Is Viral Success A Myth?

Everyone is searching for viral success with one of their videos. There's been books written about it (a good one is Contagious: Why Things Catch On), presentations given at conferences, countless web articles, and much speculation about assumptions and formulas, but few are able to recreate the a success like OK Go's "Here It Goes Again," Rebecca Black's "Friday," Baauer's "Harlem Shake," or Psy's "Gangnam Style" (not to mention the numerous cat videos that routinely make the rounds).

But is it possible that what we think of as viral isn't actually viral after all? A number of recent articles and presentations propose that these videos were given a big corporate helping hand first before getting any kind of traction.

Take for instance Psy's "Gangnam Style." In a recent article on Pando, Brandon Mendelson postulates that the video's success is "actually the tail end of months and months of preparation, buying fake views and comments, an extensive PR campaign, and his video fitting a very specific need for the business model that fuels the web: The Page View Based Economy."

He goes on to state that Psy's record company purchased views and comments by using companies like Microworkers and Fiverr to trick the YouTube algorithm into thinking the video was exploding. It actually was, only as a result of gaming the system. 

Another article by Keven Ashton on Quartz points out that Baauer's "Harlem Shake" had only a few thousand views as a result of YouTube comic George Miller's video compilation. It was only after Warner Brother's owned Maker Studios made a version of the video to promote the studio itself and promoted it across it's many YouTube channels and Twitter did the video begin to get some traction. Other companies, DJs and bloggers jumped on, mostly to promote themselves, which caused Baauer's record label to take notice and begin its own promotion. Ashton provides a pretty thorough blow by blog of how it all took place, and it a lot less to do with what we think "viral" is rather than self-promotion. Here's the very first version the "Harlem Shake."

The gist of both articles is that what we believe and what's reality are frequently two different things when it comes to social media. It's becoming easier to manipulate many of the metrics that we use to measure success, if you have the money. 

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Google Launches A New Streaming Music Service

Yesterday Google introduced its new streaming music service called All Access, but surprise, surprise - it's not the same one that's been rumored for months.

Previous reports had it that Google's new service would be built around YouTube, which made a lot of sense since the majority of people discover new music through that video service anyway. It seems that both services will live in parallel, the difference being that All Access will be subscription only with no free tier. Users will have to pay $10 per month for the service ($8 if you subscribe by the end of June) with a 30 day free trial.

While we don't know for sure what's in store over at YouTube, We do have a little more information about the list of All Access features. It appears to combine your personal music collection with any available tracks in their catalog into a single searchable library, and of course, Google excels at search so everything should be easy to find. It also has auto-recommendation-based radio stations that allow you to customize your playlists.

A couple of things about Google All Access are very interesting:

1. Google beat Apple to the punch. The tough part about launching any kind of digital music service is making a deal with the major labels. The fact that Google accomplished this before Apple probably means that the labels pushed for a better deal and got it. This had the dual purpose of stymying Apple's attempts as well, as the company has reportedly only recently upped the terms of what they were willing to pay, and still haven't completed deals with Warners and Sony.

2. There's another service vying for marketshare. Although Amazon is king of the hill in terms of online retailers, their music site hasn't made nearly the mark that was anticipated, especially when you consider the marketshare that Android phones enjoy. As more and more consumers discover the joy of accessing music versus owning it, the marketshare that it has (about 13%) could shift in a hurry, especially if Apple doesn't introduce its service in the short term. Google as a behemoth company stands on the same ground as Amazon, and could easily eat their digital lunch and maybe Apple's too when it's all said and done. After all, they have an installed base of all those Android phones.

As has been the theme here lately, we're witnessing a big change in the music business occur right before our eyes, and it's going to be better for musicians in the long run. Today every artist and songwriter complains about the meager revenue they receive from streaming, but remember that as of now it's only expected to total $1.7 billion at the end of 2013. Considering that iTunes throws off twice that in royalties to the major labels alone every year, you can see where this is eventually going to go. Unfortunately, no royalty details were mentioned during the announcement yesterday (no surprise there).

Streaming probably won't replace the income of the glory days of CDs, but things will eventually be better than they are now in the transition period from one distribution method (downloads) to another (streaming).

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

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media for the best of over 800 posts.

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.

Twitter Now Gets Cozy With Network Television

Recently I wrote about how the cable channel Fuse designed a new show around Twitter music trends. Now comes word that the social network is actively working with the major networks even more closely.

Fox's The X Factor has used Twitter for voting and American Idol used Twitter hashtags from the audience to gauge their sentiments during the show, but now the both networks are going beyond that relationship. In fact, Fox will be using Twitter to distribute clips of their various shows and events after the they have been aired starting in this summer.

This is a pretty good move on Fox's part, since most of the social narrative and online buzz revolves around Twitter at the moment. Facebook suddenly seems so last year, and as it imposes more restrictions on what a user can see thanks to their Edgerank algorithm, doesn't have the promotional cache that it once had.

But Fox isn't the only network getting in bed with Twitter, as the social network is currently having discussions with ESPN (they've already used it for expanded coverage of the BCS series), NBC and CBS as well.

All networks see a relationship not only a means to expand their distribution and show coverage, but as a potential means for advertising revenue as well. With measurable results available from Twitter, any network could build a new business angle that they didn't have before. It's also potentially good for Twitter since it expects to double it's revenue in the next few years to over a billion dollars, which is just what's needed in time for a potential upcoming IPO.

Sometimes it's difficult to see things change when we're right in the middle of it happening, but if you look closely, you'll see a social media changing of the guard going on right now. Facebook isn't going away anytime soon, but Twitter is now the rising star.

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

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media for the best of over 800 posts.

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.

RIAA Now Counting Streams For Awards

As we slowly see music turning into a streaming world, so apparently does the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the industry organization that doles out the gold (500,000 sold) and platinum (1,000,000 sold) record awards.

Wanting to get ahead of the curve, the RIAA just announced that it will now also include streaming music in the count for their Digital Single Award certification. As a result, 56 songs have immediately earned awards, even a number of oldies from Aerosmith and Whitney Houston.

What's interesting is that the RIAA counts 100 streams as equivalent to 1 download, which means that you'd need 100 million streams to reach Platinum in a streaming-only world, a figure that seems fair as it's as difficult to attain as a million sales or downloads.

The organization is including streaming figures in its count from a number of apps, including Spotify, Rdio, MOG, Rhapsody, Xbox Music and Muve, as well as video sites like YouTube, Vevo, MTV.com, Yahoo Music and others.

There are so many artists getting massive streaming counts, and they should be recognized, as streaming influence is perhaps greater than any other sales parameter at the moment. It's another indication that the music business is evolving right before our eyes.

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

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media for the best of over 800 posts.

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.

Can iRadio Save The Music Business?

Word leaked out last week that Apple has finally come to terms with Universal Music regarding a licensing deal for their new streaming iRadio service. They also are reported to be inching closer to a deal with both Warner Music Group and Sony Music, although Sony still seems to be the toughest of the bunch to hash out an agreement.

It's also been rumored that the terms of the deal is much more favorable to the record labels in that it would pay more per stream than Pandora, plus the rights holders would get 50% of any ad revenue generated by Apple's new iAd business, which is still in its infancy.

iRadio is potentially a huge opportunity for artists, songwriters and record labels alike in that the audience from streaming will increase by multiples the minute the service is launched. One of the problems that everyone on the creative end of the business has at the moment is that the payout from streams is so abysmally low. That's like saying that you're not making enough money when you only play at largest venue in a small town in Iowa. There are plenty of fans elsewhere in the world if you can only get to them, which would increase your revenue.

Though both Spotify and Pandora have seen significant increases in total users, it's still a drop in the bucket to what Apple can potentially deliver. With iTunes now available in 119 countries (the App Store is in 155 and more than reaches 90% of the planet - and each one spends an average of $40 per year!) and more than 500 million active users, artists can look forward to a boost in revenue simply in terms of the increased audience that represents.

Will the revenue streams of the glory days of the music business be revisited as a result? Unless some new ideas in song bundling (an album is a song bundle, but now outdated) come along, probably not, but artist's are going to see a definite improvement on those meager streaming royalty statements over time, and many will be quite pleased with the result.

iRadio is going to do for streaming audio what iTunes did for music downloads, which is turn it into a viable business for content creators, this time by virtue of its installed user base. Google is said to be readying a similar music service to be launched later in the year through YouTube, and that competition can only be good for streaming in general.

I've talked and written much about Music 3.0, which was more about the music business embracing digital music and the artist socially connecting to his fans. Right before our eyes we're seeing it evolve into Music 4.0 - the age of streaming.

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

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media for the best of over 800 posts.

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.