A Few Big 2012 Music 3.0 Stories

We're coming to the end of another year, so it's time to take a look back. Here are a few of the big stories from the 2012 in now particular order.

• Women dominate the music scene. Adele, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and even Madonna cashed in from everything from music sales to concert tickets to fragrance lines.\

• The holdouts fall to digital music. Longtime digital holdouts AC/DC and Kid Rock finally give in and sign on to iTunes. Sales immediately jump.

• Traditional media is less effective than ever. Michael Jackson's prime-time Thanksgiving special on the making of Bad sells just 11,000 albums.

• Psy sets a record. Over a billion views on YouTube makes him an international star despite not liking Americans (his biggest market) very much.

• Streaming comes to the forefront. It's not paying much, as songwriter Ellen Shipley finds that 3 million Pandora streams nets her 39 bucks.

• Apple pulls their streaming service at the last minute. Apple was all set to introduce their music streaming service at the iPhone 5 launch in September only to run into last-minute trouble in the license negotiations. Will 2013 be the year it finally launches?

• Trent Reznor resigns with a major label. The king of DIY recants and signs with Sony Music.

• 140 Billion friends on Facebook. It turns out that the number of users on Facebook isn't important as all their friends when it comes to word-of-mouth.

• Music sales up for the year. Even before the Christmas season, Nielsen Soundscan reported that digital albums are up 15% this year so far and individual digital track sales are up by 6%. In fact, Americans have already purchased more than 1 billion downloads this year and are on a pace to to break the 2011 record of 1.3 billion.

• Sony negotiates independently. In a move that may signal a change in the way business is done in the music industry, music publisher Sony/ATV Music will soon negotiate directly with iTunes, Amazon and every other online music distributor directly. In effect, they're cutting out the traditional performing rights organization middlemen of ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.

• Older catalog outsells newer releases.For the first time since Nielsen Soundscan has been keeping track of sales since 1991, older catalog records are outselling current albums. A catalog album is one that was released more than 18 months ago.

• Beats Buys MOG. Headphone maker Beats Electronics, owned by rap artist/producer Dr. Dre and music exec Jimmy Iovine, acquired the digital music service MOG Inc. Now that everyone has headphones, it's time to deliver content.

• The Universal/EMI deal completes. The Big 4 record labels become the Big 3 as the Universal takeover of EMI is finally approved after the company sheds some of the its smaller subsidiaries. 

• Amanda Palmer scores big on Kickstarter. She tries to raise $100,000 for album promotion and raises $1.2 million instead.

• The line blurs between online and over-the-air radio. More people listen to online radio than ever before, yet they still listen to terrestrial radio as well. 39% of the US population listens monthly to online radio.

• Boy bands make a comeback. New Direction, Big Time Rush, and The Wanted crash the charts and sell out venues everywhere.

• Billboard finally updates its charts. It took some time and is probably about 5 years too late in coming, but Billboard has finally updated its charts to include on-demand streams from services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Muve, MOG, Slacker and >Rdio to determine chart position

Here's looking forward to a great 2013!

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

YouTube Strips Labels Of 2 Billion Fake Views

Since the beginning of music on the Internet, people have been trying to game the system. Fake likes and views have been plaguing everyone from record labels to publicists to the media when trying to get a true gauge on exactly what kind of traffic an artist has. New artists want to crank up the Likes and views to get label interest and make fans think they're more widely appealing than they are. But record labels do the same thing, it turns out.

Recently YouTube slashed the accounts of Universal Music Group, Sony and RCA Records by more than 2 billion views in a move that was aimed at shutting down the illicit view count-building techniques used to manipulate some sites.

Universal took the biggest hit when more than a billion views were eliminated, while Sony lost 850 million. RCA dropped a mere 159 million. It appears that the labels have responded by eliminating most of the videos from their YouTube channels, as Universal now has only 5 videos on their channel and Sony has none. Of course they favor their own Vivo service anyway so they didn't lose their entire video exposure.

So who were the artists that suffered? The personal channels of Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, Beyonce and Avril Lavigne, as well as 500 other prominent channels were stripped of views in the last 30 days.

The next time you look at a video and it has millions of views, you may want to question how many of those are legit.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Marketing To Your "Tribe"

An artist has 2 categories of fans - casual fans that may like you or your type of music but don't love you, and really passionate fans that love everything you do. Some call these your "true fans," "superfans," or "uberfans." Marketing guru Seth Godin calls them your "tribe."

Here's a brief excerpt about marketing to your tribe from my book, Music 3.0 - A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age.

"Be extremely careful about how you market to your tribe. Chances are your tribe wants everything you have to offer, but they don’t want to be hyped on it. Make an announcement about a new release or a piece of swag, but don’t oversell it. Tribe members don’t need to know that you think your new music is the greatest thing you ever did and it’s better than the Foo Fighters last release. They’ll decide for themselves and then sell it for you in their own conversations if they like it.

The way to market to your tribe is by simply presenting your product to them. Just make them aware that it’s available, and they’ll do the rest. You can take it a bit further by offering them information about the product - the more exclusive, the better.

Instead of a sales pitch:

• Give them a behind the scenes story about the making of the product.

• Tell them where the idea for it came.

• Tell them about all the people involved, especially other tribe members.

• Provide interviews with others involved in the project.

• Give them all the trivia involved in the project, no matter how small. True fans will eat it up. If it’s a new song, tell them where it was recorded, who the engineer and producer were, how many tracks were needed, how long the mix took, how many mixes you did, how the final mix compared to the rough mix, and all of the hundred other fine details that go into producing a song. If you just produced a new T-shirt, describe where the design came from, why you chose the manufacturer, what the shirt is made of, why you chose the color, etc. Get the idea?

Giving them insight that no ones else has makes them feel special, will keep them loyal, and will show mere fans and lurkers the benefits of tribal participation."

You can read more excerpts from the Music 3.0 Internet music survival guide and other books on the Bobby Owsinski website.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" - John Lennon-Yoko Ono

Let's celebrate the holiday with a Christmas song from John Lennon and Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band. "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" was recorded in 1971 with the Harlem Community Choir as a protest song over the war in Viet Nam, but over the years it has evolved into a Christmas standard. We're all the better for it.

Happy Holidays everyone, and thanks for reading!

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

How Google Adwords Work

If you've ever used Google (and I know you have) you've seen the yellow highlighted search results at the top of the page. These are actually paid ads in what Google terms an Adwords campaign, and it's the primary revenue source for company.

Did you ever wonder how those search results are so targeted? Here's a great infographic that not only describes how Adwords work, but also 3 tactics to optimize your Adwords account if you have one.


Infographic by Pulpmedia Online Marketing

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.