9 Amazing Social Media Facts

Social media is a huge part of our lives, but sometimes we underestimate just how big it really is. Here are some truly astounding social media facts, courtesy of socialnomics, that provide some perspective on the biggest part of our online lives.

1. Facebook's 1 billion members makes it the world's third largest country behind China and India.

2. Every day 20% of Google searches have never been searched before.

3. Two new members join LinkedIn every second. This is about the same as the entire enrollment of the Ivy League colleges every day.

4. By the end of 2013, social gamers will purchase $6 billion in virtual goods, but moviegoers will only purchase $2.5 billion in real goods.

5. 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

6. YouTube is the world's second largest search engine (of course, it is owned by Google).

7. 53% of people on Twitter recommend products in their tweets.

8. 92% of people trust reviews and recommendations compared with only 14% who trust traditional advertising.

9. Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry have more Twitter followers than the populations of Germany, Turkey, South Africa, Canada, Argentina and Egypt.

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Search For Music By Your Mood

Here's one that had to come about sooner or later. Clear Channel's iHearRadio Internet radio platform recently announced a feature that allows users to choose their listening options based upon their mood or current activity.

The new feature is called "Perfect For" and allows the user to browse through "hundreds of carefully curated stations" after they browse through a menue of possible moods and activities for the day and time. iHeartRadio has a catalog of over 1,500 stations from across the country, but they're adding "thousands of new stations," so it seems pretty likely that one of them should be playing something to match your current mood.

The feature is available on their iPhone and PC app, but will soon roll out to other mobile and tablet devices soon, according to Clear Channel.

I'm usually pretty suspicious of anything that Clear Channel does since it was one of the prime movers behind today's homogenized radio, but mood listening does seem to be a leap forward. That said, sometimes you want just the opposite of your mood. For instance, if you're depressed, music that reflects that mood may just sink you lower into depression, while something more uplifting might have a better chance of pulling you out of it.

Regardless, sentiment programming just might be a next step into the future of online radio.

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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.

5 Content SEO Tips

Search Engine Optimization is something we should always be thinking of whenever we're creating content that will end up online. After all, what's the point of posting it if it can't be found?

Here are 5 tips for making your content a bit more friendly to search engines.

1. Use relational linking. If you have a story that can be linked to a big brand or name, you'll get extra points from Google if you do it. That said, if you link to a page without any context to your content, Google will punish you.

2. Use Alt tags. Every image that you use should not only have a descriptive title, but an alt tag as well. That's the extra tag that provides further info as to what the image is all about that usually only a search engine can read. That way, you can be extra sure that the search engine will list the picture higher and add it to the correct search. For instance, the name of the image to the left is "SEO" while the Alt tag is "SEO image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog."

3. Use Header tags. HTML uses a series of header tags (H1 to H6) that work as a page, category or paragraph heading. The problem is that many WYSIWYG web design programs allow you to just make a font larger or smaller without regard to these tags. Search engines use the header tags to distinguish between copy lines, and lend some weight than others depending upon the tag. That's why it's a good reason to all use them if you can.

4. Use bold text for key terms. Bolding key terms and phrases can make them more searchable because a search engine reads the HTML and sees them as more important.

5. Use full names. Search engines like it better if you use a full name. Kanye West is better than just Kanye, and Adam Levine is better just plain Adam, even if we all know who you're talking about.

These five tips are extremely easy to implement, and while they won't guarantee a high search ranking by themselves, they'll help to improve it. For a real eye opener as to your page's SEO, go to this SEO site checker.

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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.

Audio As The New QR Code

I always thought that the QR code was a rather inelegant clunky idea. The concept behind it was fine, but the execution leaves much to be desired. After all, who wants this ugly black and white splotch on your fine artwork. It takes up a lot of space and adds nothing unless someone happens to go through the motions of decoding it and following the link.

But the idea of an analog link to the digital world is sound, and more and more companies are looking at doing something similar in a different way.

Now comes word that Shazam, the fourth most popular iOS app of all time, plans to let views tag the audio coming from their TVs during the February 3rd Super Bowl broadcast this year. This will let users enjoy somewhat of a "second screen" experience as they watch the game with their smartphones and tablets. In fact, brands plan on giving away plan on giving away over a million items to people who tag the audio during the game.

Among the companies that are participating are Interscope (label home of half-time artist Beyonce), Toyota, Best Buy, Cars.com, Pepsi, Teleflora, Bud Light, Bridgestone, GE, Disney and game company Relativity. Plus, second-screeners will be able to keep up with game stats and polls as the game progresses.

With this type of buy-in for the biggest broadcast of the year, it looks like audio tagging (sometimes called "fingerprinting") is here to stay.

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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.

Digital Sets Records But Album Sales Fall In 2012

SoundScan released its yearly report and it seems that 2012 brought us some surprises when it comes to record sales. Here's a brief outline of the year that was.

• Album sales fell by 4.4% from 330 million to 316 million. 

• Digital albums accounted for 37% of the sales, but CD sales still dropped by 13%.

• Digital sales were up 5% from the previous year to an all-time high of 1.34 billion units.

• Country was up 4.1% in album sales, rock (still the biggest selling genre) was up 1.4%, but every other genre slipped from the previous year, with jazz down 26% and classical 20%.

• The top album seller was once again Adele's 21 with 4.4 million copies, followed by Taylor Swift's Red at 3.1 million and One Direction's Up All Night at 1.62 million.

• In terms of individual track sales, most genres rose in sales, with world music increasing the most with 111%, EDM at 36%, and blues by 24%

• Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" topped all digital sellers with 6.8 million downloads, followed by Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" at 6.7 million and fun.'s "We Are Young" at 5.7 million.

• Vinyl was up over last year once again, with 4.6 million copies sold, lead by Jack White's Blunderbuss at 34,000 and The Beatles Abbey Road at 30,000.

• Rod Stewart's Merry Christmas, Baby was the biggest selling holiday album at 858,000, followed by Michael Buble's Christmas at 622,000. 

What's significant in these numbers is that it's increasingly obvious that we're in a singles world (as if you didn't know already), regardless of what the major record labels might want. Album sales continue to fall except in rare cases as consumers have increasingly decided that they want the hits and the hits only.

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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.