Live-streaming as a marketing channel in the Swedish music industry

Sammanfattning: The music business is one of the industries most affected by digitalization of content and distribution channels. As industry revenue shifted from principally physical to digital channels in 2015, while being the business with the largest presence and most popular accounts in virtually all social media platforms - the current state of the music industry is change. This has led industry professionals into searching for new and innovating ways of reimagining the business model of music distribution. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the potential of video live-streaming as an addition to the current social media channels used to market artists. This was done through looking into what industry professionals think of the subject in terms of strategic reasoning and potential, observing an interactive live-stream with a Swedish boy band, and a questionnaire directed towards end-users and listeners of Swedish popular artists to define what their stance is towards music-related social media in general, and live-streaming in particular. The findings show that live-streaming certainly has a gap to fill in the social media tool-box at music companies through facilitating the defining process of superfans based on data analysis gathered from live-stream consumers, and that the channel has potential to create engagement beyond that of other social media platforms. Furthermore, end-users want to consume more live-stream content from Swedish artists. They want content that feels more personal and revealing, while utilizing the abstract feeling of “here and now” in order for it to be more interesting than other content on social media - something that the music industry professionals agree is important in live-streamed music content.