Music Industry: Top 100 Brands

The Music Industry is evolving and 2015 has seen some big developments. We now have the biggest companies in the world fighting it out to offer us the best on-demand streaming services, with access to millions of songs for a monthly subscription, or even for free if you don’t mind listening to ads.

The tide is turning, but it hasn’t exactly been plain sailing. Spotify, which was recently valued at $8.53 billion, has been at the centre of much controversy and criticism over how little of the revenue it generates actually goes to the songwriters. In opposition to this and in direct competition with Spotify, we saw the launch of Tidal in March 2015, the first major artist-owned service whose aim is to change the current financial model of music streaming by paying higher royalties to artists and songwriters. Its unique selling point is the ability to stream CD quality music and HD music videos, as well as feature exclusive content.

Google Play launched back in 2012 has been steadily building up an army of followers, but on June 30th 2015 we have the big one that everyone’s been waiting for, Apple Music. Apple has been a dominant force in the Music Industry ever since the launch of the iPod and iTunes back in 2001. The new Apple Music combines a streaming service with Apple Radio, a live 24 hour radio station with a roster of world famous DJ’s. As with Spotify however, we are seeing more controversy as Apple is being investigated to see if it has pressured or conspired with record labels to withdraw support for non-Apple services.

Whether you are for or against streaming, this is the future of how we listen to music and it’s here to stay. An estimated 41 million people paid for music subscription services in 2014, up 500% from 2010. Warner Music Group’s CEO Stephen Cooper revealed that in the first quarter of 2015 they saw a 33% increase in streaming income, which means they now make more money from streams than they do from downloads.

When you consider that the music industry had been in decline for years due to the threat of piracy and illegal file sharing, the fact that revenue from streaming is growing can only be a good thing. It was only in 2012 that the sales of digital music increased enough to offset the decline in CD sales. Record companies have adapted their business model to incorporate digital transformation and other sectors of the industry have had to do the same. Music magazines have seen a massive drop in circulation, many magazines now offer a weekly digital edition for your iPad, iPhone or Kindle in exchange for a monthly subscription. This has enabled them to survive and meet increased demand for a digital over a physical product.

Another way the industry has adapted is in the live music sector, with more and more concerts and festivals on offer. The price of tickets has also grown significantly (total box office takings for live music events in the UK grew by 26 per cent in 2013). On top of this vinyl has had a resurgence among purists, with sales in the UK hitting an 18 year high with a 54% increase in 2014. Revenues from synchronisation deals — the use of music in TV adverts, films and brand partnerships was also up 8.4% in 2014.

When you put all this together with the increase in revenue due to streaming services, it makes for positive reading, so much so that in the UK the music sector outperformed the rest of the British economy by generating 9% growth from £3.5Bn to £3.8Bn in 2013. This is a trend we have seen throughout most of Europe, with Germany and France in particular seeing better than average performances. Worldwide the Music Industry’s digital revenues grew by 6.9% in 2014 to $6.9 billion.

We wanted to see who the key players are in this new landscape, so we analysed over half a million tweets to gauge which brands are driving the most discussion on social media, which we then added together with qualitative research to provide a top 100 list.

TOP 100 BRANDS

In our brand analysis it was not surprising finding the handles from Apple Music, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify in the top 10. Also featuring highly were the music publications Billboard, Rolling Stone and NME. Record labels such as Universal Music and Sony Music also feature highly as well as the TV stations MTV and E!

Be sure to grab the full top 100 report to see where brands like Tidal, Gigwise, SXSW, BET, BBC6 Music and many more rank.

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Rank	Twitter Handle	Name	PageRank (Normalised)
1	@AppleMusic	Apple Music	100
2	@billboard	Billboard	96.15
3	@GooglePlay	Google Play	92.3
4	@iTunes	iTunes	61.53
5	@UMG	Universal Music Group	55.38
6	@TwitterMusic	Twitter Music	53.02
7	@RollingStone	Rolling Stone	49.23
8	@Spotify	Spotify	44.61
9	@SonyMusicGlobal	Sony Music	40.77
10	@eonline	E! Online	39.23
11	@NME	NME	37.69
12	@MTV	MTV	36.15
13	@warnermusic	Warner Music Group	35.38
14	@i_D	i-D	33.24
15	@SoundCloud	Soundcloud	32.56
16	@hypebot	Hypebot	32.23
17	@VirginEMI	Virgin EMI Records	32.14
18	@pitchfork	Pitchfork	31.5
19	@Inc	Inc.	32.06
20	@MusicWeek	Music Week	31.92
21	@MusicXray	Music Xray	31.88
22	@RAZRteam	RAZR music	31.86
23	@iStandard	iStandard	31.85
24	@XLRECORDINGS	XL Recordings	31.65
25	@pandora_radio	Pandora	31.62
26	@NoiseyMusic	Noisey	31.51
27	@beats1	Beats Music	31.44
28	@Shazam	Shazam	31.22
29	@QMagazine	Q Magazine	31.14
30	@mixcloud	Mixcloud	31.09
31	@bpi_music	BPI	31.07
32	@Myspace	Myspace	31.05
33	@LiveNation	Live Nation	31.04
34	@guardian	The Guardian	31.04
35	@SLMGcorporation	Starlight	31.03
36	@GoThinkBig	Go Think Big	31.01
37	@Music_Opps	Music Opportunities	30.99
38	@imusicadvice	Music Industry HowTo	30.98
39	@banquetrecords	Banquet Records	30.97
40	@XXL	XXL Magazine	30.91
41	@FreeLabelNet	Freelabel	30.85
42	@Rdio	Rdio	30.85
43	@rockactionrecs	Rock Action	30.85
44	@MusicMagazine	BBC Music Magazine	30.81
45	@ManagersPro	Managers PRO	30.79
46	@ExposedVocals	Exposed Vocals	30.77
47	@micnews	Mic	30.76
48	@Deezer	Deezer	30.74
49	@RevoltTVnews	Revolt TV News	30.74
50	@coast2coastmag	Coast 2 Coast Mixtapes	30.73

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At Onalytica we love building these lists and want to give back to our loyal readers as much as we can. If you’re interested in other topics (such as Machine to Machine, Wearable Tech, Internet of Things) be sure to have a gander on our blog or why not propose some topics to us on twitter? We also build some very cool software to manage all of these influencers. Get a free demo today by clicking the button below!

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Disclaimer: As ever with these lists, it must be stressed that the ranking is by no means a definitive measurement of influence, as there is no such thing. The brands listed are undoubtedly influential when it comes to driving discussion in the music industry.

The PageRank based methodology we use to extract influencers on a particular topic takes into account the number and quality of contextual references that a user receives. These calculations are independent of a user’s number of followers, but we do filter our lists based on how much a user is engaged in the conversation and the influence they drive through their networks.

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