Interestingly, considering live music is going through the biggest paradigm shift out of all the sectors within the music industry right now, it was the live music section of the report which brought up the biggest areas of opportunity for artists and rightsholders – notably within the intersection of online and offline fandom. 

Here are our key takeaways:

1. Live music events currently make up 64% of Americans’ music related expenses. 

While it is a popular belief that Gen-Z is spending most of their time online, they are, in fact, spending 23% more money than the average listener per month in attending live events; making them the most likely demographic to attend concerts. 

2. Short-form video users are 38% more likely to attend live events than the general American population. 

With TikTok being the most popular app among all short-form video platforms – and Gen-Z constituting the largest portion of TikTok users – we can pretty confidently assume that we will be seeing an increase in the amount of live music UGC that is produced this year. 

3. While 76% of American music listeners are consuming short-form videos, 22% of them have posted these videos themselves. 

As we have discussed in past blog posts, creation is the new consumption. Today’s fans are engaging more and more with their favourite artists, not simply by listening to them, but by creatively engaging with their music in myriad ways through UGC. With the overall volume of UGC rising exponentially, the financial implication of leaving videos undiscovered and unclaimed online is getting greater by the day. 

4. TikTok growth is plateauing, whilst Shorts and Reels are playing catch-up

Watching short-form videos is now a more popular activity for the average consumer than sports and though the percentage of users on TikTok has remained at the top of the short-form platforms, their user base has stagnated, while competitors like Youtube Shorts and Facebook Reels have seen a pretty significant increase in users since last year. 

5. J-Pop and K-Pop fans are the most prolific UGC creators

Fans of different music genres are also more likely to post short-form video UGC than your average listener: J-Pop and K-Pop fans are 59% more likely to post UGC, followed by Hip-Hop/Rap and Latin fans at 41%, Dance/Electronic listeners at 36%, R&B at 32% and finally Pop/Top 40 listeners at 23%. With fancams and video edits having been a huge part of K-Pop fan culture for several years now, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that they produce more UGC than most. Conversely, Top 40 listeners who we can assume are passively consuming mainstream hits that are served up on Spotify’s ‘New Releases’ playlists, or radio stations (yes, they still exist) rather than proactively discovering music, are unsurprisingly the least likely to post UGC. 

6. Music genres also matter on a local level

The report shows that live music can cause a pretty big impact on streaming numbers for a short time period in the area around an event. There’s a significant local growth in on-demand audio streaming by genre during the week of a show when compared to the week before. Dance/electronic music exhibits the largest increase by far, growing 143% from one week to the next – which is 80% more than the runner up, rock music (up by 63%). 

So where does this leave us? Clearly, UGC is becoming an integral part of today’s music fan experience, and this is only set to grow as fans continue to turn to creation over consumption. With the opportunities that live music presents for capturing UGC, as well as a healthy appetite for Gen Z and younger audiences to both attend and capture live events, UGC is an increasingly lucrative revenue opportunity for rightsholders, and one that is ripe for the taking.