With the first quarter of 2021 underway, there’s no better time to make music predictions for the remaining months left in the year.
At the time Mark Gillespie discovered Calvin Harris as a result of the social platform MySpace, the music industry was just beginning to find its feet on the internet. At present, the industry is fully immersed online and through social media.
2020 was a real shake-up of a year, especially for how consumers interact online. According to Deloitte, all live events have come to a virtual halt. Naturally, the music industry needed to adapt—both in the type of music that is created and the forums in which it is released. According to a recent report, most artists are livestreaming on social media platforms to keep their fans engaged.
Here are our top music trend predictions for what is sure to be another rollercoaster of a year for the music industry.
- Stadium tours will go digital
What was once the biggest revenue earner for many musicians is now still on hold with no real end in sight. Stadium tours will likely remain on hold until vaccines allow for more social gatherings. So rather than waiting until 2022 and beyond for the stadium tours to resume, we predict many artists will hold online concerts this year. Those that do it right will continue to make fundraiser events that support those who have been financially impacted (ie: the actual stadiums that are closing down and the thousands of employees who would have lost their jobs as a result).
- Artists shift away from TikTok
Right now, the hottest tracks are those that trend on TikTok. The formula for a song to go viral has been a sick beat and accompanying dance choreography on TikTok. While many up and coming artists are investing a lot of their time promoting their music through this social media app, we predict TikTok will die and artists will flock to the new “it” social media app—whatever that may be.
- The music production funnel shrinks
Thanks to never-ending lockdowns and those in the music industry being forced to produce music from their own homes, the roles that are needed to produce music have been altered greatly. The days when two dozen people collaborated to create a song are gone and we predict one of the newest trends will be self-written and produced songs by the individual artists themselves. Artists such as Arianna Grande and Taylor Swift are leading the way on this already and many more are bound to follow.
- Record vinyl album sales continue to boom
For the last few years buying a record vinyl has become the trendy thing hard-core music lovers indugle themselves in. But now that people are spending more time at home, many are wanting a more enhanced listening experience that isn’t just coming from their iPhone. We predict many will be investing in a record player and buying vinyl albums. We also know that recording artists and their management teams are already taking note of this trend!
- Cross-genre collabs will continue to grow
There’s been a steady trend for the last few years where various artists from different genres team up to do collabs on songs. Who can forget the success of Lil Nas x Billy Ray Cyrus—it was a rap meets country fairytale. With people desperate for new forms of connection, we predict that the cross-genre collaborations will only continue to grow this year and that many that haven’t already jumped on this bandwagon will very soon!
2021 has already gotten off to an interesting start for the music industry. We predict these five trends will be the driving force behind monumental changes that occur within the music industry.
