Posted inNews

Covid-19 sparked ‘boom’ in paid subscriptions in UK says ERA

‘How Britain entertained itself during lockdown’ is the title of the latest press release from UK body the Entertainment Retailers Association (Era). Surprisingly, the answer isn’t ‘doomscrolling Twitter in tears and making forts from panic-bought toilet rolls and flour’.

Era is understandably more focused on music, TV and gaming habits, and a “boom in sales of subscriptions”. In its latest tracking study, which began on 25 May, Era asked people which subscription services they had added since the start of lockdown.

Video hogs the chart: 10.5% of respondents had signed up to Disney+, and 8.4% to Netflix. But music makes an appearance too: 5.6% of people had added Amazon Prime (admittedly with free shipping and Prime Video the draws alongside Prime Music) while 4.2% had started subscribing to Spotify, 1.4% to YouTube Music and 1.2% to Amazon Music Unlimited.

Posted inNews

UK music industry set for its third National Album Day

When the going gets tough for the long-form album format, the tough get going on a campaign to persuade people to listen to albums.

Billy Ocean is one of the ambassadors for the third National Album Day in the UK, alongside Blossoms, La Roux, The Psychedelic Furs and Toyah Willcox.

Taking place on 10 October, it’s an event dreamed up by industry bodies the BPI and ERA, with support from broadcaster the BBC and other industry partners.

Posted inNews

10 talking points around kids, music and technology in 2020

Last month, Music Ally took part in the BPI and ERA’s New Kids on the Block online event, looking at children’s digital habits and what they mean for music.

Research company Kids Insights produced a report for the event too, which has been published today. We contributed a section on some of the interesting stories we’ve been reporting on around kids and music.

Here are the 10 stories we picked out, with a link to download the free full report (which has bags of stats and trendspotting from Kids Insights) at the end.

Posted inNews

ERA boss Kim Bayley joins the #BrokenRecord streaming debate

The #BrokenRecord campaign has been gathering momentum in recent weeks – and was even the subject of our own Music Ally TV Show last week. Now ERA, the body that represents retailers and digital music services in the UK, has weighed into the debate.

ERA CEO Kim Bayley has published a blog post with her thoughts on the topic, walking the line between supporting artists and defending the streaming services.

“The effective closure of the live music business has robbed many musicians of their biggest single source of revenue. It is no wonder that this has focused attention on the relatively low returns many feel they see from the use of their recordings by digital service providers (DSPs),” wrote Bayley.

Posted inNews

Serving the Superfans: takeaways from today’s BPI / ERA / Music Ally online insight session

Today was going to be the day for an insight session put on in London by British industry bodies the BPI and ERA in partnership with Music Ally about ‘Serving the Superfans’. Covid-19 put paid to the in-person plans, so the event was taken online via Zoom. Here’s our report of some of the key takeaways.

Music Ally’s Eamonn Forde introduced the event by talking about some of the findings from his ‘Serving the Superfans’ report which will be published next week, to follow on from today’s event.

He talked about the long history of the superfan, which stretches back to a performance in Paris by Franz Lizt in 1844, which was notorious for provoking fan hysteria.

“That essence of fandom hasn’t really changed that much. It’s about an overwhelming love for an artist and their music, and complete identification with that. The artists and fans are the two constants here, it’s just how they are connected and reach each other that has changed,” said Forde.