Engaging With Music 2023: Review
The latest Engaging With Music is out, which shares some vital information which is not all that obvious in the presentation. Looking at the fine print and reading between the lines is as important as reading the information that is there.
The methodology states:
“As in previous years, results from China and India are not included in `global´ figures cited in this report, as the size of these countries would have a considerable impact on the weighted average figures used.”
“Results from Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and UAE are not included in global figures to ensure long-term trending remains accurate.”
-The global report should headline, “Global report excluding India, China etc.”-
Yes weighted averages would be skewed, but is this not the world we live in its entirety. Our current global population is 8.1 billion, to exclude these territories with a combined population of 3.2 billion and you leave 40% of the world population out of the picture.
-What can be derived from this is: including these territories, specifically to China and India, to our music audiences will have a: considerable impact.-
There is a special focus for each of these “non-global,” territories to include them in the report. It is interesting how in these territories there is a 50% increase of illegal usage of music. On the flip side there is a 20% increase in licensed streaming usage of music compared to the “global” territories. Without more details about how the numbers were attained this seems like an abnormal difference.
I see two factors: access and knowledge. How accessible is the music that people are searching and how knowledgeable are they of the source. When high quality licensed services readily accessible then people won’t go elsewhere.
-listeners recognize that it is important for their mental health.-
The most important message from this report is: music is listened to all over the world to relax, cope with stress.
All in all this is the go to for the most readily available overview of the global world report.