Imagine Dragons: Late Take-Off 🚀

Las Vegas-based Pop Rock Band Imagine Dragons served as an unusual example of a case study in the changing music industry norms

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What’s good everyone?

Over the weekend, I was exploring the underlying trends in what makes a particular song or artist go viral, and whether it is always that the performance in the first few weeks of release that increases the probability.

I happened to stumble upon an interesting case study by Music Business Worldwide and Will Page, whose book- Tarzan Economics is something I talk about on a weekly basis.

The case study was of Imagine Dragons: the Grammy-winning Pop Rock band based out of Las Vegas, USA, who have sold 35 Million Singles and 20 Million albums worldwide.

In the streaming world, they were the most-streamed group of 2018 on Spotify and are the first rock act to have two songs, "Believer" and "Thunder" to surpass 1 billion streams each.

However, Imagine Dragon’s success was far from being viral from Day 1. With a plan to spread out streaming numbers over a longer time frame; this is their story 👇🏻

Billboard labeled them as the breakthrough band of 2013, following the group’s debut LP release of Night Visions in September 2012.

These dates matter, as it was during this highly disruptive period that the US industry started to transition from sales to streaming in a full-fledged manner.

The example of Imagine Dragons allows us to join the dots, and show why a front-loaded sales mindset can miss opportunities as back-ended streams create them.

Gary Kelly, Chief Revenue Officer at Interscope- the record label that Imagine Dragons was signed onto, said:

“The industry used to be laser-focused on week one, and while it continues to be important, of greater importance is the long-term focus of reaching benchmarks in weeks 26, 52, and 104. In other words, the marathon is the race you need be running to come out on top.”

To highlight this point, check out the chart below. It tracks all digital album sales and all streams during months 1 to 18 following Night Visions’ release – and then did the same for months 19 to 36 (on the right).

The effect of releasing singles prior to the album launch was factored in:-

What you can see is that sales taper off by 33% in the second period compared to the first, whereas streams grew by a massive 177% from the first period to the second.

This is what streaming momentum looks like.

In fact, Spotify has seen Imagine Dragons’ catalog maintain momentum throughout their three album releases: Night Visions, Smoke + Mirrors, and, most strikingly, Evolve – which has remarkably taken Interscope’s hard-fought success and doubled it.

Measuring momentum over time isn’t easy, not least because streaming itself is growing in both subscribers and volumes. Treating this growth through usual methods isn’t straightforward, such as simply dividing the success of a band’s streams by its share of total streams.

A more important dynamic to manage in momentum is attention – demand has to swim against this tide of thousands of albums being released each month, putting downward pressure on the attention in those released the month prior.

“The consumer has a limited amount of time each day, and the main goal is keeping them engaged.”

And “engaged” they have increasingly become. Imagine Dragons are now the 10th most followed artist on Spotify, with 40 million monthly listeners and have crossed 5 billion streams 📈

The record label didn’t take its ‘foot off the gas’ 18 months after their debut release, and the same was reflected in its streaming numbers.

But what is this 18 months rule?

Back in 1991, the industry was going through a format change; consumers were replacing their vinyl collections with CDs.

As a consequence, purchasing albums for the second time became the norm – none more so than American Rock singer Meat Loaf’s classic Bat Out of Hell (1977). This second wave of demand caused this 14-year-old album to dominate the charts – again!

Yet the purpose of charts is to promote new releases, not old, so in response, the ‘catalog rule’ was born – decreeing that only ‘new’ or ‘frontline’ albums were chart-eligible, while anything released more than 18 months ago was ineligible.

The rule succeeded in removing Meat Loaf from the top of the charts – and all because the music industry was struggling to deal with a format change.

Here’s the irony: 30 years later, we’re now struggling with another format change.

The 18-month ‘catalog’ rule affects more than just marketing and charts, yet in an age of streaming it is akin to trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Frontline releases dominated the era of sales, making up around half of a label’s annual turnover. Yet in streaming, consumers will often consume older content that they will have purchased in an earlier format. Streaming produces a monetary windfall for catalog that transactions never did, helping catalog make up the majority of a label’s revenues.

What’s my point?

The music industry dynamics have changed considerably since the advent of streaming, and following archaic rules such as those of the 18 months cut-off period to be eligible for charting, do not show the true picture of an album or artist’s success.

With lower attention spans, it is easy for a song to be slipped from a listener’s mind, only for them to discover it later on.

Imagine Dragons are a perfect testament to that.

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