The Music Industry is Oversaturated: Here Are The Pros and Cons

I had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at New York University’s Annual Alumni Event for its music business department. Big thanks to Larry Miller, a professor and director of the program, for inviting me.

It was a free-flowing conversation focused on how technology is reshaping the music industry from top-to-bottom. We’re well into the streaming era now, but some of the second-order effects are barely starting to ripple — particularly the oversaturation of content. It’s easier and cheaper than ever to release music, which explains how tens of thousands of new songs are uploaded to Spotify on a daily basis.

On one hand, this has ushered in a golden era of independent artists making a career without the backing of a label. On the other hand, value is increasingly accruing to the superstar artists. Most of these superstars were “grandfathered” into this new era as they were already household names before streaming took off. Reaching that same superstar status is harder and harder for new artists due to the industry’s oversaturation.

Larry and I dove deeper into the issue during our conversation. Students also hit me with Q&A about burning topics such as ChatGPT, botted streaming numbers, and much more. Here’s what you can expect to hear on this episode:

1:00 Introduction from Larry Miller
5:11 Superstar artists like Taylor Swift and Drake shining brighter than ever
10:02 Too many hits, not enough superstars
17:37 How Curren$y “niched down” to break through
21:52 Tradeoffs of going independent or the major label route
26:45 Industry takeaways from Spotify and YouTube’s billions playlists
30:41 YouTube’s competitive advantage over Spotify
34:01 Evolving Trapital’s own business model
39:43 Music’s bot problem in streaming and ticketing
42:56 Is the music superstar dead?
44:56 Picking a platform(s) as a new artist
46:40 How oversaturated music landscape impacts listeners
49:47 Is New York drill music the next wave?
51:41 Pros and cons of AI music

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My father once said. If you can't retire from it, then it's just a hobby or a waste of time. 14 years of making music on/off and he was right.