How People Listen To Their Music

CBS and Vanity Fair recently conducted a survey about music consumption in the United States that's extremely detailed and interesting. I'll be providing information from that report from time to time in upcoming posts, but let's start off with how most people listen to music.

As you can see from the chart below, the radio is still the way that most people get their music at 49%, followed by a digital music service way behind at 17%.

People still like to listen to songs in their library from a phone or digital player at 15%, 9% still use a CD player, 6% from their computer, and 1% from a record player.

That last figure is surprising in that it's as high as it is. Vinyl has made a comeback, but finding the equipment to play it on isn't all that easy these days. Also, the fact that so many still use CDs shows that the format has a great deal of life left in it as well.

Beyonce Fights Back Against The Amazon/Target Boycott

If you’ve been following the marketing strategy used by team Beyonce on her latest self-titled album, you know that it’s been quite clever so far. To recap, the Beyonce album was released on the unsuspecting public without any advance marketing fanfare whatsoever, which caused a bit of a commotion as that fact was trumpeted far and wide by bloggers and news organizations (including me, I should add).

Of course there’s always more to the story and so it is here. The album was released as a digital-only product, with a one week exclusive going to iTunes. This didn’t sit well with retail giant Target, who refused to sell the CD when it was released as a result. A few days later, Amazon joined the boycott on the CD as well (although it still sells the download). 

Even though Beyonce set an iTunes record with over 600,000 digital album downloads, having the number 2 and 3 retailers boycotting your physical product could put a crimp in your long term sales. So what did Beyonce do? She went on a shopping trip to a Tewsbury, Massachusetts Walmart on Friday night, announced to everyone over the store’s loudspeaker system that she was there to buy her album, then gave out approximately 37 grand worth of $50 Walmart gift cards to everyone she saw in the store.

Most of the press covered the move as Beyonce being nice to a bunch of people she didn’t know, but there was actually a grand design behind the shopping appearance. One was a subtle reminder to her fan base that even if you couldn’t find her CD at Target or Amazon, it was readily available at Walmart. She also sent an unmistakable message to Target that said, “If you cross me, I’ll give all of my attention to your competitor instead.” Read more on Forbes.

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You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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4 Ways To Use Your CD As A Marketing Tool

Yes, people still buy CDs. There were over 240 million CD sales in 2011 that were recorded (and many millions more that weren't), so it's still a viable market that's going to be around at least for a little while longer.

Since people still buy CDs, you might as well use it as a marketing tool as well, instead of solely a piece of merchandise. Here are a few things to think about before you commit to manufacturing.

1. Pay attention to your artwork. It really is important. Low quality artwork can give a potential buyer the impression that you didn't care enough to get it right, and maybe the music and production on the CD suffer from the same fate.

2. Ad a QR code. A QR code is that little black and white square image that's basically an analog link to an online address. People scan it with their camera phone and can instantly go to your website, iTunes store, or just about anywhere else you point them. It doesn't cost much and is a great way to keep people interested while they discover more about the artist or band.

3. Be sure that your website URL is very visible. Put it on every page of the artwork so if the reader gets curious for more info they can instantly get it. This is your chance to sell some merch, which is where the real money is made.

4. Include a download code. This could be for the digital version of the CD, additional bonus material, or some unreleased songs. Whatever it is, this is becoming more and more common and CD buyers are beginning to expect it.

Remember, as I've said here before many times and illustrated in my Music 3.0 Internet music guidebook, your music is your marketing.

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

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.

How Much Does An Artist Really Make?

Here's an interesting chart from informationisbeautiful.net that shows how many units (either physical or digital) an artist has to sell in order to make the minimum wage of $1,160 per month. In other words, this is what you have to sell just to make the same amount as flipping burgers at Micky D's.

There are quite of few of the following numbers that I have a problem with, most notably the album download and retail CD figures (they're lower than they should be), but the general gist of the graphic is correct, which is that you have to sell a massive amount of digital product for it to amount to anything.

Keep in mind that most artists make their income from a combination of all the categories on the chart, so  the end result is not quite as dire as the graphic makes it seem.

Click here for the original post.

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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.

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

New Survey Shows Teens Actually Paying For Music

It's common knowledge that teens don't and won't pay for music, and place zero value on it. Or so we've been erroneously told, it seems.

A new survey by the teen-targeted virtual world Habbo surveyed 47,000 teens from 33 countries about their listening and purchasing habits, and the results fly in the face of music industry wisdom. Among the data includes:

  -- only 33% of teens prefer to download music without paying for it
  -- Teens in Chile are least likely to pay for music, with 51% downloading music without paying
  -- only 21% of US and 20% of UK teens report downloading music without paying
  -- only 21% of teens prefer purchasing downloaded music
  -- 37% of Australian teens say they favor paying to download

Now comes the surprising part:
  -- 20% of teens polled report buying CDs
  -- Teens in Sweden (40%), Germany (37%) and Denmark (35%) are most likely to buy a CD, versus 14% of teens surveyed in the US

What influences the type of music teenagers listen to?
  -- Radio and TV are still the dominant music taste makers. 38% of teens take music recommendations from these traditional channels
  -- 28% are influenced by what their friends are listening to and recommending
  -- 18% are influenced by what is in the music charts
  -- Only 9% are influenced by magazines and what they read online

The study also shows that today’s teenager is connected with friends online and values their social recommendation:
- 78% of teens use social networks to share recommendations
- Only 23% never use social networks to recommend music to friends
- Finnish teens are the most likely to share recommendations (88%)
- German (51%), Swiss (46%) and Austrian (45%) teens are the least likely to use social networks to recommend

The music industry is pretty fast to claim that all their problems is the result of illegal downloads, but as we all know (and this survey suggests), there's a lot more to it than that.

Read the original article at Habbo's parent company blog at sulake.com.

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Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Pandora And The CD

Regardless of the trends towards online digital music, CDs are still important. Sure, you may sell a few, but it's the hidden advantages of the format that everyone overlooks.

Take Pandora for example. I came across the following section on their submission FAQ.

To submit music to Pandora, you'll need these items:

1) a CD of your music

2) a unique UPC code for that CD*

3) this CD to be available through Amazon as a physical CD (and not just as MP3s)**

4) the legal rights to your music

5) a standard free Pandora account, based on a valid email address, that will be associated with this submission

6) MP3 files for two of the songs from your CD

Once you have all of these items ready to go, you can submit your music to Pandora for consideration here: http://submitmusic.pandora.com/.

Take notice that the only way to get on their playlist is to have a physical CD for sale.

It's the same thing if you want your music reviewed. It doesn't matter if it's on a blog or traditional media, you're not legit until you have a physical product that you can send to the reviewer. I saw this exact situation for myself a couple of years ago when I was producing the first SNEW album. I was all for releasing it digitally but the band insisted on a CD and they were right. Even though the music was released online months before the CD was available, they couldn't get a single reviewer interested until the physical CD was released. As soon as that shiny plastic disc was available, they were perceived as a viable entity and received more than 100 reviews (almost all of them great, by the way). For their recently released CD, "We Do What We Want," there was no question that it would be available on as many formats as possible, and once again we've been rewarded with at least as many reviews, band interviews, and a ton of airplay. I'm convinced that it wouldn't have had nearly the success without the physical product.

It used to be that pressing CDs was a pain since you had to not only pay for them up front, but keep them in inventory and distribute them as well, but even this isn't much of a problem these days. Services like Kunaki not only allow you to press CDs on demand, but they'll drop ship them as well. They look like a million bucks (as long as your artwork looks that way) so that old worry at the "CD-R look" doesn't apply.

So while there's no doubt that the music world is more digital than ever, the CD is still a useful distribution tool. Ignore it at your own peril.

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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.

Another Interesting Music Survey

One of the great things about the Internet is that there are so many media companies that do surveys so there's always something new to discover the thirst and demographics of music consumers. Here are some highlights from a survey that Myxer.com did. They're a site that supplies various media for the phone, which is important to remember as you read this. My comments in italics.

• The company found that 47 percent of the people polled still used traditional radio to discover new music. Wow, who would've thought. I guess they didn't get the message that radio is over. Or maybe they know something we don't.

• What's more, 45 percent reported that they discovered local music by radio, and only 31 percent discovered music by word-of-mouth. Is local music even played on the radio any more? I know that many stations have an hour a week that they allocate for local music, but that usually comes during the slowest possible airtime late on Sunday night.

• Believe it or not, 74 percent of its respondents by at least one CD a year. I guess the real question here is, "What are they buying and why?"

• 32 percent listened to music on their phones from 1 to 5 hours a week, and 26 percent listened more than 20 hours per week. Remember that this is a mobile-centric audience. 1 to 5 hours per week makes sense, but 20 hours? I guess that also ellicits the question, "Exactly what are they listening to?"

• 49 percent consume most of their entertainment on the Internet. This falls in line with other polls and studies I've seen.

• 39 percent attended 1 or 2 live events a year. This one is surprising. I would have thought the number would be a lot higher. If this figure is real, the concert business is in greater trouble than anyone thought.

This study is skewed because the audience is so targeted to mobile, but that still doesn't mean that some of the stats aren't surprising. It will be interesting to see how these numbers correlate with some of the new studies that are upcoming. I'll keep you posted.

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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.

An Answer To The Worst Sales Week Ever?

Paul Resnikoff's great newsletter Digital Music News recently reported that the week of May 31st was the worst sales week ever in the United States for both physical and digital albums with 4, 978, 000 units sold TOTAL! Keep in mind, back in the 80's and 90's a single artist could sell this number in a week, but now it's the entire industry.

Now we're not just talking about just physical CD sales here - we talking about CD's AND digital sales combined. While I don't believe that this number truly represents the total of all sales (there still are a lot of private sales that aren't counted), it does represent one fact - the music business is in deep trouble.

I think it's too easy to focus on the fact that the CD is now old technology and the consumer wants to move on. It's too easy to say that it's a singles world these days and no one wants a package of songs. It's too easy to say that marketing is now so fragmented (as is the audience) that the consumer can no longer be easily reached.

It is fair to say that people consume more music than ever before, they just don't pay for it like they used to. There's little incentive to at this point.

But music has always been given away for free from the earliest days of radio. The product was free, but you couldn't get it whenever you wanted. You had to wait until a song was played and that's why you bought the record/CD/cassette - to have the personal ability to access that music any time you want. Either you endured the anticipation of waiting to hear it for free, or you laid your money down to own it.

So if there's no anticipation left in music in these days of instant access, what else is there?

Let's assume that the industry was vibrant today, full of new and exciting acts creating music that the audience couldn't get enough of. Sure, sales would be up, but would that solve the problem?

Probably not. We have to think outside the box to develop a new product - something that can't be accessed as randomly, yet provides a greater value to the fans. Perhaps it isn't a single music product anymore. Perhaps it's a bundle - concert tickets and a CD/download, merchandise and music.

Whatever the product, it must be more than we have to offer today. That ship has sailed and it ain't coming back.

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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.