The 5 Top Facebook Music Apps

While Facebook seems increasingly to be an adult network of anyone over age 25, it still has over a billion users worldwide, and a number of them frequently listen to music on the service. The analytics site MetricsMonk determined that the top 10 Facebook music apps have around 74 million active monthly users, which is around 33% more than last year. Here are the top 5:

1. Spotify - 33 million
2. Pandora - 8 million
3. Soundcloud - 7.8
4. Deezer - 7.8 million
5. iHeartRadio - 4 million

The big winner here is Spotify, as it almost doubled its users from last year, while Pandora ominously shed users by more than half. The big trend though, seemed to be towards services like Songza and 8Track that provided more personalized streaming, although none of those services even remotely challenges Spotify at this time.

That said, the latest numbers (as of May 1, 2013) state that there are over 1.13 billion active monthly users of Facebook. If less than a tenth of them get their music through the service, then these numbers may not be anything to get excited about. Yes, they're increasing, but there doesn't seem to be a challenge to the standalone streaming services by Facebook in the cards anytime soon.

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Is Music Discovery All It's Cracked Up To Be?

To many in the music tech community, the holy grail of online music involves music discovery. As a matter of fact, some within the industry feel that the music business' future depends on it. That's why any company that has "discovery" as a feature suddenly becomes a hot investor attraction even as investors grow wary of the music industry.

The reason why some think that discovery is the future is many feel that's the best way to grow the industry. Instead of listeners recycling their listening with more or less the same songs from years past as well as a smattering of songs from today that are high on the charts, any way that exposes a listener to something new means that there's a new potential sale, either from buying music, merch or concert tickets.

While that certainly seems plausible, one has to wonder just how much better the current discovery algorithms can get, and if an improvement is really all that necessary. In an interesting article on Hypebot last week, a number of industry vets were asked their views on the subject, and they had some interesting insights.

In the article Jay Frank, the author of Future Hit. DNA (a great resource for anyone in the music business) postulates that music discovery is overrated, since it appeals to only a limited segment of listeners, the ones actively looking for something new, to begin with. That, of course, limits the widespread usefulness of such an algorithm considerably.

Where once upon a time you were exposed to new music on the radio whether you wanted to be or not, today we have too many choices for that to happen as much (even though radio is still the largest form of music discovery, with YouTube far behind). In fact, so much of music discovery still comes from word-of-mouth. If all of your friends rave about the new Daft Punk album, of course you're going to check it out. If you hear mixed reviews, you're less likely to take a listen unless you're overwhelmed by the media exposure (think the last Justin Timberlake album). With a discovery algorithm, you might be exposed to something new, but will that single listen to a single song be enough?

While an improved music discovery algorithm might still be the holy grail for some, it doesn't seem likely that it will change the music business as much as some hope it will.

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

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Is Vimeo Better Than YouTube?

YouTube is the undeniable king of the hill when it comes to online video hosting, but it's far from the only game in town. At last count there were over 90 other sites doing roughly the same thing, which you can see at all-video-sites.com. While most of these sites were very specific in their content, a number of them are a catch-all, open to anything that one might post, as is YouTube.

There is a competitor to YouTube that doesn't open its arms quite as wide, which in many cases makes it a better choice for the serious artist or videomaker. That's Vimeo, which gets 70 million unique visitors a month that are generally more engaged that what you'll find watching the competition.

One of the advantages of Vimeo is that the content is generally up a notch or two from YouTube, with fewer cat and baby videos. Add to that a streamlined layout that allows you to find and watch what you want a lot easier, and you can see why it's preferred by many after they try it.

One of the best reasons to watch on Vimeo though, is that it's advert free, which won't make money for the content creator but sure is better for the viewer. Let's face it; no one likes to wait for a pre-roll commercial before you get to the video you want to check out.

A basic membership is free and allows you to upload one HD video per week or 500meg of storage. The downside is that your uploaded videos are subject to banner ads, the ability to make a video private is turned off, and the analytics package is pretty basic. Upgrade to Vimeo Plus for $9.95 a month and those limitations are lifted. If you're a pro, you can upgrade to a Vimeo Pro account for $199 per year that basically ups the game by providing better video quality, more storage and bandwidth, and the ability to monetize your content.

You might not want to change completely from YouTube, but Vimeo offers a lot - for a price. Then again, with a service like OneLoad, you can upload to a number of platforms and have a presence across all of them. After all, there's nothing like a video everywhere to raise your profile.

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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.

Facebook's 3D Music Map

One of the cool things about the online world is the variety of measurement tools that are available, and the fact that new ones are being created all the time. Take for instance the 3D music map that Facebook commissioned Stamen Design to come up with.

In the following video, you'll see a number of views of the 90 day viral spread of 3 songs on Facebook; Will.i.am and Britney Spear's "Scream And Shout," Macklemore and Ryan Lewis "Thrift Shop," and Swedish House Mafia's "Don't You Worry Child." Check out how "Scream and Shout" starts to go viral in Miami and New York first before it spreads, and how "Don't You Worry Child" surges in Texas in the middle of February.

While this is just a test of the technology, I can see how a more real time version could be useful to record label marketing departments and agents, as they could see the hot spots of a song's activity and be able to respond with a greater artist presence in the area. For now, it's just a cool video (with no audio, by the way).

The map is part of Facebook Stories, a blog that looks at different ways that people use the social network.

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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.

Predicting Retweets

What if you could determine how many retweets you'd have before you even sent the tweet? It probably would change the way you compose your tweet and use Twitter for promotion.

Up until now, most marketers depended upon data that suggests either the best time of day, or the best hashtags to use (or a combination of both) to get a feel for what their tweet might do in the wild. That might all change, as an MIT professor has now created a computer model that predicts the number of retweets in its entire lifetime after only a couple of minutes of retweet activity.

“A lot of people felt that Twitter usage was totally random and unpredictable, that it was all just noise,” stated Sloan School of Management assistant professor Tauhid Zaman in an article in the LA Times. “But it turns out that there is a systematic, repeatable behavior that you can model.” Who knew?

You can actually see the model in action on his website Twouija: the Retweet Oracle, which is a twist on the old physical Ouija board. The site shows a number of tweets from celebrities and shows, as well as  how well they match his predictions.

While on the surface this might seem like a boon to anyone who does promotion via Twitter, I don't think the model by itself adds much in terms of promotion, since you have to actually release the tweet first before it can predict what it will do. By correlating that data over time though, it might provide some better clues as to the parameters that make a tweet more "retweetable." 

That said, I can tell you that without any of the fancy computer models or predictions. Just write something worth retweeting. 

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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.