IMS outlines the impact of streams on the gaming and live music industry in 2020

It’s been quite an interesting, and also sad, year for the live music and entertainment industry due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Almost no in-person events are taking place, all major organizers are hosting live-stream events challenging their designers in a completely different way this year. IMS has now released its 2020 Business Report that addresses the impact of live streams on the music and gaming industry this year.

This year, various organizations hosted stream series and collectively raised millions of dollars for the industry. Beatport with their ReConnect series and Boiler Room: Streaming from Isolation just being 2 of many more. Just for the month of May, 7 out of the 10 most-watched music streamers on Twitch had their focus on electronic music totaling to over 6 million viewing hours. Number 1 on that list is none other than Insomniac, the company behind Electric Daisy Carnival. Insomniac has been very active with hosting almost daily streams on their Twitch channel, generating 2.6m viewer hours on its own.

Amongst the obvious choices, like labels and event organizers, IMS also outlines that streaming events have taken place within online games, hosting completely virtual concert experiences in-game. These in-game concerts actually had a huge effect on the fellowship of the artists. Dillon Francis, Steve Aoki, and deadmau5 all performed at the ‘Party Royale’ event in Fortnite and afterward collectively grew their Instagram follower count tenfold.

Thinking about the future, we will most likely also see more of these kind of events as most countries don’t see live events returning until there’s a vaccine broadly available for COVID-19. This means that the music streaming and gaming industry could have the potential to achieve way more than previously thought when collaborating as these are 2 major markets that not necessarily cross over too much. Also, Tomorrowland – Around The World is coming up next weekend, so let’s see what they have up their sleeve and how they create a whole virtual festival experience.

Check out the full IMS report here.

Image Credit: Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash