A new report by Next Big Sound presents the state of the music industry from a data point of view. Aimed at brands -- the traditional music industry can still find plenty of useful information -- the web-based report uses attractive charts and plain English to guide the reader through music's impact across the Internet. The main message is simple: artists want to work with brands, and artists' fans have a huge online presence.
What's the state of music on social media? NBS says Instagram is "growing in leaps and bounds" and Twitter "may have plateaued," although artists are still gaining more new followers on Twitter than Instagram each month (by nearly a 5-to-3 margin). Millennials -- the age group defined as 18 to 24 -- are the most-active users of Facebook for music purposes, and their 46-percent share of artist activity equals their share in early 2012 (it has slightly risen and fallen since then).
Also interesting is an analysis of music genres' activity across services ranging from social media to streaming and Wikipedia. Perhaps surprisingly, rock leads the way. Artists with the pop/rock classification (examples given were Billy Joel, Foreigner and Kid Rock) had 24 percent of activity. The standalone rock genre had another 8 percent, indie rock had 7 percent and metal had 1 percent. That's a total of 40 percent for various forms of rock and pop/rock music. (Pop itself has an 8-percent share.) Although it's an apples-and-oranges comparison, Nielsen says rock's share of U.S. music consumption in 2014 stood at 29 percent.