In case you missed it, last month MarketWatch published an opinion piece from Luminate’s CEO Rob Jonas, which addressed the issue of entertainment data asymmetry between music and Film & TV, titled “Taylor Swift and the rest of the music industry use valuable data to make business decisions. The film & TV industry needs a similar model.” More specifically, Rob detailed the challenges brought on Hollywood by the lack of transparency of viewership metrics for film and TV streaming video on-demand (SVOD) content on platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Max, Apple TV+, and others, as recently highlighted by the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.
Citing the music industry’s ability to adapt to the streaming era more quickly in terms of understanding the value of data and working from a singular reference point, Rob wrote, “When iTunes and then Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and other streamers disrupted the ways listeners consumed music over the last two decades, record labels, distributors and artists had to evolve their release strategies. Fortunately, music charts all over the world, including the Billboard Charts in the United States, adapted in real time, making use of available streaming data to provide an objective look at the landscape.”
Beyond that, the fact that data is shared by music streaming platforms and verified by Luminate, we are able to identify key trends that signal industry growth, changes and forecasts on a global scale. For example, in our 2023 Midyear Music Report we revealed that Global On-Demand Audio streaming saw a +22.9% increase between H1 2022 and H1 2023 as streaming accelerates.
Unfortunately for the entire streaming film & TV industry, including those who bridge that world with music, from music supervisors to music sync professionals and beyond, there is no transparent, reliable or consistent data that allows for the understanding of such growth. As Rob said in the closing of his op-ed, “An opaque marketplace doesn’t make much sense when technological advances make transparency possible, and everyone knows it. If there is data that affects the work of many, while only informing a select few, a healthy ecosystem cannot be sustained.”
At Luminate, it’s within our nature to fix problems like this, even without access to direct data from the platforms. For the past few years, our data science and product teams have been hard at work to come up with an accurate model for measuring streaming viewership. Learn more about Luminate Film & TV Streaming Viewership (M) here.
Rob will share more insights on this topic during a special session at Vox’s CODE Conference tomorrow, Wednesday, September 27, in Dana Point, CA. If you’re planning to be there, head to the event’s app for attendees to learn more details. For everyone else, please stay tuned as we continue to roll out viewership numbers for film and TV titles in a weekly chart. Our mission is to continue and expand the availability of trusted consumption data in one entertainment ecosystem so that we can inform all relevant parties and drive more effective marketing strategy, better understanding of the industry at-large and create more opportunities for collaboration, innovation and investment.
