Development of a Prototype Simulation Model for Assessing the Economic Efficiency of the Music Industry across Various Genres

Since the last decade, various streaming services have been increasingly developing, providing both recording studios and individual artists with the opportunity to broadcast and monetize their work. The largest of them are Spotify (31.7%), Tencent Music (14.4%) and Apple Music (13.5%), and the total income of leading music labels (Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music) in 2023 exceeded $ 25 billion. In Russia, after the departure of foreign services, the streaming market grew by 40% and reached 25.4 billion rubles, with 97.5% of revenue coming from paid subscriptions. The industry growth in 2024 was 15%. The music industry remains one of the drivers of the creative economy, whose contribution to Russia's GDP is estimated at 3%. The study examines the created prototype of a simulation model for forecasting sales of physical and non-physical (digital) albums of artists using the AnyLogic software environment. The model implements variables containing average genre popularity indicators and audience preferences for distribution formats. Eighteen streams were created that simulate the dynamics of sales of physical and digital albums, which made it possible to link these indicators with probability coefficients, providing the ability to forecast sales of new releases. Artists and groups of various genres were selected as the object of modeling: Usher, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Drake, Kanye West, Jay Z, Foo Fighters, Nickelback, Red Hot Chili Peppers. The modeling results are presented in a comparative table, including predicted and actual values of artist album sales in 2024.