Shelter-At-Home to Generate New Consumer Patterns in Headphones and Home Audio

Parks Associates is predicting that headphones and earphones are likely to experience sales spikes with the world changing to Work at Home, Home Schooling, and Entertainment-In-Place. The company's research highlights the need for enhanced user experience to aid with device integration as audio market shifts from whole-room home theater systems to standalone connected devices. Podcast, music, and news consumption habits are also changing as a result of the current public health crisis with COVID-19.

For this edition of The Audio Voice I am wrapping up the summaries I have been writing following the Audio Collaborative 2018 conference. The event dedicated to the latest audio trends was successfully promoted in London, UK, for the fifth consecutive year by market research firm Futuresource Consulting . I'll try to summarize some key content and add some context and perspective, this time focusing on the panels on trends and opportunities in the music market and the gaming sector.

Music subscription services are gaining traction as the dominant way consumers listen to music, with smartphones and new devices, such as smart speakers, driving adoption of these services, especially among younger audiences. "Audiomonitor 2018: The Overall Music Listening Landscape," is a new report provided to the Music Business Association (Music Biz) from research firm AudienceNet. The report was based on a survey of a statistically and demographically representative sample of the US population (3000 participants, aged 16+).

It could be argued that the proliferation of smart speakers in the last 2 years has heralded the biggest evolution of music consumption we have seen since the launch of the iPod, iPhone or even CD. The BPI and ERA held an event in London on Tuesday 20th March 2018, that tackled the smart speaker impact on music consumption. Futuresource was proud to be on the bill, alongside several esteemed industry leaders and experts.