Video Games Killed the Radio Star

Can live video save music?

Stephen Phillips
@mawsonguy

As the music industry stumbles, gaming goes from strength to strength. Can we learn from their success?

In 2009, Charles Arthur suggested that perhaps piracy isn't killing the music industry, video games are. Maybe kids are spending all their money on a different and better product. Video games offer more value for money and the music industry has failed to adapt and compete.

From 2000 to 2009, revenues in the US recorded music industry decreased by around $10B. 

During the same period, the video game industry grew by roughly $12B.

When you compare the revenue for both industries, his argument seems compelling. 

So let's turn the tables. Maybe the music industry can learn a thing or two from gamers. They have Steam, and we have Spotify. They have Twitch, and we have...? 

Live streaming is huge for gamers. Can this success be replicated by the music industry?

Twitch.tv is the world's dominant video game live streaming platform. Twitch averaged over 100M viewers in December 2014 and is still growing strong. Astonishingly, their average user watches nearly two hours of video per day. 

Meanwhile, music remains as cool as ever. It drives huge engagement on social media and still shapes popular culture. Yet making money in music is hard. Live streaming might bring much needed revenues. Will music fans go for it?

To assess music’s potential, let’s examine why it works so well for gaming.

Why Gamers Love Streaming

Watching other people play games has proven as addictive as playing yourself. Gamers cite many reasons why they love to watch other people play.

Social

Social interaction is the main reason for Twitch's phenomenal growth. People come for the video, but stay for the friendships. On the surface, Twitch may look like a video streaming site, but Twitch is a social network for gamers. While watching games, users joke around with each other, talk about their lives, and make new friends.

Twitch is a social network for gamers

Excellence

Gamers love to watch the world's best gamers play their favorite games. In this way, Twitch is similar to ESPN or the Cooking channel.

Uncertainty

The uncertainty of what will happen next in live games provides a unique experience every time. Each game could be a new world record. Every moment could be a hilarious failure or a history-making hack. Just like athletic sports, the unpredictability is a huge part of the appeal.

Interactive

Watching games live, rather than as a recorded video, means you can discuss the game as it happens with the player. Watching even amateur players can be entertaining if they're responding to questions during the stream.

Educational

Watching and playing aren't mutually exclusive. Watching live gaming improves your own gaming immensely. The more you watch the pros playing, the more enjoyable you're likely to find the game itself when you play. The more you play, the more likely you are to understand the high-level play you see on display by the pros.

Substitute

Live streaming gives a decent gaming fix, even at times when you don’t have the time you need for a game yourself.

Clique

The feeling of watching something that you understand on a deep level, but that the general public doesn't understand at all, makes you feel like part of an elite club. You can see this at work in the text chat rooms that accompany most Twitch conversations, which are full of in-jokes and image memes that seem incomprehensibly insane to the uninitiated.

Preview

If a demo is unavailable, many gamers watch live streams to get an idea of the gameplay and see if it is worth a purchase.

Relaxation

A lot of gamers enjoy watching live streams to unwind. They are so invested in the gaming community that most popular TV shows and movies are not so relevant to them anymore.

Background

Many gamers will have live streams of other players while they are playing themselves. This second screen experience provides background noise and even makes it seem like you are playing with friends.

Twitch is Testing Music

Over the last two years, Twitch has been experimenting with music through hosting a number of prominent electronic artists and launching a new broadcast category for music.

Twitch has created partnerships with record labels like Monstercat, Fool's Gold, Skrillex-founded OWSLA, and Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak. All have made their music free on the platform and host their own Twitch channels. Skrillex and Diplo used BeatPort’s Twitch channel to unveil their Jack U project, a live stream that peaked at more than 20,000 concurrent viewers.

In March 2015 they announced that Twitch would be the official live streaming partner of the Ultra Music Festival. A recent poll of its users found that 80% were interested in watching live concerts.

Will it work for Music?

Similiarities

Music and Gaming share some similar values.

Excellence

Watching the most talented musicians in the world practice, record or play music is compelling.

Social / Clique

Hanging out with fans with similar tastes in music is the main reason people attend festivals and live concerts. A social network centered on music should be compelling.

Relaxation / Background

Music works even better than gaming as background noise and relaxation.

Differences

Watching someone play a game is not significantly different from playing a game yourself. In both instances you are sitting in front of a screen by yourself. However, the experience of watching live music on a screen is very different to the real thing. It is much less visceral and social. The closest analogy to gaming in music would be watching a producer mixing/recording a track. Indeed, Deadmaus provides regular streams from his studio and they are very popular with fans.

Watching live music via a screen is completely different from the real thing, much less visceral and social.

Music is different to gaming in a other ways as well.

Education / Substitute

Most viewers of video game streams are gamers themselves. For music, most viewers are not musicians. The educational value is therefore much lower for music. Most music consumers are unable to be producers as well. A big impediment to growing the network. 

Interactive

Live concerts and studio recordings require concentration from the performer and therefore support limited interactivity. Artist Q&A sessions have become the dominant interactive forum for music on social media.

Uncertainty

Music has less uncertainty than gaming. At live concerts, fans generally want to hear the hits they already know and love. Artists use stage craft and special effects to introduce unpredictability. Practice, recording and backstage would be more unpredictable than concerts.

Preview

Music is much cheaper than games. Most music fans have streaming subscriptions (Spotify, Rdio, etc) where they can listen to whatever they want, so streaming performances give little value as a preview before purchase. Live streaming may be a good preview for upcoming concert tours.

Analysis

A social network centered on music remains a significant untapped opportunity. Music fans are just as social as gamers, music stars are much bigger than gaming stars, yet no social network exists that caters specifically to music fans.

Whether live streaming is at the core of this music social network seems doubtful. Social networks are normally built on a content type that every member of the network can produce and consume. With gaming, every user can play, record and consume. For music, that is not the case. Only a minority of users can produce music to stream.

The closest service we have to a major music social network today is probably Soundcloud. It caters mostly to musicians themselves, with serious music fans cheering them on. They have not yet been able to go mainstream.

Twitch's move into music will produce new, compelling content for their existing user base, centered on edm which is very popular with their users. While a distant second to gaming, music is still a significant opportunity for Twitch and an initiative worth pursuing. If you are an artist making music that gamers love, this is a new and important market.

A social network centered on music remains a significant untapped opportunity.

Someone needs to invent a new type of media that can be the foundation of a new social network just for music fans. Something fun and musical that everyone can create and consume that entertains and expresses their musical identity.

Make it happen!

About Me

From 2009 I led a music startup called We Are Hunted. It was one of the first music charts powered by social media and was a popular tool for music discovery. It was later acquired by Twitter in 2012. I worked on Twitter Music in 2013/2014. Since leaving Twitter I've been thinking a lot about new models for music discovery. Enjoy!

Stephen Phillips @huntedguy
26 May 2015