UMG's Jonathan Dworkin warning at NY:LON Connect

During Music Biz and Music Ally’s NY:LON Connect conference, Universal Music’s SVP of digital strategy and business development Jonathan Dworkin delivered a warning:

It’s truly the thing that worries me. I’m very positive, I’m very bullish about where we’re going. Never before has more music been made or consumed… but what does worry me is that with the ease of consumption, and with the disappearance of the UI layer and the rise of the algorithm… and the glut of content. I do worry that music is at risk of becoming an ‘and’ experience.
I’m driving and I’m listening to music. I’m at the beach or gym or whatever it is, and I’m doing it. I’m worried that the consumers become less focused on the depth of the experience. I don’t see the experience of going down, putting vinyl down and having a focused listening experience… that doesn’t seem to be as much the consumption experience as it is ‘play me music that sounds like I’m hanging out in a cool hotel’… I think there is going to be some innovation around people trying to drive deeper music experiences though.

Dworkin also talked about hearing an artist described as “a playlist artist” – getting millions of plays, and people don’t skip their music, but they “can’t draw more than 10 people to a show” because those listeners don’t really care about them:

That’s a real thing! And something we need to be a bit cautious about. I just think we need to be cautious about how, as we scale, about becoming too cynical. There is a danger of cynicism creeping in. And you see it: people gaming platforms, people gaming consumers, white noise, all of this crap creeping in at the edges. It’s very dangerous. The business will grow, but it’s dangerous for what I believe in anyway: the real artist experience.