How Spotify Helps A Song Become A Hit

The other day Spotify director of economic development Will Page showed some data about how the service can be front and center in helping a song become a hit, using Lorde's "Royals" as an example.

The gist of the example is that playlists are one of the primary reasons that a song takes off on Spotify. When people add a song to a playlist they create, it's almost the same as word-of-mouth in that other people check out the song and potentially add it to their lists as well.

As with so many hits these days, that can help a song get a groundswell, but it takes a celebrity or someone with high visibility to add it to their playlist for the song to explode. In the case of "Royals" it was Spotify's Sean Parker who added it to his Hipster International list which pushed the song to hit status almost overnight.

The interesting thing here is that this is really no different from hit making on radio going back to the 50s. If a DJ started playing a song in a major or secondary city, the song would begin to break out as other DJs would add it to their playlists because it was suddenly got hot.

The fact of the matter is that it still requires some sort of a unexpected break for a song to become a hit, it's just that the break now may come online instead of over the air.

----------------------------------

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook 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.

Lady Gaga’s Management Blues

It’s been reported that Lady Gaga, a performer seemingly at the height of her powers, has fired her longtime manager Troy Carter in a move that has many in the industry scratching their heads. Carter and his management company Atom Factory have been in charge of Gaga’s career since 2007 and are largely responsible for putting her in position to become the superstar that she is, and even more importantly, being able to financially take advantage of it.

There’s been no reason given for the split, but an artist/manager divorce usually comes down to one of three reasons; the artist isn’t making enough money, the artist is being asked to do something he or she feels compromises some artistic or personal integrity in order to make more money, or the artist feels slighted because the manager takes on a new client. 

Gaga’s making plenty of money (she reportedly made $80 million last year alone, topping Forbes list of most powerful musicians), so that’s an unlikely scenario. The other major star in Atom Factory stable is John Legend, but he isn’t a new signing, so that’s an unlikely conflict. 

That said, Carter does have a new label venture with Capitol Music Group with two new acts, Basic Vacation and The Ceremonies, the later who will have an EP released on November 19th. The label (Atom Factory Music) is said to be a hybrid record label in that it uses Capitol more for their radio promotion, with the rest of the marketing occurring in-house, which would take more attention than in a normal artist-manager-label relationship. This could be another thing that competed for the superstar’s attention. Read more on Forbes.

----------------------------------

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook 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.

8 Steps To Developing Your Brand

Everyone has a brand, but one of the problems that most musicians, artists, bands, songwriters, engineers and producers have is that they don't understand exactly what their brand is. It's difficult to stand out from the crowd unless you have a really good idea of your brand and know how to develop it.

Here's an excerpt from Social Media Promotion For Musicians: The Manual For Marketing Yourself, Your Band And Your Music Online, that describes the 8 steps to develop your brand.

"While the music that you play or create is totally up to you and outside the realm of this book, what we can deal with is the second part of the brand - your image. Here are some steps to take to refine your brand.

1. Make sure your brand image accurately portrays your music and personality. If you’re a biker band, you probably don’t want a website that’s all pink and flowery. On the other hand, the pink works great for Katy Perry. Likewise, if you’re an EDM artist you wouldn’t want your site to show the woods and trees, although that could work well for an alt rock band from Minnesota or someone doing music for meditation. 

2. Keep it honest and simple. Don’t try to be who you’re not, it’s too hard to pull off. You are who you are and people will either love you for it or they won’t. While you can concoct a backstory where you were taught a new form of music by aliens, then honed your technique in the jungles of Brazil, that just sets your brand up to fail if you really can’t live up to the image that’s been painted. Best to keep things simple and be honest about who and what you are and where you came from. If people like what you do and can relate to you, that will shine through and your fans will not only find it interesting enough, but will be totally fascinated as well.

3. Differentiate yourself. While it might seem tempting to proclaim that you’re just like Coldplay, that doesn’t immediately make you their equal in the eyes of the public. The fact of the matter is, there already is a Coldplay, why does the world need another one? It’s their brand, not yours. The only way that a brand can be successful is to differentiate itself from the competition. A great example is the seminal punk band The Ramones, who decided that all their songs would be as short as possible and played without solos. There must be something that makes you unique in even a small way. If you can’t find it, it may be time to go back to the drawing board.

4. Keep the look consistent. Consistency of product and image are the key to branding. That’s why you need to use the same logo and fonts and have the same general look and feel across all your promo for it to be effective. That includes your website, press kit, blog, newsletter and all social media.

5. Create a remarkable logo. This is a requirement if you’re planning to promote your brand. You need this for your website, social sites, merchandise, press kit, promo and on your stage during gigs. In short, it has to be part of everything you do. You may start promoting yourself without it, but it’s a big plus if you already have a logo. It separates you from the newbies. Just as an example, here are a few unmistakable musician’s logos in Figure 3.1.

If you’re a musician without a band, a producer, songwriter or engineer, it doesn’t mean that you must also have a logo as well (although it would be better), but at the very least, use the same font for your name on your blog, website, newsletter and anywhere else it might appear.

6. Great photos are a necessity. You need first class photos for posters, merch, website, social networks, press kits, and a lot more if you want to build your brand. This is as important as the logo - you need a great photo in order to begin any kind of promotion. Have you ever seen a Facebook page or website of a major artist without an artist or band photo?

7. Give away samples. Learn this phrase well as it will be repeated throughout this book. 

Your music is your marketing.

That means that you can’t look at your music as your product. It may bring in some money eventually but not all that much in the grand scheme of things. Remember that 90 to 95% of the money that a major artist earns is not from recorded music. It’s from concerts, merchandise, publishing and licensing. 

TIP: Don’t be afraid to give your music away. It’s your best marketing tool and the best way to build your brand.

8. Cool is never declared. You cannot proclaim how new and unique you are. If such a statement is in fact true, people will find out soon enough and tell the world. You can use quotes from other people, but telling the world that you think you’re cool does not make it so.

These are not the only steps that you can take, but they’ll take you a long way to creating a brand image that works for you."

You can download a free chapter of Social Media Promotion For Musicians or read additional excerpts at bobbyowsinski.com.

----------------------------------

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook 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.

A Search Engine For Radio

Have you ever listened to the radio and wished that the station would play a song that you can't wait to hear? You had to wait until either the song was played, or search for another station where the song might be playing and risk missing it on the original channel. Of course, if you're near a computer you can dial that song up in a second on any number of streaming services or YouTube, but if radio is your thing, that meant that you were stuck with the way we've listened for nearly a century. But that's changed now with the a new service called Radio Search Engine.

Radio Search Engine, the brainchild of Michael Robertson (who's also responsible for DAR.fm and way back, MP3.com), allows you to search for a song or artist, and the service will find a station that's currently playing it. It gives you a list of popular songs that are playing, and poses suggestions of other songs and stations after the search engine has found your query. You can think of it sort of like Google for radio.

Radio Search Engine works pretty well but it's not perfect, probably because it depends upon song metadata. If the metadata is incorrect or incomplete, a song could be playing but RSE won't find. That's not RSE's fault, but it's something that does come up. Then there's the fact that, as stated before, you can use one of the many streaming services to do the same thing.

One area where Radio Search Engine can help an artist is by searching to see what songs are being played on radio and where. While there are other ways to measure airplay, there's nothing like hearing it yourself as the ultimate aircheck. Check out the video below on how it works.

----------------------------------

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook 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.

Three Reasons Why The CD Is Still Important

Everybody knows that the CD has died, replaced by a digital world where files and streams are the main methods of music delivery. The only problem with that statement is that the CD is not yet deceased by a long shot, and it’s still a real tool in the belt of artists and bands everywhere. Sure, it’s rapidly diminishing in importance, but important it still is. I know that most of you reading this don’t believe me, so let me give you three reasons as proof. 

Reason #1: Last year there were 211 million CDs sold in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. While this number is down 78% from the format’s peak in 2000, it still amounted to around $2.5 billion in revenue, or about 35% of the income of the entire industry in the US. If you think that there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth in the business now (although it’s far more quiet than it’s been in the recent past), you’d hear some real wailing in record label boardrooms everywhere if the format were to disappear into the ether tomorrow.

Now 211 million of anything is a lot of units, but keep in mind that these are only the sales that the RIAA could count through their traditional distribution channels. This doesn’t account for all the CDs sold independently by artists at gigs, shows, church services, or online, and who knows how many other outlets.  And keep in mind that CDs are a high-margin item that makes not only more revenue per sale but more profit as well. An artist or band selling a few units per night might not seem like much, but this is occurring by the the thousands daily, which adds up to real money that’s not on the books anywhere and never will be. Read more on Forbes.

----------------------------------

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook 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.