How Music Consumption Formats Affect Audience Building

How have developments in consumer audio formats affected the consumption of music and created new opportunities for artists to build audiences?

The first audio format was the wax cylinder, 1877, which was invented by Thomas Edison. This process involved an artist singing into a horn, which caused a needle to carve into a roll of warm, soft wax. This format could not be ‘copied’ or ‘manufactured’ which meant that, for example, if you wanted 5 copies of the song, you had to record it 5 times.

This, unsurprisingly, went out of fashion very quickly, with the invention of the record in around 1888. Early records could not be copied and manufactured, but later ones could and were pressed. This meant that an artist could build a fanbase as they could actually mass-produce copies of their songs and albums for people to buy. This meant that artists could start to build audiences by being able to sell copies of their albums.

In 1898, Guglielmo Marconi opened the first radio factory and in 1920 the first commercial radio stations appeared. The invention of radio is so relevant because it was a way for people to hear an artist’s music A) for free, and B) not necessarily out of choice. As radio developed, there were radio stations that specialised in certain styles of music, like dance music, 80s music, etc. However, not being able to choose the specific song that you hear means that songs that you may not have listened to yet (or even knew existed!) are thrown right in front of you. This allowed artists to build audiences because their music was being played to people who were listening to the radio- the audience no longer had to come to/find the artist!

Tape was invented in 1962. Tape did not directly influence the expansion of artist’s audiences, however it was the first format that could (successfully) be played in the car! This could have helped artists build their audiences by people hearing music that they wouldn't normally listen to in someone else’s car.

The introduction of CD in 1984 didn’t have much impact on an artist building their audience that previous formats had not already had.

Digital Download was introduced in 1998 and roughly in 2014 (according to the American Enterprise Institute), Digital Download and Streaming overtook CD as the most popular music format.

Streaming is so revolutionary to artists building audiences because streaming involves ‘subscribing’ to the platform (e.g. Spotify) in exchange for access to all of their songs. This means that a user of a streaming platform is encouraged to get the best value for their money and listen to more songs. This means that they can listen to music that they wouldn’t normally listen to for no extra charge, compared to albums in CD format, where you would have to pay for each individual album, which might make you more cautious about listening to something new, in case you don’t like it and feel you have wasted your money.

Now, artists can also build their audiences by using specialist features on social media platforms, such as Tik Tok, YouTube and Instagram, that allow artists to have clips of their music played alongside other media on Stories, and videos such as Reels, Shorts and Tik Toks. This means that potential audiences can hear clips of music just by scrolling through social media. If a user hears music they like, they can often click on an icon which shows them the song name and the artist (hopefully giving appropriate credit to the artist!) so that they can find it on a platform and listen to the full song.