Sophie Moser 0:02
Hey, I'm Sophie.
Sophia Barber 0:03
And I'm Sophia.
Sophie Moser 0:05
And this is the That's Showbiz, Baby! podcast. Hey, listeners, happy new year, we are excited that you're all back to kick off season two of the podcast, which is super exciting. Hope you had a restful holiday season. And we can't wait to kick off another season of super fun and exciting and informative content. So welcome back.
Sophia Barber 0:32
Yeah, welcome back, everyone. So today, we wanted to do kind of a wrap up of the music industry in 2020. A lot of it was pretty grim. But there were some standout kind of exciting moments and developments that we're going to talk about. But we're going to start on a pretty sad note. And Sophie and I are each going to kind of highlight one artists that we lost in 2020 and their impact on the music industry and a little bit about them. So I'm going to start with Little Richard, who passed away on May 9th, 2020, at age 87, from bone cancer according to his lawyer, and Little Richard is often cited as the architect or archetype of rock and roll, and his hits include "Tutti Frutti," "Long Tall Sally," "Lucille," and "Good Golly Miss Molly." So let's play a clip of one of my favorite Little Richard songs, "Lucille."
Audio 1:26
*Clip of "Lucille" by Little Richard*
Sophia Barber 1:48
So I love that song, and his vocals are just so incredible. And his songs became part of rock and roll canon, and were covered by huge artists in the decades to come. And he also paved the way for androgyny and flamboyance for men in music. And it's very clear that artists like Prince took inspiration from Little Richard. So obviously, he led a long, successful and complicated life that we can't completely cover on the podcast, but we wanted to pay our respects to him, and encourage you all to listen to more of his music, if you haven't.
Sophie Moser 2:19
The artists I want to talk about who passed away in 2020 is Eddie Van Halen he passed this year on October 6th, and I'm sure you all have heard of him. He was the superstar guitarist and the founder, or, known as the founder of Van Halen, which, of course, was an uber successful hard rock band that dominated the rock scene in the 70s and 80s, in particular, but has left a legacy to this day. And some of their biggest hits include "Jump," "Panama," "Running With The Devil," "You Really Got Me," and "Hot For Teacher," which is one of my personal favorites from Van Halen. So let's take a listen.
Audio 3:27
*Clip from "Hot For Teacher" by Van Halen*
Sophie Moser 3:32
So, I know I really enjoy throwing it back and listening to Van Halen. And I know many, many do. So it's great to, again, pay our respects to an icon like Eddie Van Halen, and he did pass away from cancer after a long battle with it. So that's a little bit about him.
Sophia Barber 3:51
Yeah, and we know, especially due to COVID, so many amazing artists were lost in 2020 that we can't highlight. So I would recommend checking out, you know, rollin- Rolling Stone or the Grammys In Memoriam for 2020. And learning more about the artists that impacted the music industry that we lost.
Now we're gonna move on to kind of a brighter now and we're going to talk about some breakout artists of 2020, who really, despite all the hardships of the year had a pretty good year. So I'm going to talk about Phoebe Bridgers and she's been making music for a while with her first EP that's available on Spotify being from 2015, but she was really blown up in 2020. Her song "Kyoto" was even placed on Barack Obama's favorite music of 2020 playlist. So let's take a listen to "Kyoto" by Phoebe Bridgers.
Audio 4:55
*Clip of "Kyoto" by Phoebe Bridgers*
Sophia Barber 5:18
And as we talked about on our Grammy nominations episode, she was nominated for a 2021 Grammy for Best New Artist, and she also recently collaborated with Fleabag's Phoebe Waller Bridge for her video for the song savior complex and performed alongside Dolly Parton and Cher at Cyndi Lauper's Home for the Holidays benefit concert. Additionally, her album "Punisher" was fourth on Pitchfork's Best Albums of 2020 list. So Phoebe has had a pretty good year. And from what I read, she seems like a really cool person. And I enjoy her music. So how exciting for her.
Sophie Moser 5:54
Now I kind of have a little, I'm going to do a little duo highlight for breakout artists from 2020. And I'm going to focus on two rap artists that kind of broke out: 24kGoldn, who we kind of talk about a lot, but that's okay. And Megan Thee Stallion. So obviously, both of these artists really broke out into the music scene this year. 24kGoldn, particularly with his song "Mood" featuring Iann Dior, who kind of like almost a third shout out, is also really gaining traction.
Audio 6:31
*Clip of "Mood" by 24kGoldn*
Sophie Moser 6:59
And then of course, he did a remix of that song with Justin Bieber and J Balvin. So that just goes to highlight how successful he became this year. He had some great Billboard moments sitting even at number one and then you know, throughout the top 10 for quite a while. And then the same thing with Megan Thee Stallion she broke out particularly with her song "Savage."
Audio 7:22
*Clip of "Savage" by Megan Thee Stallion*
Sophie Moser 7:46
And it's I think it's just kind of fun, they kind of go together. These were two really big, like Tik Tok songs, and really kind of splashed onto the music industry scene and gathered quite a lot of attention. So it's cool to think about some of these big songs and big artists from 2020 and take a look back.
Sophia Barber 8:05
Yeah, 24kGoldn, from his hit song bleep I go to USC, we don't curse on this podcast everyone, to hit a collabing with Justin Bieber, we're proud of him.
Sophie Moser 8:18
Yes, ex-USC friend in our midst.
Sophia Barber 8:23
Yes. So now we're going to kind of move on to more of the industry and the stats side and talk about some business, business growth and trajectory. So I'm going to talk about physical sales, so of vinyl, CDs, and, shockingly of cassette tapes in 2020. And a lot of these statistics are just for the first half because the, you know, data for the second half of 2020 hasn't been released yet. So work with us on that one. But I'm going to start with vinyl and vinyl sales absolutely boomed in 2020. In the first week, or in the week of November 27th to December 3rd, which is the week after Black Friday. 1.253 million vinyl records were sold in the US, which was the largest sale week for the format since they started electronically tracking music sales in 1991. And surprisingly, and like happily, indie physical store sales accounted for about half of that number. Thanks to Record Store Day Black Friday, so people are going out and supporting their local indie record stores, which is awesome. And the top four best selling vinyls of that week. In order. Were "Fine Line" by Harry Styles, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" by Vince Guaraldi, which is one of my personal favorite Christmas albums. "Queen's Greatest Hits" and "When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go" by Billie Eilish. So honestly that list besides I guess, "Queens Greatest Hits," that's cool that it's on there, but I was kind of surprised. But those seem to make sense that they were popular. Also in 2020, vinyl sales surpassed CD sales, dollar wise, in the US for the first time since 1986. So according to the Recording Industry Association of America, vinyl records accounted for $232.1 million of music sales just in the first half of 2020. Whereas CDs is only brought in about $129.9 million, so close to half of the sales, which is kind of shocking. And then as for CDs, from 2019 to 2020, CD sales, unit wise, dropped by 45.2% in the first half of 2020, with revenue decreasing by 47.6%. So this is honestly not super surprising, because less people are going to stores and kind of just seeing them while they're out shopping and picking them up as gifts. Because so much is online. It makes sense that CD sales are dropping. And you know, because Vinyl is more of an aesthetically pleasing gift to give someone or something to buy and have, it kind of makes sense that it's being replaced when people aren't going to stores. But despite year over year decreases for CDs and digital downloads, vinyl sales actually grew unit wise by 2.3%, just in the first half of 2020. So that's not even including the Black Friday sales, which were super impressive. So overall CDs and digital downloads went down, and vinyl kept growing, which is awesome. And then this really shocked me. But cassette tapes are back people, at least in England, you know, the English are eating them up. In the first half of 2020 over 65,000 cassette tapes were sold in the UK, which you know, it's not that many compared to the money that's thrown around in the music industry worldwide. But it's an increase of 103% compared to the same period in 2019. And cassette sales in the UK were paced to top 100,000 units. And that would be the first time it's done that since 2003. So considering how low fidelity and honestly kind of inconvenient cassette tapes are, I'm kind of shocked by this. But I think it's you know, the hipsters bringing back like the old formats. And the top selling cassettes were, in the UK, were led by pop music, including Five Seconds of Summer, Lady Gaga, The 1975, Selena Gomez and Dua Lipa. So kind of a summary of all those. Sorry, that was a lot of numbers. Physical sales are back and doing really well. Especially led by vinyl. I have to confess, you know, I have a vinyl collection that I've purchased or my parents have given me, and I don't listen to them probably as much as I should. But I really like them. And I continue to buy them because I like the sound and the look. So I guess that's maybe where a lot of people's head, head is coming from when they're buying vinyls. But the cassette thing I can't get on board. Sorry, everyone.
Sophie Moser 13:16
That's kind of fun, I have to say I do too have a record player and have a pretty small but existent collection of vinyl. And I think it definitely is an aesthetic thing. I think some people like the sound better. But even just like the visual of kind of seeing. I mean, I don't know, like seeing a record spin on a player is really cool. And the cassette tape one is kind of funny, but I think it would be cool if like younger generations knew what they were . Like I was having this conversation with my siblings, I have younger siblings, and they like they just don't even know that that was a thing. And I was thinking back to like when I was a kid, and I would like pull the tape out of the little cassette. Like, I would get really in trouble for that. So it's kind of like a fun histologic throwback. But I don't know, seems like maybe won't stick stick around long term.
Sophia Barber 14:12
Yeah, I think that's the biggest appeal is the nostalgia of it. But I also don't like how cassettes you have to like, hold fast forward or rewind to get to the next song rather than just like skipping it. I remember like hating that when I was a kid. But also, just generally physical sales going up is cool, because it's a time where artists can't tour and they're losing a lot of money. So if you spend, you know, $10 to $20 on a physical copy of their record, rather than just streaming it, it can help them make up some lost revenue. So all in all, it's a good thing that physical sales are continuing to grow.
Sophie Moser 14:49
Yeah, that's definitely a good point. And kind of on that note, I just wanted to touch on kind of a more general music industry statistic and talk about the continued revenue growth in the music industry, which is exciting. It's a industry that is growing, and has been growing after kind of a long time being, kind of slumping. So it's fun that we are back in business. And I took a look at the RIAA, it's a US recorded music body, and they report on, particularly the recorded music revenues, which does account for a big portion of the music industry. And again, this, like Sophia said, is about the first six months of 2020. The second half is not in yet. But stay tuned if you're interested. But a summary of this report that they did on the first six months states that in the first half of 2020, US recorded music revenues grew 5.6% to 5.7 billion at retail value. Cons- continuing the positive growth trends of recent years, streaming music grew to 85% of the market by value compared with 80% of the prior year. Which, that's definitely a lot. And I was looking back at my research and saw that even I think in 2018, it was only around 63%. So you can see that streaming music has definitely boomed and interactive streaming services like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, which we talk about all the time, are really dominating the music industry. Which makes sense. And there were definitely some differences and trends between quarter one and quarter two. Quarter two of 2020 was definitely rough. That's kind of when COVID took its hardest toll. And there were a lot of retail store closures, tour cancellations and other impacts. But it's great that, you know, among all of that, we're still able to continue growing and the music industry has, has increasing revenues.
Sophia Barber 16:53
That's awesome. I'm happy for us.
Sophie Moser 16:57
Yeah, I can tell my parents that now. And they can be, they can be less scared about me going into this industry.
Sophia Barber 17:05
Yeah less worried.
Sophie Moser 17:05
Yeah.
Sophia Barber 17:06
All right. So moving on a little bit from the stats, we're going to go to a development that we have seen or heard of in the industry, and we kind of went different directions. So I'm going to start with kind of a tech or a new company development in the industry. And that is Gold Rush Vinyl, which is a vinyl pressing plant in Austin, Texas. So you know, because vinyl is booming, they're trying to find more innovative and faster ways to press vinyl. So this company Gold Rush Vinyl was named one of the top 10 most innovative music companies of 2020 by the Fast Company, by revolutionising the way they make vinyl records. So they can press vinyl three times faster than the previous industry average, reducing wait times from four to six months to four to six weeks, which is a very impressive development. And they also reduce plastic waste and used- plastic waste and use less water than competitors, as they recycle water through the factory. On their website, it said that this is similar to the way Tesla recycles their water. And they also only reject about 2% of their vinyl pressings due to defects, as opposed to the around 33% that most other pressing machines toss out. And that's a lot if a third of the vinyl that they're pressing is defective. That's a lot of money and resources lost. So this new way of doing it is very impressive. And if you go look on their website or social media, you can see that their records are really beautiful looking on top of being, apparently, very high quality, they make really cool like colored vinyl, there was a red one and some, like a silver one, they were really pretty. And they also have a vinyl club that people can sign up for. And for $28 a month, they get two vinyl records per month that were manufactured in their factory. So this is just really cool that a company in 2020 or maybe 2019 or 2018 saw this problem that has been around for decades and tried to fix it. The long wait time of four to six months for vinyl was kind of shocking to me, I didn't realize that before. It seems like it would be very difficult to finish an album in time to get vinyl to sell on like tour and stuff. So this company is solving a lot of problems and they seem really cool.
Sophie Moser 19:32
Yeah, that's awesome. That seems like a lot of very big and helpful improvements from some of the industry standards and maybe would even make it a more affordable product too, if they're not having to deal with losing so many defective records that they did have to you know, like pay for the materials for and whatnot. So that'll be really cool to see if they can kind of create some successful innovation and change things up.
Sophia Barber 19:57
Definitely.
Sophie Moser 19:57
And, um, my big development is, once again we talk about Tik Tok. Tik Tok definitely emerged as a major force in shaping music trends and artist popularity throughout 2020, which was definitely driven by people being at home and bored in quarantine. But it was a huge force and it's continued to be. Tik Tok has 80 million or sorry, 800 million active users worldwide. So it has a very wide reach huge, huge audience, huge amount of people that it has access to, and we've all seen it shape music trends. It's brought classic artists back into the present and given them new audiences like we saw when we talked about Stevie Nicks and her song "Dreams" that blew up on Tik Tok. And then touching on the breakout artists I talked about earlier, 24kGoldn and Megan Thee Stallion. It's brought new artists such as these who didn't have much of a platform before, it's brought them into the public eye and given them a huge start to a successful music careers- music career. So Tik Tok is definitely a major player, um, I think if you throw it back to our Tik Tok episode, there are some things that will need to be worked out just in how they handle the legality of music being uploaded, how they pay artists. So there's definitely going to be probably just a little bit of figuring out to do when it comes to some of those things. But there's no doubt that despite even some of the challenges for artists to, you know, make money or be recognized on it, it's still creating a really big splash in the music industry and just a huge tool for artists and has definitely changed just marketing and getting into the public eye.
Sophia Barber 21:47
Awesome well that is our 2020 wrapped for you all I hope you learned something, sorry for giving you so many numbers, but they're very important numbers to know. And we look forward to sharing another season of the podcast with you. Look out for some really fun content coming up in 2021. Thanks for listening, everyone.
Thank you all for listening. You can find us on Instagram at Sophia.productions. And please go rate, download and follow wherever you get your podcasts