The Japanese are firmly rooted offline when it comes to music consumption; previous attempts to open up the digital market have been met with limited success. But Google is trying to change this by publicising its Google Play streaming service with a giant, interactive, music-playing billboard.

These days, vinyl collecting is assumed to be the penchant of music-obsessed Gen Yers after a more ‘authentic’ experience; it’s meant to sound warmer and more dynamic than any digital recording. But new data suggests it’s actually Xers who are driving sales, in part because of nostalgia.

Searching for Beethoven on Pandora or Shostakovich on Spotify can be frustrating at best; the most iconic pieces of classical music can be performed hundreds of times by hundreds of symphonies. Popular streaming services just don’t take this much metadata into account – until now.

With the arrival of Apple Music, continued growth of Spotify, and a vinyl revival, it’s clear that the music business is in a state of flux. So how will the way we find, play and share music change in the future? In the first of two reports we see how Spotify and vinyl are shaping the industry.