Millennial's Relationship To Music Consumption, By A Millenial

After reading Pierre Priot’s impressions on the relationship my generation has to music consumption (published here few days ago) I felt that, as a Millennial myself I should share my personal view on the matter. Although I can only relate to the European market, and from my own environment, I hope my thoughts will give you more insights into my generation’s mind.

In his article Pierre Priot reports a conversation he had with a 21 year old man he was car-sharing with, and came to the conclusion that most of my peers never paid for music.

While it is partly true I believe we should take some distance and consider the whole picture. What are the reasons for that behavior? And more importantly, is it as definitive as it sounds? 

Nowadays anyone with the slightest interest in music can satisfy his needs by downloading music onto a hard-drive and using free streaming services. That way he or she can carry his entire music library anywhere and listen to it in any given setting (such as plugging it in a car’s stereo). That is just the easiest way to do it. The digital format (whether downloaded legally or not) suits their consumption the best. Does illegal downloading impact on the industry? Absolutely, we know it and I do not encourage this behavior. However, by the nature of the music concerned and a few exceptions aside, the loss will mostly affect major companies. 

What happens now when the same people discover an independent artist they like? 

The thing with our generation is that we search for meaning. If we feel an artist doesn’t need our help or is disconnected from our reality most of us won’t mind downloading. That is because they think buying an album or not will not make any difference to the artist. On the other hand when it does make a clear difference, when the same people feel they can help someone take it to the next level, they will give them their full support.

These people will go see that artist live, buy their entry ticket, maybe invite a friend, buy the CD after the show (- even though their IMac doesn’t have a CD slot, and they probably have never owned a CD player since they left their parent’s home). They may even buy merchandise. I have witnessed it many time with people who have never paid for music through the traditional channel.

We may be used to having free music everywhere, radio, TV, parking lots, and so on. But this is free music we didn’t particularly ask for. We might like it, but there isn’t much more to it. We know that should we pay for it or not, it will always be there. On the contrary if we feel an artist needs us to exist, is trustworthy and if that artist has managed to build a certain level of intimacy with his audience, we will go all the way. He deserves our financial support and we will supply it without any hesitation. That relationship plays a major role in our involvement. Millenials need to feel part of something bigger. It has to make sense to them and to the person who receives it. 

That covers the majority of us, but part of the youth still has a strong interest in music. They download music (both legally and illegally), subscribe to streaming services, collect vinyls, by CDs, merchandising, concert tickets, they promote local bands, etc. Some of my friends have a monthly budget of 150€ (approx. 158$ at today’s rate) only for vinyls and CDs. Add to that a few concert tickets, a streaming subscription, a t-shirt from a local band and you can easily double that amount, which is huge for a student. Yet the same people will still download the album they already bought to have their music on a transportable device, because again, that is just the easiest for us. We enjoy a good quality product, a collectable item but we also like to have it all accessible from anywhere, at anytime. We do not see it as an opposition between native of the digital era craving free digital music versus previous generations holding onto physical objet, but as a question of context. The two formats are complementary.

In addition, in our search for meaning and integrity, we prefer buying directly from an artist, a label or an independent record store. We want our money to be used the right way. We support people who take risks. If our money is to be wasted on too many middlemen by a worn out system we’d rather get the thing for free. 

The bottom line is that even though most of us will not pay for music itself, we are willing to support meaningful projects when needed. Concretely this means that music institutions such as majors, arena bands and pop stars might see their revenue melting whereas people who put real effort in bringing out something new will get rewarded. The situation seems actually quite enthusiastic to me, with the music industry evolving towards a more sustainable model.

At least that is what some of us Millennial hope for.

Millennial's Relationship To Music Consumption, By A Millenial