Survey Finds The Music That Label Execs Hate

Billboard Magazine just conducted an anonymous survey of label execs and the results are interesting, to put it mildly.

• Taylor Swift is the artist that most would like to sign if just starting a label, followed by Lady Gaga and Adele.

• Speaking of Gaga, she was named the artist that isn't running a label but should be.

• 62% said they had a better handle on technology than the average 14 year old (I don't know if that's something to be proud of or not).

• 54% said that they'd take a job with Apple or Spotify if the money was the same as what they're making.

• 71% said Jay-Z's Tidal streaming service would last less than a year.

• 58% of execs admit that the music industry is unfair to artists.

• There was one topic that was a little surprising. When asked which type of music they hated the most, Rap/hip-hop was #1, followed by EDM and pop.

The survey also asked a few gossipy questions that had many execs up in arms, the most salacious being "Who do you believe, Kesha or Dr. Luke?" Kesha has taken legal action against Dr. Luke (her longtime producer) accusing him of a variety of sexually related charges.

So there you have it, a short but interesting look into the psyche of the executives running the music business today.

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The Oscar Effect On Music

Television appearances for music artists don't have an affect on music sales like they once did with one exception - the Oscar telecast.

Nielsen Research has found that the "Oscar effect" is real when it comes to music nominated or featured on the broadcast, and can still provide significant impact on sales, streaming and social media immediately following the telecast. That momentum can even sustain for as much as a full week afterwards.

Here's what the company found a full week after the most recent broadcast (in % of increased activity):

“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” - Glen Campbell

Digital Tracks + Stream Equivalents Sales - +50.36%

On-demand Streaming - +71.36%

Facebook Likes - +8.70%

Wiki page views - +420.21%

“Lost Stars” - Adam Levine

Digital Tracks + Stream Equivalents Sales - +3.08%

Streaming - +48.09%

FB Likes - +4.98%

Wiki page views - +74.97%

“Grateful” - Rita Ora

Streaming - +85.76%

Wiki page views - +92.86%

“Glory” - Common/John Legend

Digital Tracks + Stream Equivalents Sales - +141.77%

Streaming - +209.09%

“Everything Is Awesome!”- Tegan & Sara

Digital Tracks + Stream Equivalents Sales - +34.72%

Streaming - +21.79%

Lady Gaga (Overall) 
Digital Track Sales - +31.4%

Wiki page views - +167.7%
Facebook Likes - 3300%!!
Twitter Followers - 28%

What's more, there was a huge uptick in consumption of nominees for Best Original Song:

   *  I’m Not Gonna Miss You/Glen Campbell - +2177.8%

   *  Grateful/Rita Ora - +909.99%

   *  Glory/John Legend & Common - +564.14%

   *  Everything Is Awesome/Tegan & Sara - +135.15%

   *  Lost Stars/Maroon 5 - +90.22%

So it looks like the new way to increase your sales is to be tied to a hit movie. Wait, that's something that's never really changed, it's just more important now than ever.

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Lady Gaga Secures Her Transition From Pop Star To Chanteuse

One of the things about being a pop star is that success is so hard to sustain. Your life is built around the hit song and as soon as they stop coming or your audience grows up, you’re destined for the dustbin of music history. Lady Gaga is one of the very few pop stars that has managed to transcend the bonds of pop music in favor of a bigger picture that will keep her in the public’s ears and eyes long past when the hits dry up.

Gaga’s recent collaboration with the iconic Tony Bennett proved that she had the vocal chops to go legit (not an easy thing to do keeping up with a legend), and her Sound of Music rendition at the Oscars sealed the deal. Don’t expect to see her as the same pop star again, but watch as she becomes the current generation’s Barbra Streisand or Julie Andrews.

This transition comes just in a nick of time, as Gaga’s last pop album, Artpop, was considered a flop by many, yielding no true blockbuster hits on par with her previous successes (although “Applause” was close, charting top 10 in 20 countries). If you’re losing your mojo, then it’s time to change the game if you’re smart, and that’s what Gaga did with the Tony Bennett coupling Cheek To Cheek.

That album and subsequent appearances with Bennett proved Gaga to be more than up to the task of singing the standards. Even her harshest critics had to admit that she could pull it off with aplomb and that there was some trained singing behind even “Poker Face” and “Just Dance.” Read more on Forbes.

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You should follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business, Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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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.

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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.

Why Katy And Gaga Were Banned In China

China may be the biggest market in the world, but it's still one of the most difficult to crack. Just ask Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. While Gaga and Katy may have substantial followings in China, you still have to get by the Chinese government, who appears to not be buying what they're selling at the moment. Both Gaga and Perry made a list of 100 songs that China's Ministry of Culture has ordered Chinese websites to remove by September 15.

According to a Reuters.com story, "Gaga racked up six songs on the list, all from her most recent album Born This Way. "The Edge of Glory," "Hair," "Marry the Night," "Americano," "Judas" and "Bloody Mary" were all included in the ministry's announcement, while the album's title track was included in an earlier list that the government issued. Perry placed twice in China's latest banned-songs collection, with "E.T." and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)."

But they're not the only ones. Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)," Britney Spears' "Burning Up," and even the 1999 Backstreet Boys hit "I Want it That Way" all made the list as well.

So why did the government choose to ban these songs? According to the ministry, allowing the songs on its list to be shared and downloaded over the web has "endangered national cultural safety" for one thing. For another, the tunes in question had not been registered with and reviewed by the ministry, which makes you wonder how they decided that they were a threat to national security in the first place.

According to ministry guidelines, all imported digital music needs to be translated into Chinese and submitted to the government before online distribution is permitted. The crackdown applies to all websites, including personal sites.

While these songs may not be the height of taste and culture, they're about as far away from a dissenting political voice that you can get. It just goes to show that even though the Internet allows you to access the world and for the world to access you, sometimes there can be large impediments in the way.

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The Top 10 Facebook Artists

Now with Google+ introduced and, at least initially, a hot topic, Facebook seems to have more and more detractors. That said it's still a vital part of most artists online strategy. Here are the top 10 artists (those with the most pageviews) in the month of May, according to Visibli (which is really a cool site to check out to see how effectively you're connecting with your fans).

While Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga were no surprise at #1 and 2, I'm pretty shocked at Bob Marley coming in at #3.

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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 daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Prince And Gaga Prove The New Music Business Model

By now I'm sure that everyone's heard about Lady Gaga selling 1.1 million copies of her "Born This Way" album last week. On the surface this seems like a huge number, especially for an artist these days, but there's more here than meets the eye.

First of all, the digital sales were about 660,000, but 440,000 of them came from Amazon's two day $.99 promotion. This set a one-week SoundScan record for most digital sales, and became the eighth best-selling U.S. digital album of all time. But the significant thing here is the price, 99 cents, which we'll get to in a minute.

Next in the news was the fact that Prince just ended his 19 day run playing the Forum in Los Angeles. What's significant here is that the majority of the tickets in the 18,000 seat venue were priced at only $25.

Why is that important? Because it shows a new trend in the entertainment business were price is a motivating factor in purchases.

Way back before music became the commodity that it is today, everyone felt they got a fair value when purchasing either an album or a concert ticket. The price was cheap enough that if you bought something that you didn't like, you didn't feel ripped off or filled with buyer's remorse. It was easy enough to buy the next album or a ticket to the concert without feeling it in your pocketbook too much.

Of course all this changed when Wall Street became involved in the music business after it smelled big money in the 80's. The prices for premium artist's CD's were double what consumers were used to paying for vinyl records, so if you bought one that you didn't like or only had one good song on it, you indeed felt the financial pain of a near worthless purchase.

Likewise for concerts. It was nothing for a music fan to go to several concerts a month during that era. They were cheap enough that you didn't feel like you'd have to miss lunch for the next two weeks to pay for it, and you felt comfortable about spending money to see a new unfamiliar act.

Of course that all changed when the price of tickets, concessions, parking and service charges went to the sky. Music lover's buying habits slowed to only a show or two a year instead of every month. In it's greed, the industry tried to milk every single dime from the consumer at the expense of a making them a returning customer.

With Gaga signing on for the Amazon promotion, it proves that consumers are more price conscious than ever with music, and will buy in large number if the price is right. With Prince lowering the ticket price to $25, and doing a good business in doing so, it proves that people will still show up if the price is right.

Although the numbers are unofficial, it seems that prince sold as few as 6,000 seats on some nights, but that's still enough to make money since both his and the venue's overhead was amortized over the number of dates played. Gaga still sold more than 500,000 albums at $13 to 16, despite the 99 cent promotion (although her number have steeply fallen since), once again proving that online, the more you give it away (or almost give it away), the more you sell.

It's about time that the industry learns that price is a barrier to sales. It's hard to believe they didn't know that in the first place.

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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 daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Ga Ga Numbers

With all the talk about DIY (do it yourself) for bands and artists, the only way that you can get really, really big numbers is with the infrastructure of a record label at your back. The LA Times printed the following numbers in an overview of Lady Ga Ga's impact on current music.

• 667,070,854: Combined hits from her videography on her official YouTube/Vevo channel for "Alejandro," "Telephone," "Bad Romance," "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich," "Poker Face," "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)," "Paparazzi," "Love Game" and "Just Dance."

• 3.64 million: The number of copies Lady Gaga's "The Fame" has sold in the U.S. since its release in August 2008, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (As of Aug. 1, 2010.)

• 1.3 million: The number of copies "The Fame" has sold in 2010 alone, making the 2-year-old album this year's fourth-bestselling album thus far. All sales numbers are courtesy of Nielsen SoundScan. (As of Aug. 1, 2010.)

• $24 million: Billboard's estimate of the gross for Lady Gaga’s 47 European and Pacific Rim tour dates.

• $440: The most expensive ticket package when Lady Gaga returns to Staples Center on March 28, 2011.

• $40: Cost of a Lady Gaga 2010 tour shirt.

• 179: Total number of shows Gaga will have played when the tour wraps next year (it began in 2009).

• 13: Number of Moonmen she could potentially walk away with at this year's Video Music Awards; she received the most nominations ever in a single year.

Now the only way any of this happens is with a major record label, at least at this point in time. And that's the one thing that they're very good at, capitalizing on a trend. The problem is, an artist like Ga Ga only comes around once a decade at most.

Will the major labels be capable of doing the same thing the next time around?

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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.

2009 Music Sales At An All-Time High

Yes, you read the title correctly. 2009 US music sales hit an all time high according to Nielsen SoundScan, with total sales of over 1.5 billion, up 2.1% over 2008.

Despite reports of the album's demise, the format sold 373.9 million (which is still a very substantial figure), but individual digital track sales are even better with more than 1.1 billion in 2009, up 8.3% from 2008 .

Nielsen also reports that 89 digital songs exceeded the 1 million sales mark in 2009, compared with 71 songs in 2008. Not only that, 2009 marked the first time a song broke the 4 million sales mark in a single year, which happened by not one, but four singles -- "Boom Boom Pow" and "I Got a Feeling" from the Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" and Flo Rida's "Right Round."

Sounds pretty good doesn't it? But the devil is in the details. Of course the number of sales were up, but that doesn't mean revenue was as well, and industry growth is definitely slowing. Album sales dropped another 12.7% from the previous year, which is not a figure that the industry wants to hear, but digital music is still on the rise as it accounted for 40% of all music purchases in 2009, up from 32% in 2008. That being said, digital album sales made up 20% of total album sales in 2009.

Who was the biggest seller of 2009? Michael Jackson, who racked up a total of 8.2 million album sales, which was significantly more than Taylor Swift's 4.6 million. After Jackson and Swift, The Beatles moved more than 3.28 million total units, followed by newcomer Susan Boyle (3.1 million), Lady Gaga (2.8 million), Andrea Bocelli (2.6 million), Michael Buble (2.28 million), Eminem (2.1 million), Carrie Underwood (1.8 million) and the Black Eyed Peas (1.88 million).

Lady Gaga was the year's top-selling digital artist, selling more than 15 million tracks and her album "The Fame" being the top-selling digital album of the year with 461,000 downloads.

What can we take from these figures? Music is still extremely popular and although it's a business in decline, it's still enormous. Of course it's changing, but it's not going away any time soon.

Music 3.0 News Roundup

Happy Thanksgiving for those of you who celebrate it. Here's a roundup of the relevant Music 3.0 (M30 - "em 3 oh" - for short) new thanks to Bruce Houghton's fine Hypebot blog:

• 30,000 Internet Users to Receive File-Sharing Cash Demands - As many as 25,000 BT and 5,000 customers of other ISPs will be receiving shock letters demanding big payments during the coming weeks. Lawyers in the UK have been granted more court orders which force ISPs to hand over the details of individuals who they say have been monitored sharing hardcore pornography. (TorrentFreak)

• The Business Of Lady Gaga: She isn't the music industry's new Madonna. She's its new business model. (Forbes)

• Spotify plans to rock the U.S. digital music landscape early next year. (LA Times)

• Hulu U.S. video streams soar almost 50% in October, Google’s YouTube flat. (VentureBeat)

• Ted Cohen (one of the contributors in my Music 3.0 book) on Midem: "Sixty Days Out, So Much To Think About". (MidemNet)

• Rock Band songs now top 1000 from 390 bands. (Billboard.biz)

Lady GaGa's $169 Spotify Payment - The Music 3.0 Relevance

There were many articles and posts circulating the Web yesterday regarding the fact that Lady GaGa only received $169 in payments from the online streaming music service Spotify for 1 million plays for her song "Poker Face" (check out Hypebot for the story). Today Spotify fires back that they paid much more than that but are unable to provide the exact figure due to a privacy restriction.

First of all, I understand why Lady G's people are making a big deal of this. It's their job to make her all the money they can (especially while she's hot), and of course, the more she makes, the more they make. For an artist like her, it's in no one's interest, not her management, not the record label, not her publisher, to settle for a small amount like this. After all, a tentpole artist for a major label works under a different set of rules than everyone else.

But the Music 3.0 perspective wouldn't be about the $169, it would be, "Wow, 1 million plays!" In Music 3.0 (we'll call it M30 - em three ohh - because it flows better), the music is simply the carrot that entices the consumer to buy the other, more profitable goods that an artist has. In other words, Lady GaGa will make more money on touring and swag then she ever would on only the sales of her music, regardless of whether it's 2009 or 1989. On top of that, the popularity of her music makes other big money ventures like movies, possible for her.

In M30, music is the calling card. It's a commodity with fewer and fewer hard costs involved (yes, I know there are some and what they are - that's for another discussion). Your intention is to give it away in order to find an audience. Once you've developed your "Tribe" (as marketing guru Seth Godin calls your superfans), they'll happily pay more and more for rarer and rarer merchandise like box sets, exclusive backstage passes, or after-show party invites (to name just a few). The more the music gets out, the more likely the artist is to sell the items that really make her money.

Keep in mind that from the beginning of recorded music time, this was always the case. Even during the heyday of record sales in the 70's 80's and 90's, most major artists made the vast majority of their incomes and fortunes on the road, not from record sales (they did make major money on publishing if they were the writers - something we'll cover in future posts). In M30, the idea is to get your music out there any way possible, and free online is the same as free on the radio, which was once the driving factor in record sales and artist popularity. If you give it away, more people will be exposed to your music. If you make a little money on music sales, consider it a bonus.

Next post, we'll cover the publishing aspect of Lady GaGa's $169 from Spotify, where you'll find a completely different perspective from that point of view.