that. Now, we need to understand what to do about it.”

Keith Jopling, Consulting Director at MIDiA Research.

The post-peak attention economy is a huge challenge for music — and a big reason music industry has to collaborate more — not only internally, but also with other crossing over into other platforms and formats like video and video games.

The growing crossover between music and gaming

With the advent of video streaming services like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok, the music and gaming industries are overlapping more than ever.

 “Billy, he was a video gamer. And he just wanted to upload his YouTube videos with music on it but kept getting taken down. He was like, "Right, I'm going to sign the music myself, then I won't have the issue of my video getting taken down". Again he was fulfilling a need of other people like him. And that snowballed, and you now discovered the likes of Alan Walker”. 

Farhana Aboo, Head of Marketing for AEI Group

Collaboration and genre fusion: the "Memes" hypothesis

Apps like TikTok allow listeners to use and repurpose music in unique, collaborative ways will break down barriers between genres (and between creators). That is something that already exists in the underground electronic scene — and it will touch on other genres in the years to come.

“I expect interesting effects from the "music like memes" trend. Here’s an example: someone has a musical idea relevant to their 'scene' or digital community. They put a track together, put it on Soundcloud, share to the community (e.g. a Facebook or Telegram group), of which members then take the idea and iterate on it through remixes, edits, mashups. This is very common in "internet genres" such as nightcore, but could also be witnessed with the rise of moombahton around 2010, as well as most other electronic niche genres since.” 

Bas Grasmayer (MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE)

4. How the financial aspect of the music industry will increasingly detach from the artistic side (and how this empowers artists) 

Labels and producers traditionally held power to make (or at least influence) the artistic decisions. However, social media has empowered artists to create a personal brand and connect with fans directly — without any label interference. This will lead to labels taking more of a VC-like approach, handling the financials — while the artist (and their manager) focuses on artistic direction and brand-building.

“A.I. is going to allow young pop stars to be discovered earlier, to communicate exactly what they're feeling and saying to each other. And I think it'll just lead to a completely new pop-industry. These stars will still need the labels to get exposure and manage their careers. I see labels as VCs for the music industry, and they'll still have to invest in the talent, and I think they'll just see more of it, earlier than they've seen before, and I think it's gonna be a great boom for them.”

Stephen Phillips, CEO of A.I. lab Mawson

“I think we are going to see some interesting models arise: artists with subscriptions, managing the communities better, monetizing like small-middle global businesses. And the team around them is going to be different from what it is today — it’ll still involve managers, labels, and streaming platforms, but it would be a different formula. “

Keith Jopling, Consulting Director at MIDiA Research.

As artists grow more powerful, so will music managers 

Social media and music streaming services like Spotify and Pandora have skewed the balance of power away from labels and back towards artists. In turn, music managers will begin running more and more aspects of an artist’s career. 

In the new music ecosystem, managers will increase their share of the work in artist development, both as promoters and additional D.A.’s (rather than just promoting the interests of the artist).

“With more and more managers taking the power back to run things directly now, something they are starting to realise is that their operation needs solid structure and support. Getting that workflow and organisational side down could drastically change the financial fortunes of many an artist, so I think it's one of those "not sexy, but nonetheless very important" areas that nobody really discusses.” 

Darren Hemmings, MD of Motive Unknown

Conclusion

In just 20 years or so the internet has completely reshaped the music business, and we’re still only in the early stages of this transformation. Democratization and collaboration will become the order of the day: artists will be able to create professional-quality music on the spot. Streaming will conquer new markets, giving millions of people unlimited access to music. The trend of democratization will be powered by emerging markets, rather than the traditional ones, that rule over the industry today.

Artists will connect with new audiences, both far-flung and right at home. Music will be used and repurposed in ever more creative and unique ways. Old barriers between media will break down. All of these processes are already well underway. Getting a peek into the future is just a matter of understanding the shifts that are happening now.

Understanding these trends and how they will change the way music is created, promoted and consumed is extremely important. This is the context in which the music industry will develop in the years to come — and having a good idea of these tectonic shifts is instrumental to success in the industry as fast-paced as the music business.

However, what's even more important is to make a link between the macro- and micro-level and understand how those structural changes affect your career and the careers of the artists you work with. Here's where Soundcharts can help. We gather artist's data across dozens of platforms and mediums, from social media to streaming platforms and radio airplay, to bring you a complete overview of any career. See how Soundcharts can help you leverage music data to build your own trend.