By Anne Steele
Joel Shaffer usually listens to current pop stars like Drake,
Kygo and Migos during his 30-minute commute to work outside Boston.
But when he recently stumbled onto Nine Inch Nails' 1989 song "Head
Like a Hole," he was hooked.
"This led me down a three-day, binge-listening rabbit hole of
Nine Inch Nails and Spotify's suggestions on similar music," said
the 29-year-old engineer for a medical-device company, who found
the song thanks to Miley Cyrus's cover on the Netflix series "Black
Mirror."
Older music is the biggest growth area in music streaming,
according to Nielsen. Labels are looking to cash in on "catalog"
tunes -- officially, songs released more than 18 months ago -- both
from veteran artists and more recent acts whose earlier hits still
have traction, while the streaming services are tapping nostalgia
to broaden their subscriber bases to include people more interested
in Led Zeppelin than in Billie Eilish.
Over the past 10 months, major services including Spotify
Technology SA, Alphabet Inc.'s YouTube and Amazon have created
"head of catalog" executive roles, charged with promoting older
music in ways that engage listeners of all ages. Apple Music, part
of Apple Inc., has had such a position for several years, as has
Sirius XM Holdings Inc.'s Pandora, which has been expanding its
catalog team.
Music companies say they are now able to pitch older music for
some of Spotify's popular mood and genre playlists. The "Summer
Road Trip" list, for instance, recently included songs from
1970s-born bands the Cure and the Doobie Brothers alongside more
recent hits from Lil Nas X and Meduza. "The Cookout" list mingles
recent hits by Childish Gambino and Drake with oldies from Bill
Withers and Kool & the Gang.
Streaming is more tilted toward catalog than sales have ever
been, according to Nielsen Music analyst David Bakula. Retailers --
both online and physical -- have tended to display new material
front and center, and sales of tracks and albums historically have
been around half catalog and half new music.
On streaming services, focused on listening rather than sales,
consumption is about 65% catalog. It is just as easy for
subscribers to turn to familiar favorites as current hits, and the
services employ automatically generated recommendations that don't
necessarily emphasize new releases.
"In a buying world, that recommendation doesn't exist," Mr.
Bakula said. "The lift of these songs is living longer than it
would have in a sales world." And artists' home pages on Spotify
and Apple Music often list their most popular songs, playlists and
albums more prominently than their newest work, he said.
Labels and music publishers, eager to introduce older songs to
younger audiences, are increasingly seeking to license catalog
music to ads, television shows and films. And a proliferation of
music-oriented biopics and documentaries is driving more people --
old fans and new -- to stream the music of the featured artists
like Queen and Elton John.
For Led Zeppelin's 50th anniversary earlier this year, Spotify
prompted users to create custom playlists with their names stylized
in the band's logo font. Among those participating in the promotion
were other musicians, such as Jack White, with a 10-song "Led
Zeppelin x Jack White" list.
"The songs those artists identified as their favorites then
became the trending growth tracks in Led Zeppelin's catalog," said
Tim Fraser-Harding, head of catalog at Warner Music Group.
For the 25th anniversary of the Beastie Boys' "Ill
Communication," Amazon Music worked with the group to create a
documentary about the creative process in the years leading up to
the landmark album.
"It gave us a reason to reach out to customers and reintroduce
them to this music," said Ryan Redington, director of Amazon Music,
part of Amazon.com Inc. "Or, for our younger customers, to listen
for the first time."
When Spotify started, in 2008, it attracted mostly young
listeners looking for the latest hits. The service has invested
heavily in algorithms that create individualized recommendations
for its users, who now number 232 million, and head of catalog
Johan Lagerlöf said older subscribers are the next growth area.
"This older demographic needs to feel at home when they enter
Spotify for first time, because if they don't feel at home the
first time, they won't come back a second time," Mr. Lagerlöf
said.
Spotify recently experimented with a feature called "storylines"
to highlight Motown Records' 60th anniversary. Several playlists,
including "Women of Motown" and "Evolution of Soul," include text
boxes with stories from the studio, historical significance and
what the artists said about the music -- material meant to
replicate the liner notes aficionados once pored over on vinyl
albums and CDs.
"For catalog music you always think of boxed sets," Mr. Lagerlöf
said. "This is a way of taking that into the streaming era."
Write to Anne Steele at Anne.Steele@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 03, 2019 09:54 ET (13:54 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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