Music 3.0 Music Industry Blog

Sunday, March 21, 2010

The Music Alliance Pact Promotes Music Discovery

Music Discovery is one of the buzzwords of Music 3.0, but while other such phrases might be more technobabble than description, this is one phrase that carries a lot of weight in the music business for one reason - no music discovery, no new music business.

For most of recorded music's life, consumers discovered new music through a single source - the radio. With music radio listening decreasing in importance every day due to the tight playlists and takeover of talk-radio, consumers have had to look elsewhere to discover new music and that has mostly been from a variety of sources online.

Music-related blogs have increasingly become more and more important to users trying to find new hot music, and they act in the same way that the FM DJ's did in the 70's. You listened to the DJ's show because you trusted their taste and knew that you'd probably like what they played. Same with many music bloggers. You read them in the hope that you'll probably be introduced to something you like.

Now comes a new twist on the music blog idea. Every month on the 15th, 34 music bloggers from 34 different countries cross-post an identical list of hot bands from their nation along with MP3s. This blog group is called the Music Alliance Pact (MAP) and is the brainchild of Scotland's The Pop Cop as a way for the acts that he writes about gain exposure beyond Scotland.

It's a great idea that once again shows how small the world has become. While acts have sometimes gained exposure in other countries in the past, they always required the enormous infrastructure of a major label to do so. Now, an unknown local band in an overlooked corner of the world can gain exposure around almost everywhere in practically no time at all. Good job, Pop Cop!

Here's a list of participating bloggers, thanks to Hypebot.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Establishing Your "Tribe"

Here's another excerpt from "Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age."

Establishing Your Tribe

According to Seth Godin, the originator of the tribal concept (from his landmark book "Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us"), a tribe is “…a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea…” In M30 (Music 3.0), a tribe is connected to each other and the artist via their passion for the artist’s music, but the leader is the integral part of the tribe. In fact, without a leader the tribe is only a “self-organized group.” As an example, a blog may have thousands of readers who never add a comment, so this makes it a group. The blogger could be the leader, but if she’s the only one that posts, there’s still no tribe.

Now we’re assuming that there are more than 3 people that are passionately connected to the artist, since this is obviously essential to the creation of a tribe. The music is what connects them to the artist and to each other.

The Leader

The most important thing that the tribe needs is a leader. Although the artist is the most logical leader, a representative that speaks for the artist could work as in that capacity as well. In the old fan club days, the fan club president acted as leader and today she still could be the leader of the tribe, but unless she directly represents the artist, the tribe isn’t as powerful or as dynamic as it could be.

So how does one become the leader of the tribe? The leader initiates contact with the tribe and leads the conversations. For instance, the artist/leader might send or post a tour schedule with a list of “meet and greets” especially for tribe members. She makes it easy for everyone to participate and rewards the members that do so. Before the artist makes a new recording, she might ask the tribe what direction they’d like her to go in, then reward the ones that respond with a link to download a special mix of the song. And most importantly, she gives projects to tribal members to work on. The artist might ask for suggestions on venues in a certain area or to pass out flyers before an upcoming gig. Remember that tribal members are passionate and truly want to be part of something. Active participation fulfills that longing.

However the leader reaches out, it must be authentic and show true caring for the tribal members. Tribal members can feel in an instant if you’re just going through the motions and the tribe will begin to dissolve. If you’re posting just as an exercise because “That’s the way M30 works, dude,” then you’re better off finding a surrogate leader.

The next thing that a tribe needs is a place to meet. This is pretty easy in M30 as there are a variety of alternatives from blogs to Myspace, Facebook, Twitter or a custom social network on Ning. Whatever the online technology used, the tribe has to be able to communicate with each other easily or the glue that holds the tribe together will be weak. That being said, even a simple mailing list can be enough to connect the tribe.

The Relevancy Of Record Labels In The Digital Age

Mark Mulligan recently posted "Three Key Questions For Record Labels In the Digital Age" on his blog which goes over some points I made in my Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook. Here are the questions asked:

1) Are record labels relevant any more?
Despite all the talk to the contrary, they sure are, just not in the same way as before. Once upon a time (back in the Music 1.0 through 2.5 days) a label was virtually the only way to go because there were so few legitimate alternatives. In Music 3.0, artists have more ways than ever before to do it themselves without label help, but there comes a time when you need a label's infrastructure if you wish to go to the next level popularity and sales-wise.

Take a look at every big seller on the charts today. Almost all of them are on a label, and the ones that aren't on one used a label to propel them to where they didn't need one any more.

Can the labels do a better job? Absolutely. Can an artist or band or artist do it themselves? Yes, until you hit that certain point when you need the infrastructure to really blow up. That being said, the point where you need a label is getting further and further away each day.

2) Are they innovating enough?
I think the industry as a whole stopped innovating by 1980 when it was taken over conglomerates like Vivendi, Time Inc., Thorn and Sony and the bottom line was more important than the nurturing of talent. If there's one thing that could turn the label's fortunes around, talent incubation is it. We'd get better product, artists would view them as a viable alternative because of long-term support, and we might even see some new superstars and trends arise as a result. It's probably a pipe dream to ever expect this to happen though.

3) What role should they play?
Certainly not the 360 deal where they take a piece of everything from merchandise to touring along with record sales. The record labels were only ever good at a few things - marketing, sales and distribution. Even those core competencies have diminished greatly over the years, so why would anyone ever let them assume what is essentially a management role? If anyone is ill-suited to be someone's manager, it's a record label.

But if they would concentrate on marketing, sales and distribution in the digital domain (to be fair, some are trying), they could remake themselves into a viable alternative to DIY. Until then, hello DIY.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

SoundExchange Money

A few weeks ago, Billboard magazine reported on the dismal returns that artists were making from digital royalties, and we even followed up with a post about it here. Now SoundExchange, whom we've also talked about a couple of days ago, has responded with some numbers that they claim are reality, and they're quite a bit different from what was previously reported.

Here are the numbers:

a total of 1,602 artists were paid more than $2,000 in 2009
500 of those received more than $9,000
more than 60 earned more than $50,000
4 cleared $100,000

The amounts are only for royalties paid on recordings played on non-interactive digital streams in the US (Internet radio and satellite) and don't include publishing.

As I said the other day, there may be some money waiting for you, but you've got to register to get it. Do it at SoundExchange.com.

SoundExchange is currently at SXSW attempting to match an estimated $1 million in royalties to performing artists that are not yet registered.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Importance Of Deep Links

Usually most bands and artists always provide a link to the landing page (top page, home page, they're all the same thing) of their site in any correspondence or social network post. Of course this is better than no link at all, but it might not be the best strategy. There's now some evidence (according to many SEO gurus) that "deep linking" can bring you a higher Google ranking by also providing some value to the person following the link as well.

Deep linking is any link on your site that's not your home page AND has the appropriate information. For example, if you have your picture taken with Jeff Beck, it's better for both you and your visitor if you link him directly to the page that has the picture, rather than sending him to your homepage which does not, and forcing him to dig down. Not only is it annoying, but you can get penalized by Google for providing a less than perfect user experience as well.

A better strategy might be to mention the picture and provide a link on your homepage to a separate dedicated subpage with the picture, complete with the story behind the picture (don't skimp on the copy - 300 to 500 words is about right), the appropriate metadata (your name, Jeff Beck, the place where the picture was taken, etc.), and the appropriate keyword phrases (your name, Jeff Beck, the place where the picture was taken, etc.) baked into the copy at about a rate of about 2% (that's about 6 times or so for each keyword phrase). If you use the keywords more frequently, Google may penalize you for "keyword stuffing", which means trying to get a higher ranking by using the keywords so much that it diminishes the user experience again. Same thing if you use too many keywords or phrases - the first 5 or so is all that will get Googles attention.

Seems like a lot of work, and it is. It's especially difficult to design copy around keywords. I'm a writer with a lot of words under my belt and I still find it hard. But it's worth it if it helps raise your visibility.

What your aiming for is a lot of backlinks to your deep link, which will raise your ranking and visibility even more.

One last thing - don't forget to submit this subpage to the various search engines and directories. But remember, the subpage has to be able to stand on its own or the entire exercise probably isn't worth it. If it takes the visitor only a few seconds to read the copy, then you don't have sufficient stickiness for it to be any benefit to you.

There's still a lot more to cover on deep linking as well as keyword phrases, but that's for a future post.

Monday, March 15, 2010

How Bad Metadata Costs Artists $$$

If you're an artist and don't already know about SoundExchange, then you should. The company was appointed by the US Copyright Office to collect royalties for artists and performers who's music is played on any digital service, either online or satellite.

That means if you're an artist who didn't write the song you're performing, you can still get paid for your hard work. Performance royalties have been long overdue in the US (Europe has paid them for a while now), and the battle still rages regarding royalties from radio broadcasts, which will hopefully be settled this year sometime. But for anything digital, it's a done deal.

Don't confuse artist performance royalties with songwriters performance royalties; they're not the same. Songwriters have always been paid if they retained their rights, but until now, performers were never paid a dime. It's hard to believe that a group like the Righteous Brothers can have the most played song ever on the radio with "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" and never make a penny out of it, but that's the way it's always worked. At least on the digital side, this has now changed and performers can expect to see at least a little cash.

But a couple of roadblocks stand in the way of a payday. First of all, you've got to sign up with SoundExchange so they know that you exist and where to send the money to. But the second one is the big one; the metadata of a song hasn't been sufficiently logged.

Metadata is data about the data, so in the case of a digital song, it's everything about the song, from the artist to the label to the musicians to the year of release. Surprisingly, the copyright owners sometimes don't include that information. As a result, there's money that sits in an escrow account at SoundExchange for "Beethoven" (who never recorded anything) instead of the orchestra that recorded one of his pieces, or "Various Artists", or "Artist Unknown." You can pay money to someone if you don't know who they're supposed to credit. Gradually, the word is getting out that carefully including a song's metadata gets everyone paid, so expect to see the problem to lessen a bit as the word gets out. Just remember that if you're self-releasing songs online, be crystal clear about all the metadata.

If you're an artist, register with SoundExchange. It doesn't cost anything and you might be surprised to find out that you have some money coming. And treat your metadata seriously.

Check out this article about SoundExchange and monies owed by Laura Williams.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Gaming The System

The sales charts of the music business has always had someone gaming them. It never gets old and it never goes away, no matter the attempt to stem the tide. Want some examples?

From the 50's through the 80's, a record label would pay off record store clerks to lie about the sales of a particular record when Billboard called in order to get a more favorable chart position. This ended with the institution of Soundscan, which entered the purchase based upon the bar code of the record at the point of sale.

Then the labels would pay off radio station program directors to put a song in heavy rotation. More airplay meant more sales and also meant the song would rank higher on the sales and airplay charts, thereby influencing more airplay and sales. This was the the dreaded "payola" and was eventually declared illegal. The labels got around it by paying third party promotion companies to do their dirty work.

Then the labels began to ship large quantities of a record they wanted to be a hit on consignment to dealers. They'd declare to the press that it "shipped platinum (over a million)", which again would influence programmers, distributors, one-stops and even the charts. This ended when reports started to come in from the dealers about shipping unsold records back in platinum as well. Everyone wised up to listening to sales figures from a label.

Music 3.0 is hardly immune to being manipulated, starting with artists and groups gaming their MySpace accounts by inflating their friend counts by using 3rd party "friend finder" apps, and using bots to inflate the number of plays their songs got.

Now comes the interesting case of Boston rapper Sam Adams, who came out of nowhere to hit #1 on the iTunes charts by selling over 20,000 downloads of his single "Driving Me Crazy" in one week. Sensing there's some trickery afoot, a number of journalists and pundits (like Bob Lefsetz) have questioned the sales. Now comes some informed speculation by Jay Frank, author of the book FutureHit.DNA and the blog of the same name. Jay believes that Sam Adams or people close to him bought the majority of these downloads themselves. He comes to that conclusion by analyzing the sales figures between iTunes and Amazon, Google search data, similar artist recommendations, file trading, and the song itself. It's an interesting bit of detective work that you can read for yourself. For the record, Adams recently presented a 3500 page document showing all the sales as evidence that the sales were legit, but Frank doesn't buy it.

This is just another example of trying to game the system, but in Music 3.0, it's by the artists instead of the record labels like before. The thing to remember if you ever consider trying it is that now there's always plenty of forensic evidence to sniff it out quickly. Get your friends and plays the old fashioned way - earn them.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

How To Gain 200 Fans A Week

I recently clipped an article by Brian Mazzaferri of the band I Fight Dragons that discusses how the band gained 200 new fans a week. Unfortunately, the link to the full article is now dead, but I did manage to save some of the more valid points. Here they are with my comments following.

1. Give your music away, but don’t throw it away.

We’ve given away a free digital copy of our debut EP to everyone who signs up for our email list. For people who don’t know us, it’s a free and easy way to learn about our music for free. And then we’ve got their ear. Note, this is VERY different to just posting it online for free download. The price may seem the same, but the result is 100% different, because we now have a foot in the proverbial door.

They're following one of the golden rules of the Internet - you've got to give something to get something. In this case, what they really doing is harvesting email addresses, which is vital to their strategy of getting new fans. Even if the track that was downloaded doesn't interest the potential fan, they have a chance to grab them at least one more time because they have the email address.

2. Regularly give away stuff that’s way too good to give away.

Next, we send an email to our list every Monday at 11AM (for the most part). More weeks than not, that email contains free music. And not just some off-the-cuff track, it’s a track that is up to our personal standards, which I’d like to think are very high. In holding ourselves to that standard, we give our fans something new that they really want to show their friends. And when the next new track goes out, the new converts get to become the evangelists. But they need new music to do that, and not just any new music, YOUR BEST new music.

Of course, giving something really good away to get a customer has been a sales strategy probably since the beginning of sales, but many artists see their music as so valuable that they're afraid to let it go. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, the fan will decide, but the fact that they're willing to part with what they consider their best to convert fans means that many of those fans will become purchasers at some time down the road.

The other thing important here is that staying in touch via a newsletter is a vital communication link with the fan. It's inexpensive, the fan feels good about receiving it (most times), and it's a controlled message. This is the reason why you want to harvest all those friend and follower addresses from social networks.

3. Be real, be available, and be involved.

This seems like a no-brainer, but it actually takes a LOT of work. We’re on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, our Blog, and TheSixtyOne every day, talking with people and being involved in conversations. I’m NOT talking about one-way, blast-yourself-out-there stuff like MySpace adding. I’m talking about joining in conversations on Twitter that you have something to add to. About commenting earnestly on music you like. About joining a community, not trumpeting your own message.

Yes, it sure does take a lot of work, and that's why you must have a strategy in order to take full advantage of social media in an efficient way. It's too easy to spend all of your time communicating, then be so burned out that there's no longer time for the main event - the music. We'll cover social media management strategies in a future post.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

8 Principles Of Fan Communication

Staying in touch with your fans is probably about the most important thing an artist can do these days, but the way it's done is equally as important. In an excerpt from the Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook, here are 8 principles of fan communication.

1 - Talk to your fans, not at them. Don’t try to sell them, but keep them informed. Anything that reads like ad copy might be counterproductive. Always treat them with respect and never talk down to them.

2 - Engage in communication. Communication is a two-way street. Fans want to know that they’re being listened to. You don’t have to answer every email, but you have to acknowledge that you heard it. The more questions you ask, polls you supply and advice you seek, the more the fan feels connected to you.

3 - Keep your promises. If you say you’re going to do something, do it in a timely fashion. Don’t let the fans wait. If you promise you’re going to email a link and post a song, sooner is always better.

4 - Stay engaged. Even if you’re only sending something simple like a link, take the time to engage the fan. Tell her about upcoming gigs, events or releases. Take a poll. Ask for advice. This is a great opportunity for communication, so take advantage of it.

5 - Utilize pre-orders. If you have a a release coming soon, take pre-orders as soon as you announce it, even it’s free. It’s best to get people to act while the interest is high, plus it gives the fan something to look forward to. To motivate the fan for a pre-order, it sometimes helps to include exclusive content or merchandise.

6 - Appearance means a lot. Style counts when talking to fans. Make sure everything looks good and is readable. Spelling or grammar mistakes reflect badly on you. Try to keep it simple but stylish, but it you or your team don’t have the design chops to make it look good, it’s better to just keep it simple and readable.

7 - Cater to uber fans. All of the members of your tribe are passionate, but some are more passionate than others. Fans have different needs and wants and it’s to everyone’s benefit if you can cater to them all. Try to always include a premium or deluxe tier for every offering such as a free T-shirt or backstage pass as a reward for posting, a free ticket to an upcoming show, signed artwork, extra songs, anything to satiate the uber fan’s interest.

8 - Give them a choice. Give fans numerous ways to opt-in since not everyone wants to receive their information, or the type of information, the same way. Ask if they would rather receive info by email, SMS or even snail mail. Ask if they’d like to receive info on upcoming shows, song releases, video content, or contests. And ask how often they’d like be contacted.

Follow these 8 principles and your communication with your fans will remain both smooth and profitable.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Costs Of Breaking An Act

Want to know how much it costs to break an act on a major label? How about a cool $1 million, according to a report from UK's IFPI. Advances, recording, marketing and promotion are the largest part of that figure. According to that same report, record labels around the world invest up to $5 billion a year on talent alone.

The IFPI also states that there are currently more than 4,000 artists on major label rosters, 25% of them signed over the past year, with 30% of all revenues plowed back into marketing and 16% spent on A&R and R&D.

The entire world-wide music sector, which includes radio, publishing, audio equipment and live revenue, is estimated to generate $160 billion annually, and employs more than two million people.

The music industry is having it's problems for sure, but it's still huge. There's a lot of money out there, but just like water, it's seeping into places it's not been before and finding a new level. What scares everyone that's been entrenched for a while is the way the balance of power is changing. But that's a good thing as the industry certainly needs a reshaping.

Music has gone stale. How much of it will be played 10 years from now? Probably not much. That $5 billion (yes, with a "b") that's being spent on talent is being spent on chasing the last hit and the next pretty face rather than developing true artists and innovators like the way it was done when music was vital and culturally significant.

That $1 mil to break an act is being spent on a legacy promotion system that returns so little for such a large investment, because the entire music eco-system is undergoing a change - some sectors more rapidly than others.

Lest I sound like I have it out for record labels in general, I understand that there remains a need for them, perhaps now more than ever before. An artist can only take the Do It Yourself route so far before he needs the infrastructure than only a label can provide to take things to the next level.

But the way business is done in 2010 should be way different than in 2000, and the label of today must become the label of the future - the one that understands Music 3.0 and the synergy of the artist and his fans - if it expects to survive.

I'm still waiting for a new label with some innovative ideas and fresh blood to take the industry by storm. Maybe tomorrow.

Monday, March 8, 2010

The Music Industry And Legal File Sharing

The music industry is still sticking to the old CD paradigm and apparently will go kicking and screaming into Music 3.0. The Telegraph recently ran an interesting article regarding a recent survey that exposed some major flaws in the current strategy of the majors.

Before we get to the numbers in the survey, the conclusion was that the best way for the music industry to combat online piracy was to promote legal online sales, something that the industry so far has failed to do. These numbers are startling:

Of the almost 2000 people surveyed in the UK, 4 in 10 couldn't name a single online music service (there are about 20)

9 out of 10 consumers that are aware of online music services are only aware of 2: iTunes and Amazon.

The IFPI (the UK music trade organization that's the equivalent to the US RIAA) estimates that 95% of music downloaded last year was illegal, a figure that seems way high to me, but whatever the real figure is, it's certainly high.

Now the reality is that the CD is still pretty profitable when a sale actually occurs, a lot more so than the single song download that predominates today, and even though CD sales are down some 55% since 2000, it's still a really big business that won't go away soon. Yes, I know, CD's are dying, they're old technology, they're not hip, etc., but they're still sold in huge numbers, so the last thing the music establishment wants to do is to hasten it down the road out of town.

The other thing is that the major labels generally hate the fact that they've lost the battle of distribution to a computer company, namely Apple, which still calls the shots on pricing. I have a feeling that some of the people that run the majors would rather drink tainted milk than give in to Steve Jobs again, so the idea of sending business his way probably makes them wretch just as much.

I'm not sure how much merit the idea of promoting legal file sharing to prevent piracy really has though, since the 40% who couldn't name a single online service probably aren't computer hip enough to illegally download either. But sooner or later, it will behoove the record industry to finally promote online music, so it might as well be sooner.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

5 Tips For Building Your Email List

Your email list is a major component for marketing to your fanbase. It's widely overlooked since most artists believe that their Facebook friends and Twitter followers are enough, but you email list allows you to reach out and personally connect with the fans and control you message while you're doing it.

A well thought out email blast allows you to do the following:

1) Engage your fan on a more 1 to 1 basis
2) Design the communication without the constraints of a social network
3) Add a call-to-action

This makes it easier to inform, market and sell to your fan in a manner that the true fan (superfan, uberfan, Tribal member - whatever you want to call them) enjoys, if you do it well.

Here's a short video about the best way to harvest those valuable email addresses.

Help Support This Blog