The Official RIAA 2015 Statistics Are Out

The RIAA has released its statistics for 2015 and, as always, there are some surprises. The things to remember about the RIAA is that it works for the record labels (especially the majors), so some stats you have to take with a grain of salt. Here are some of the more noteworthy data points.

• There was a very slight increase in the recorded music part of the business, with revenues of just over $7 billion, for an increase of 0.09%

• Streaming accounted for more revenue than any other income stream for the first time, accounting for 34.4% of income, while download sales made up 34%, physical sales were 28.8%, and synch were 2.9% of total revenue.

• Paid subscription revenue increased 52.3% to $1.22 billion, compared to $800.1 million in 2014, while ad-supported streaming revenue increased 30.6 percent to $385.1 million. All very good news!

• Revenue from CDs, vinyl and DVDs of albums and singles fell another 10.1 percent to $1.9 billion (although that was less than predicted). CDs fell to $1.521 billion from $1.83 billion the year before based on 123 million CDs that were sold last year, which was down from around 143 million in 2014. 

• Vinyl sales continued to soar, generating $423 million from 16.9 million album sales and roughly 500,000 singles, an increase of 31.8 percent.

Here's the catch - the RIAA's numbers reflect retail sales, which means that the above numbers don't reflect how much the labels actually received for their music, although wholesale prices are from 65 to 70%.

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Branding For Musicians Quick Overview

Last summer I was a thought-leader at David Cutler's wonderful SAVVY Musician program at the University of South Carolina, which is basically a mini-MBA program for musicians. The program not only teaches you have to think like an entrepreneur, but produce results as well.

Here's a brief branding outline that I gave while there, which explains some of the very basic steps that any musician, engineer, producer, or music exec can do to develop your brand.

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Twitter Can't Get Young Users

If you're an artist or in a band then you're probably on social media to reach your existing fans and to expand your fanbase. There's a problem though, in that it's getting a lot harder to do that, especially with the biggest social platforms available.

This is especially evident with Twitter, which still has 320 million monthly users, but most of those seem to be business, sports and celebrity users or journalists. Gen Z and younger millennials are staying away like the plague.

It seems that, unlike Facebook (which they reluctantly use), younger users really don't have a good reason to use Twitter when other alternatives like Snapchat, Instagram and Kik fulfill their needs in a better way.

Twitter is hard to define and even harder to describe why you need it, but any social network is in trouble if the user doesn't have any friends on it, as is currently the case with Twitter and the Gen Z and millennial crowd.

Brands are beginning to recognize this as well and spending less on the platform, understanding that it probably won't be growing much in the future, and that you're buying current users, not future ones.

That's why it's important that you know exactly where your fans are before you invest your time in a social platform. You only have a limited amount of energy and as a result, can't be everywhere, so go where you can get the most bang for your buck in terms of time invested. If you know that your fans are on Twitter, spend your social capital there, but if more are on Instagram (for instance), that's where you have to be.

Also, be aware of the ebb and flow of social media platforms, because they change every year both in terms of users and features. What works this year might not work next, and vice versa.

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EDM Is Slowing Down

We've all seen clubs and restaurants that were white hot for a while and suddenly petered out after the sheen had worn off. That's what's happening with EDM at the moment as the scene is slowly winding down on a number of fronts.

Although some big festivals like Ultra Music can still command large crowds, they're not the instant sellouts that they once were. In fact, many formerly successful festivals like TomorrowWorld have been cancelled this year.

Why is this happening? There are a number of reasons why the scene is said to have peaked (some say back in 2013).

• For one thing, EDM is a victim of its own success, with entrance, VIP and bottle prices now beyond what the normal fan can handle.

• There are fewer South American high-rollers to prop the clubs up as unfavorable exchange rates and country economics have kept them at home.

• Soaring DJ fees (as high as $400,000 per night) have also made it impossible for many clubs to continue.

• The "show" that most DJ's put are is basically the same, and is pretty much limited by the genre and environment. People that used to love EDM are now looking for something new.

• Many are also tired of the house music genre that's at the heart of EDM.

Both Las Vegas and South Beach, the respective ground zero for the genre, have seen mass club closings in the last year, and SFX Entertainment, who bet heavily on investing in EDM, has declared bankruptcy.

It looks like we're ready for a new trend. Do you see it on the horizon?

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Former Taylor Swift Manager Rick Barker On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

This week's guest on my Inner Circle Podcast is Rick Barker, who helped launch the career of Taylor Swift as her first manager. In the interview, Rick provides an overview of how Taylor became such a huge star, and gives us some insights into how the music business has changed since she hit the scene.

Rick is now is the social media mentor on American Idol, and offers a great Social Media For Music video full of tips and tricks on how to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to help you promote your music. Rick is cutting edge in this regard, and taught me a few things I didn't know myself.

In the intro I'll take a look at how the record labels are now changing their marketing strategy away from the short product release window to a "continuous loop," and how the fifth Beatle Sir George Martin changed the finances of the music business.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

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Labels Adapt To Music Without Sales

Major record labels are are finally coming to grips with the fact that we're going to be living in a streaming world where any sales are a bonus. That means their strategy is now changing from one of selling product to one of engagement, according to a great article on The Drum.

The article states that there's now a rethink of how product should be marketed.

Instead of the short "release windows" of the past, labels are coming to realize that the more consumers are listening to an artist's streams, the more money everyone is making. As a result, the marketing cycles are becoming much longer, creating a "continuous loop" that's geared to keep people coming back to listen.

This movement is being spearheaded by Sony Music UK, but other labels are slowly adapting the strategy.

Sony began to look at other industries like traditional publishing and hotels to see how both are courting and keeping their customers, then incorporating that strategy to help increase engagement.

This can only be good for artists, who have long suffered from inadequate promotion when a song or album wasn't an immediate hit.

In the past, there was still a chance that a record could catch fire if a radio station (no matter how obscure) would add the song to its playlist, but in these days of station groups, consultants, and less local radio, that's more difficult than ever. Plus, radio is less and less relevant when there's no product to sell, so any new ideas in music marketing is great news for every artist and label in our new Music 4.0 age.

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Kanye Gets Tidal To Extend Trial Period

If you want to listen to Kanye West's new album The Life of Pablo, there's only one place online and that's Tidal. The problem is that after the 30 day trial period, you have to start to pay for the service, either at the $9.95 per month premium rate, or the more spendy $19.95 per month rate for the CD quality Tidal Hi-Fi.

Fearful of losing a chance at upselling trial subscribers that signed on just to listen to the album who's time has run out, Tidal has extended it's free trial period by 30 days.

There are probably a couple of reasons for this. First, Tidal screwed up Kanye's TLOP launch by not reporting it's numbers to Billboard, resulting in the album not even charting when it was released. Whether this was because the numbers might have been embarrassingly low, or just a human error hasn't been determined.

The second reasons might be that Tidal owner Jay-Z is reportedly looking for either a partner in the platform, or a straight buy-out. Any subscriber attrition, even those on free tier, looks bad, so it's in the company's best interest to bite the bullet and add another free month rather than have the numbers decrease.

One interesting thing is that Kanye and his producers keeps changing TLOP even after it's been released, which may be the wave of the future in terms of production. Hit the release deadline and perfect it later in the form of updates may become the norm before you know it.

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Get More People To Watch Your Live Video Streaming

Live video streaming is pretty hot these days, and most of the major social platforms allow you to do it. The problem is that you only get a small portion of your available fans when streaming in just one place.

While it's possible to embed your player on a number of websites, that's a pretty time consuming process, and that's where StreamSpread comes in.

StreamSpread is a new network that finds compatible websites for you (called "publishers") so you can get your live stream out to more people. You have to pay for this service (you're an "advertiser") at a rate of either $5 per 1000 views or $0.03 per hour viewed, but you can quickly and easily expand your audience.

The service works with a stream you create from Ustream, Livestream or Twitch, and provides analytics such as number of viewers, time watched, viewer geolocation, concurrent views, and viewer's browser and device type.

You can also filter the categories of the websites that will serve up your stream to make sure that you target the exact audience for your message or music.

Here's a brief video below that explains the service.

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UK Adopts Sensible Legislation To Stop Music Venue Closures

It looks like the task force set up by London mayor Boris Johnson is actually having some effect, as tweaks to planning legislation may actually help to save some live music venues.

Alarmed by the closing of some of the most popular clubs in the city, the mayor took action last October in an effort to save its remaining music venues. The impact has spread to the entire country though, as the Music Venue Trust announced that new legislation would be put in place specifically to deal with noise complaints that threatened many successful music venues.

With many cities sections undergoing gentrification, it was not uncommon for a new apartment or condo building to be built beside a long-standing music venue. When new residents moved in, they complained about the loud noise and large crowds of people, in many cases causing a successful club to close.

The new tweak in the legislation requires a developer to consider the impact on the new residents before applying for any building permits, and ceasing development if the impact will be too great, thereby saving the venue.

Something like this happens so rarely that it feels good for musicians and venues to finally get a win. Now if only more localities around the world would adopt the same attitude, the music industry would be a lot better off.

Here's a great overview of the situation from DIY.

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Instagram Users Consume A Lot Of Music

Nielsen just completed a new study assessing Instagram user's music behaviors, and discovered a number interesting facts.

It turns out that Instagram users are above average music consumers. They spend more time listening, and they spend more money on music items than other music consumers for starters. They also take artist's live performances more seriously than most other music consumers.

Their tastes in music is also different, as they listen to more pop, hip-hop and R&B than other music consumers (check out the chart below).

They're also more than twice as likely to pay for a premium streaming tier than other users.

The upshot: if you're not on Instagram already, it's time to sign on, as there are a lot of music fans there.

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Two Year Anniversary With Episode #100 Of My Inner Circle Podcast

Today is a joyous occasion in that it's the two year anniversary of my Inner Circle Podcast!

I want to thank you all for your support of the show. I don't make any money from it, but I love doing it as long as you find it interesting and useful.

For episode #100 I welcome back the great studio and live engineer and my good friend Dennis Moody, who was my first guest and also first anniversary guest on episode #50.

Dennis will talk about the changes in venues around the world, especially after the latest terrorist incident in Paris. Dennis arrived there on tour shortly after the event, and he'll describe what it was like.

In the intro I'll take a look at how the once promising Tidal streaming network is currently in trouble and why, as well as some of the unique and interesting vintage gear finds of late.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

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SoundExchange Introduces A New Song Code Search Tool

You'd think that with so much music existing in the digital domain that it would easy to track down the usage and royalties for a song, but unfortunately that's still not the case. Despite calls for the recording industry, there's no one single search engine that can find that data, but SoundExchange recently came up with a step in the right direction.

SoundExchange now offers an online tool for looking up the ISRCs, or International Standard Recording Codes, that are related to the nearly 20 million recordings in its database.

ISRC codes have long been the standard method for identifying sound recordings, first being introduced in 1986. Each code number is comprised of a two-letter country code, a three-character code for the registrant, two numbers for the year, and five numbers assigned by the registrant. The RIAA oversees the ISRC system in the United States and its territories. The IFPI oversees ISRCs globally.

SoundExchange's search engine allows you to look up an ISRC code by artist name, song title, album, year, version and UPC/EAN. The result can be added to a cart for future reference, which can then be exported to a CSV file so the data can be inputted to a digital service's system. The IFPI also provides a lookup tool it created in conjunction with SoundExchange with identical information.

SoundExchange collects royalties for non-interactive streaming platforms like Pandora and satellite radio only.

As said before, this isn't the ultimate solution that everyone has been wanting, but it's the best solution so far in that it provides cross-check information to make sure that copyright owners are being paid at least in some areas.

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