Rock + Beer = Great Business Opportunities!
AC/DC, Motorhead, Iron Maiden and a couple dozen other bands have slapped their names and logos on beer. The Lights Out, a band from Boston, even released an entire album on a beer can. How did we get to this level of cooperation between bands and beer? Marketwatch takes a look.
What can a band do when the record store is an antique and they’re just another name in a crowd of streaming options? Have a beer.
Music acts, especially those used to radio airplay, ample non-festival live music venues and album sales, are having a really tough time navigating the modern music industry. According to Nielsen Soundscan, overall music sales rose 3% last year behind a 75% jump in on-demand streaming.
That’s great for Spotify, Google’s GOOG, -1.06% YouTube, Apple AAPL, +0.01%Amazon AMZN, -0.40% and Microsoft’s MSFT, +2.35% Xbox Music, among others, but not tremendous if you’re an artist used to the opportunity and revenue that albums once provided. CD sales continued to plummet, falling 16% last year, while digital albums slumped 20%. Vinyl sales jumped 10%, but make up only about 6.5% of all albums sold.
So the days of hooking fans at the record store are over. However, there’s a corner of the retail market where shoppers are still compelled, by law, to shop at brick-and-mortar locations and pick through shelves based on labels and what they’ve heard from friends.
Keep reading. (Thanks to Tom for the link.)
