Which Streaming Service Is The Leader?

Spotify gets so much press and hype that we automatically think of it as the streaming service with the most listeners.

That's far from the truth though, as a new study from Edison Research shows that Pandora, at 31% of American listeners, is clearly the leader by a factor of 3 of the next competitor, as shown by this infographic from Statista.

What's probably more interesting is the fact that iHeartRadio is second with 9% and the relatively new iTunes Radio is right behind with 8%. Spotify follows in 4rth place at 6%.

What's not included is YouTube, which may in fact have a far larger audience than Pandora, if other studies and empirical evidence is true.

We're in the early days of streaming adoption, so expect this chart to be fluid. It very may be totally scrambled next year at this time.

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

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The Tiny Piece That Neil Young's Pono Needs To Succeed

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Neil Young’s dream of a higher quality consumer music service appears to be slowly getting closer, as evidenced by the latest announcements at the annual South by Southwest conference and its accompanying Kickstarter campaign. Pono Music, in which Young is heavily invested, is a high-quality audio ecosystem consisting of a download service supplying digital audio files transferred from the original high-resolution audio masters, and a dedicated player with the ability to play back those files. Along with Apple’s best kept secret in their Mastered for iTunes program, Pono is an attempt to raise the bar in audio quality, a bar that has been continually lowered since just before the turn of the century thanks to the public’s acceptance of the quality impaired MP3 format, but can be traced by as far as the introduction of the CD.

Through the years, Young has always been a notorious stickler for audio quality, being one of the first artists to build his own personal studio based around hand-picked vintage audio gear, then later investing in Pacific Microsonics, which developed the HDCD audio technology that was acquired by Microsoft in 2000. He’s also been a big proponent of hi-res audio formats like DVD-Audio and most recently Blu-Ray.

When I first heard of Pono three years ago I was initially skeptical. Large digital files like the ones required for the hi-res audio backbone of Pono weren’t easy to deliver, and the public seemed just fine with the lower quality offered by MP3 and streaming services. Even last year, when Pono’s introduction was teased, success still seemed somewhat far-fetched with the wholesale movement towards the convenience of streaming music, one that continues in earnest today.

Today is a different day, however, and now I look at the Pono player/service in a somewhat different light. First of all let’s look at what Young and his cohorts have done right. Read more on Forbes.

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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.

Predicting a Country Music Hit

What would you do if you knew the formula for a hit? Would you follow it to the letter to take advantage, or would you do exactly the opposite to stay true to yourself? These are interesting personal questions that luckily we never have to ask ourselves because you can't predict a hit. Or can you?

Musicmetric recently released an interesting whitepaper called "Cracking The Code - Predicting a Country Music Hit" that can look at the sales and social metrics of a country song and reasonably predict if it will be a hit or not within four weeks of debuting on the charts. The research looked at 28 different metrics, including airplay, Shazam tags, Facebook likes, Soundcloud followers, online activity, chart positions, category, sales and other audience metrics. Of the 66 country music tracks that they looked at, 23 went to #1.

They found that the average #1 country single had:

• 3.5 times their usual weekly Facebook likes 
• 2.0 times their usual weekly YouTube plays 
• 1.8 times their usual weekly Twitter Followers 
• 2.0 times their usual weekly BitTorrent downloads 
• took 16.5 weeks from its first entry to its chart peak 

After looking at their model, the researchers found that they could predict with a 79% probability if a song would reach the top 20, 63% if it would the top 10, and 50% if it would go to #1.

While this isn't that helpful for songwriters, it sure is for record labels and publishers. That said, I don't think I'd want my promotional budget hanging on research that has even that much room for error, but it's still the closest we've come to hit prediction yet.

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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.

Warner And Shazam Hold Hands

Shazam is a great service that can tell you what song you're listening to, which millions of people use around 16 million times each day. In fact, it has 420 million users who are consistently using the app to identify songs, which provides it with a very powerful set of data of who's listening to what and when.

Warner Music Group wants to tap into that data, and has made an agreement with Shazam to verify the play data from other sources, but also find new unsigned artists. You can almost think of it as crowd-sourcing new talent.

Other social networks have been sharing their big data for some time, so the fact that Shazam is now doing it isn't particularly earth-shattering. What is different about the deal is that it establishes a Shazam-branded label for the new artists that are discovered.

Shazam has a database of 35 million songs and adds more than a million new ones a month. Chances are pretty good that if someone is listening, Shazam knows about it, and now that can benefit new artists.

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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.

Musicians Should Ask For The Sale

When it comes right down to it, we're all selling something. Every day, we're selling our products, services, brand and our personal selves over and over again. As an artist or band, you have to be aware that sales are a big part of your equation for success. Here's something that I posted before, but it bears repeating. It's 10 sales tips from the Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age book that can help you not only increase your revenue, but your fan base as well.

"Here are ten sales tips to always keep in mind.

1. Ask for the purchase. Never forget that even though you’re selling yourself, you’re still in sales.

2. Sell a package. With a ticket you get a CD, with a CD you get a T-shirt, with a T-shirt you get a ticket. The idea is to make each purchase something with added value.

3. Sell merchandise at as an affordable price as possible. Until you’re a star, you should be more concerned about visibility and branding than revenue. If you want to spread the word, price it cheaper.

4. There are other things to sell besides CDs and T-shirts. Hats, a song book, a tour picture book, beach towels—get creative but choose well. Too many choices may actually reduce sales as a result of buyer confusion. You can now sell a variety of branded merchandise with no up-front costs using CafePress.com or Zazzle.com.

5. Begin promoting as soon as possible. That allows time for the viral buzz (aka free promotion) to build and ensures that you’ll get a larger share of your fan’s discretionary spending.

6. Capture the name, email address, and zip code from anyone who makes a purchase, particularly ticket buyers.

7. Always give your customer more than he or she expects. By giving them something for free that they did not expect, you keep them coming back for more.

8. Give it away and sell it at the same time. In the Music 1.0 to 2.5 days, you used to give away a free track to sell other merchandise such as the album. Now, if you give away a track, that track will help you to sell more.

9. The best items to sell are the ones that are the scarcest. Autographed items, special boxed sets, limited-edition vinyl that’s numbered—all these items are more valuable because of their scarcity. If the items are abundant, price them cheaper. If the items are scarce, don’t be afraid to price them higher.

10. Sell your brand. You, the artist, are your own brand. Remember that everything you do sells that brand, even if it doesn’t result in a sale. Just the fact that people are paying attention can result in a sale and more revenue down the road."

You can read additional excerpts from the Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook and my other books on the excerption section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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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.