What Apple Music Means To Artists

Here's a nice infographic from TakeLessons.com shows the potential of Apple Music. It's just a little outdated in that Spotify's numbers are now much larger (75 million subscribers of which 20 million are paid).

Also keep in mind that the royalty rates at the bottom of the page can be a bit deceiving in that they're only averages. It's difficult to determine the exactly rate per stream because it's different in each country, is different for different tiers, and in some cases, even based upon the marketshare that the artist has.

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Your YouTube Channel Checklist

If you have a YouTube channel (and if you don't you really should create one right now) you can optimize it by utilizing its features to the fullest. Here's an excerpt from my Social Media Promotion for Musicians book that outlines the things that you should be sure are taken care of.

"☐ Branded Channel Art

The channel art is the banner at the top of the page where you can display a customized graphic. YouTube suggests this graphic be 2560 x1440 pixels so that it works on all types of televisions, tablets, smartphones and computers, but what YouTube will show on most computer browsers is 1546 x 423. This is known as the “safe area” and is where you should place any critical graphics information since anything outside that area might not show up on a device with a smaller screen. The graphic can be up to 2MB and in either a JPG or PNG format. The Channel Art upload section is accessed by clicking on the pen icon on the top right of graphics box. You can access a template for the channel art, as well as a design tutorial, by clicking on “How to create channel art” at the bottom of the upload pop up box.

☐ Channel Description

You access your channel description from the About tab underneath your channel name. After the About box pops up, select the pen icon on the upper right to edit. From here you can enter or edit the description. Be sure to include all the information about your channel in the description, such as what to expect from the video content as well as who’s involved (like the members of a band).

☐ Website link

The website and social medial links are accessed in the same manner as above; through the pen icon on the top right of the box. Here you can add links to websites, blogs and social networks. The first weblink you entered will appear on the lower right side above your channel art, as will the social network icons. The others will appear in the About box.

☐ Social Media Links
Make sure that you connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your YouTube channel.

☐ Channel Icon (picture)

The avatar is either a picture of you, your band, or product that appears on the upper left of your channel page. The avatar can be up to 800 x 800 (you’re able to crop it) and 1MB in size, although the smaller the file size the better, since it will load faster. The picture is stored with your Google+ account, and you can also access any pictures stored there to use as your avatar.

☐ Featured Video or Trailer

Another thing that you can do is feature a particular video or trailer at the top of the page when someone who is unsubscribed visits your channel. Simply select the pen icon on the top right of the box, select a video, then hit save. You can see what both subscribers and non-subscribers see by toggling Unsubscribed trailer and Subscriber view next to the edit icon.

☐ Playlists

YouTube allows you to create multiple playlists, which can have a great influence in how your fans consume your content. If you have a fair number of videos, you might want to create different playlists for different parts of your fan base, since each may have a different desire of what to watch. While your superfans will want to see everything you upload, your casual fans may be more selective. You can select the order and layout of these playlists, or create a new one, by selecting the edit icon on the top right of the playlist box."

It's easy enough to have a YouTube channel without using many of the above features, but it will be so much more powerful if you do as it connects with the rest of your online presence.

You can read more from Social Media Promotion for Musicians and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Facebook Changing Its News Feed Algorithm Again

Just when you thought that Facebook couldn't get any worse in distributing your posts to your friends and followers News Feeds, it goes and changes its algorithm yet once again.

Right now your News Feed is determined by how much a post is liked, commented on, or shared.

The company will now measure how long that you look at posts, photos and comments in your feed to determine your interest in certain content as well. The thinking is that the more time you spend on a post, the more likely your friends will like to see it as well.

Of course, the main problem with its current algorithm is that it's cut down on the number of followers that you can reach with any one post. 5 years ago a post would be seen by all of your friends and followers. 2 years ago that was down to just 15%. This year it's around 2%.

Of course, you can still reach all of your friends and followers by promoting a post (meaning, paying for distribution), which is what Facebook really wants.

It's probably too early to tell whether this will be a positive or negative, but my bet is that for most artists, it will fall on the negative side. Of course, the best way around it is to post really compelling information that people spend a lot of time reading.

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Music Matters - A Movie About The Payola Law

Payola, which occurs when a record label pays to have a song played on the radio, was outlawed in 1960, but a new documentary called Music Matters tries to make a point that the law was created for the wrong reason.

The film states that it was actually a racist backlash against Elvis Presley, since he was singing a white version of songs made by black artists. The film also states that if payola was still in force, market forces would self-regulate the industry, so a bad song wouldn't play long on a station no matter how much the label paid since it would hurt the station's ratings.

Whether you agree or not with the premise of the film, it's still worth watching below.

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A Look At The Streaming Revenue Pie

Here's an interesting infographic from Statista that shows exactly what the online digital revenue pie looks like as compared to 2008.

At the end of 2014 there was about 28 million paid streaming music subscribers, which has now topped 41 million so the numbers are quite a bit larger in 2015.

As you can see, downloads still owns 52% of the market, and while that will undoubtedly decrease in 2015, it will still remain a substantial piece of the puzzle for at least a few more years.

What is growing is the number of people that are adopting streaming, either via the free tier or paid subscription, and this looks to really take off now that Apple Music has launched.

What's interesting is that 15% of the market is still made up of ring tones, ring backs and various other technologies that we don't even consider these days, but are still generating significant income.


You will find more statistics at Statista

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Like A Coiled Snake Spotify Strikes Back At Apple Music

If you thought it was a coincidence that Spotify released new and much improved subscriber numbers directly after the big Apple Music announcement at its World Wide Developer Conference, then you haven’t been paying attention to what many are calling the “Streaming Wars.”

At least in the short term, Spotify is still the market leader in the interactive music streaming space, and the company did its best to put an exclamation point on that fact by providing a lot of new information, strategically waiting a day for the Apple Music furor to die down a bit to steal a little thunder for itself.

At the end of last year, the company touted 60 million total subscribers, with 15 million of them paying the going rate of $9.99. That number far outpaced its closest rival in Deezer, with only 6 million paid subscriptions, and others like Rdio and Tidal that fall below the 1 million mark.

But Spotify’s new user numbers show a striking increase in a short time, with the company announcing it now has 75 million users, of which 20 million are now paid subscribers. This makes the company a major player even when compared to the non-interactive streaming side of things, as Pandora only sports 79 million total users, with the vast majority of those using the free tier. 

While user numbers are solid proof of growth, another part of the same announcement may be even more important. The company also reported another round of funding for $526 million, which places its valuation at around $8.53 billion (keep in mind that it has yet to turn a profit). 

Among the partners that invested in this round include Swedish telecommunications firm TeliaSonara AB and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth-fund, so there are some deep pockets with a large stake in the company’s success. Read more on Forbes.

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Apple Pushes A Fake Indie Artist

The Real Loren Kramer

While Apple was introducing its new Music service on Monday at the WWDC, it made a point of saying that indie artists would be prime contributors to the service. That's when Loren Kramer was introduced and given about 10 seconds of prime airtime that any indie artist would die for.

The problem is that Kramer seems to as close to a true indie artist as a Blackberry is to an iPhone.

With the world filled with hard working artists slugging it out gig after gig, recording after recording, Apple instead chose an artist who hasn't played many gigs and has no presence on iTunes, Spotify, Facebook, or even a web page. He has a Twitter feed but that only went live right after the announcement.

What Kramer does have going for him is a manager who used to work directly for Apple Music head Jimmy Iovine back in his Universal Music days, and a whole list of privileged friends thanks to a wealthy family that sent him to exclusive Hollywood schools. Kramer is in fact a visual artist who's the editor of an art magazine called Megazine, hardly what you'd call indie music credentials.

Apple really whiffed badly on this one, and while it might not rise to the U2 fiasco of last year, it still proves that the company is now surprisingly tone-deaf to what's currently going on in music.

This could also bode poorly for the thousands of indie artists that were hoping that Apple Music might somehow become a new source of income. If the company couldn't get something as simple as this right given the thousands of worthy candidates available, then it really shows where the company's priorities lie.

So good for you if you're on a major label, Apple Music will welcome you with open arms. If you're an indie, not so much.

You can read some excellent posts about this in Digital Music News and The Next Web.

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More Music Choices Creates Fickle Fans

Just about every streaming or download music service these days has at least 20 million songs available to choose from, and some have even more. This is great for the consumer in that the choices are enormous, but there's also a negative component it brings as well.

Mark Mulligan's Music Industry Blog post shows that because of all these choices, people are actually listening to their favorite music less than ever before.

When people purchased music in the past, be it either vinyl, CD or download, they tended to listen to it over and over first because they paid for it, but also because it was the only new music they could get on demand. With new music now available at your fingertips, this is no longer the case thanks to the short attention span of just about everyone today.

What this seems to mean is that fans now have a shorter-term relationship with the artists they like than every before. If you listen to a song or an artist over and over, you tend to identify more. That's no longer the case, so it means that there are fewer deep fan-artist relationships now being built.

This has long term implications in that 5 or 10 years down the road there won't be as many artists capable of filling an arena or drawing a festival crowd - obviously not good for the business.

Mulligan also makes the point that because there is so much mediocre music now available, it's becoming more and more difficult for quality music to rise above the clutter.

The only saving grace is that music follows technology. While streaming may be the distribution method of choice right now, something new could completely rewrite the music business as we know it and make us throw the above out the window.  Tomorrow's music and music industry will likely be quite different than what we see today.

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Apple Music Just Might Prove Skeptics Wrong

There have been plenty of naysayers willing to condemn Apple’s new Apple Music service before it was even launched, but they might just have to take back their words if today’s presentation outlining the service was any indication.

It’s certainly true that Apple has fallen behind its competition when it comes to music streaming, and that Apple Radio wasn’t the resounding success that everyone anticipated. It’s also true that Beats Music, which the company paid a bundle for last year, wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire and quite possibly wouldn’t even be around today had Apple not thrown it a life preserver.

Then there’s the fact that while Apple touts 850 million credit cards on file for iTunes, more of them apply to the app side of the store than music, making the number slightly dubious when anticipating subscriber numbers.

All of that could lead you to believe that Apple Music could easily come and go after the initial wave of enthusiasm from today’s announcement died down.

If you watched today’s presentation however, it was readily apparent that there were a number of features shown that differentiate Apple Music from the competition, any one of which could make a big enough difference to help it dominate the industry in no time.

First and most important is its ease of use. Apple Music appears to be very easy to navigate, with My Music, For You and New tabs designed to help you negotiate the music that you’ve already purchased, find recommendations based on your previous playlists or listening trends, and discover recently released music. A mini-player complete with artwork also provides easy to access control of the music being played as well, and a playlist function makes it easy to add your own graphics, reorder songs in the list, and search the library to find additional music. Read more on Forbes.

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EDM Market Still Growing But More Slowly

Electronic Dance Music has been one of the biggest trends in music in recent years, but it looks to be slowing down.

According to the latest IMS Business Report 2015, EDM grew about 12% last year, which on the surface is great, but down considerably from the the 37% growth of the previous year.

The total market for EDM is now estimated at a very substantial $6.9 billion. North America represents about 29% of that market at around $2 billion.

Still, many data points indicate the genre is beginning to flatten out. First of all, U.S. track sales of EDM stood at 4.6%, the same as in 2013. The same with music festivals, although they're still huge with over 1.4 million attending.

One area that's still is growing is DJ equipment, especially in the United States. The U.S. accounts for 40% of the DJ equipment market, which grew 16% last year. As a comparison, stringed instruments and amplifier sales fell 2 and 3% last year.

Of course, the major DJs are still hot and making more money than ever, with the top 10 earning about $305 million last year. Calvin Harris tops the list at $66 million, or about $1 in every hundred brought into the industry.

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8 Steps To Discovering Your Brand

We all have a brand, but most of us just don't know what it is. Branding yourself, your music, your band or your product is extremely important if you want to become a success in the music business however, so it's important that we discover what our brand is - and the sooner the better.

Here's an excerpt from my Social Media Promotion For Musicians book that provides 8 steps that you can use to look inside yourself, your music, or your business to begin to discover your brand.

"1. What name are you using? Am I using a business name or product/service name that’s most comfortable to me now? Can I name the service I provide something other than a generic name? Is the name easy to say and remember?

2. What makes my business or product stand out from everyone else? What do I do? How would I like to be perceived? If you’re a service business, list your core specialties, then narrow it down to 3, then narrow it to 1. If you have a product, list its benefits, then narrow it down to 3, then narrow it to 1.

3. Who do I wish to serve? How do I do it? Describe the people that you currently do business with or are your customers. Describe the people you would like to do business with, or the customers you’d like to attract.

4. What is the current image of the business or product? How do my current customers describe it? Ask a variety of people, then extract the commonalities.

5. What’s my customer service like? How do people feel when they work or interact with me? How do they feel if they come to me with a problem with a product or service that my businesses has provided?

6. What does my business stand for? Is there a cause I really believe in? What are my values? What really matters to me? What would I never do?

7. What’s the look of the business? What colors represent the business? Is there a certain type of clothing that represents the business?  Does the business name or product suggest an image?

8. Is there a current brand that I identify with? Why?"

If you can answer these questions, you're well on your way to not only discovering your brand, but developing it into a powerhouse as well.

You can read more from Social Media Promotion For Musicians and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Metal The Most Popular Genre On Spotify

It's easy to think that pop music is the most popular genre in the world, especially if you listen to radio a lot, but that's not the case - at least according to Spotify.

It turns out that globally, metal is at least in the top 10 genres and is usually in the top 5. The genre also has the most listener loyalty, with pop a distant second, followed by folk, country and hip-hop.

The genres most popular artists include Metallica, Slayer, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Sepultura, Pantera, Cradle of Filth and Anthrax.

Of course, this is no surprise to metal fans, but the major labels should take note. There are some hard core fans there that still buy physical product.

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