Page 30 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

30music has plummeted: price of CD v. streaming subscription and, above all, as a result of easy access to music free of charge via a host of channels, many of them legal such as traditional radio, YouTube, Deezer and Spotify, and a few illegal such as torrents, P2P networks or le sharing platforms.Perceived value is de ned as the result of the consumer’s comparison of perceived bene ts and perceived sacri ces (“A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research”, Zeithaml, 1988; “Customer Satisfac- tion with Services: Putting Perceived Value into the Equation”, McDougall and Levesque, 2000).There is a direct relationship between the value perceived by consumers and what they are willing to pay for it. Therefore, a fundamental consideration in the music world is how much the customer is prepared to pay.Music is undoubtedly ceasing to be a product and is becoming a service. It ispart of our lives and improves their quality; therefore, it is starting to be of strategic importance to bear in mind the habits of the consumers at whom the music is aimed.Consumers – especially in the case of music, which is aimed at all kinds of audiences – each have their own needs and attitudes to con- sumption and to how they value the product or service that music can o er them. Musicis undoubtedly ceasing to be a product and is becoming a service.There are key factors which the music industry has pushed into the background in order to focus on a speci c product (CDs). This has caused it to neglect other elements which music consumers are beginning to value as a result of the impact of the internet: consumer experience, closeness to the artist, exclusive content, fast consump- tion, multi-platform consumption, reduced price and live music experiences, among others.A product is no longer de ned only by its price but rather by all the bene ts it o ers the client who consumes it. Music, unlike other products or services, is part of our lives and improves their quality; therefore, it is starting to be of strategic importance to bear in mind the habits of the consumers at whom the music is aimed.In this new environment shaped by technology, in which fans demand closeness to their artists, we need to progress towards building a brand and experience around the artist in a way never previously witnessed. The idea is for clients to perceive the value of the work of the artists they follow. Fostering listener loyalty is of key importance to artists nowadays.A recent study by Nielsen shows that portals providing access to music free of charge are the most widely used channels for discovering music: 48% of listeners discover music through the radio, whereas 64% of millennials prefer YouTube to all other sources for listening to music.Viewed from a broader perspective that takes into account factors other than merely economic concerns, digital music consumption is also in uenced by time, attention, personal data and social involvement in music-related experiences. Music consumers listen to and interact with it much more than ever.Taking these factors into consideration, the de- bate therefore should not necessarily be centred on whether consumers value music in today’s society, because there are many other types of “currency” in consumer transactions when it comes to obtaining value from music products and services. As in all the major industries, perceived value is no longer just a guarantee of revenue. What music industry players need to ask themselves is how to increase readiness to pay for what they have to o er, because when free products and services are perceived tohave the same value as those that are paid for, willingness to pay is greatly reduced.THE MUSIC MARKET GOES DIGITAL · ROBERTO CARRERASSmart culture. Analysis of digital trends