Top 10 Touring Acts Of 2012

We're coming up on the close of 2012 and it's always interesting to look back to see who was hot. Billboard recently tallied the top 25 touring acts of the year, but I'll give you just the top 10.

1. Madonna - 72 sell-outs out of 72 shows, $228 million

2. Bruce Springsteen - 54 sellouts out of 72 shows, $199 million

3. Roger Waters - 51 sell-outs out of 71 shows, $186 million

4. Michael Jackson "The Immortal" by Cirque du Soliel - 9 sell-outs out of 183 shows, $147 million

5. Coldplay - 56 sell-outs out of 67 shows, $147 million

6. Lady Gaga - 65 sell-outs out of 65 shows, $125 million

7. Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw - 9 sell-outs out of 23 shows, $96 million

8. Van Halen - 9 sell-outs out of 46 shows, $54 million

9. Jay-Z and Kenye West - 15 sell-outs out of 31 shows, $47 million

10. Andre Rieu - 2 sell-outs out of 99 shows, $47 million

What's really interesting here is the percentage of sell-out shows that each artist did. Both Madonna and Lady Gaga sold out all of their shows, while Springsteen, Waters and Coldplay sold out the majority, but the others weren't nearly that successful. That said, others in the top 25 played to fully sold-out shows like Taylor Swift (25 for 25), Barbara Streisand (12 for 12), and Jason Aldean (59 for 59). Justin Bieber came close with 28 for 29.

It should also be noted that Springsteen actually played to the most people in 2012 (2.165 million to 1.635 for Madonna), as he made an effort to keep ticket prices down.

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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.

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6 Music Business Holiday Gift Ideas

If you read my Big Picture Production Blog, you've probably seen my 13 Holiday Gifts For Musicians posts a few days ago. Here's another gift guide, but this one concentrates just on music business and social media.

1. Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age
You know that I'm biased about this, but I really believe that if you're looking for one book that best outlines the new music business, Music 3.0 is it. With lots of great traditional and social media tips to help you market yourself successfully and efficiently, the book is currently used in music business courses in colleges and universities around the world. You can read some excerpts of the book on my website, as well as my other books.

2. Musician's Roadmap to Facebook And Twitter
Ariel Hyatt is the queen of social media PR and her Cyber PR company has been a huge help to hundreds of artists. Her Roadmap picks up where Music 3.0 leaves off. If you just don't get how Facebook or Twitter can help you as an artist, you need this book.

3. All You Need To Know About The Music Business
This is the 7th edition of LA music attorney Don Passman's excellent book and there's a good reason why it's been popular for so long. Let me put it this way, if you're in the music business, this book is essential reading, since it outlines just about every business scenario that an artist might come up against. The best part is that it's written in plain English so that even complex ideas (and there are lots of them in the music business) are easy to follow. Highly recommended.

4. Music Business Contract Library
Everyone wants to save a buck, and while you're always better off hiring a music attorney, sometimes you just don't have the dough. This book comes with a disc that has 125 of the most commonly used music contracts in editable Microsoft Word format. Any agreement is better than no agreement, and the Music Business Contract Library is a good place to start.

5. The Future Of Music: Manifesto For The Digital Music Revolution
This book was published a number of years ago but it's still surprisingly relevant. Dave Kusek and Gerd Leonhard nailed so many things, and have predictions that we've yet to see. It's a very provocative book that's an interesting read.

6. Lynda.com Video Courses
Lastly, you'll find all sorts of great business and software courses on Lynda.com, the absolute best portal for learning on the Web. If you're into Mixing, Recording or Mastering, you'll find some of my courses there as well, but just about anything else you can think of that revolves around tech or business is available there. Here's a free 7 day trail pass.


Each of the above makes a great holiday gift, but don't forget to treat yourself to a present as well!

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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.

8 Search Engines That Access The Invisible Web

I'm not sure how this directly applies to music, but it sure is fascinating on many levels. We think of the Web as everything that Google can find, but did you know that there's a huge amount of data that's not indexed or searchable?

It's estimated that the size of the searchable Web is at 167 terabytes (a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes) worth of data, while the so-called "Invisible Web" or "Deep Web" is more than 91,000 terabytes!! Wow, that's a lot of data that can't be easily found.

Why isn't this data available via Google? Google sends out spiders to regularly index websites, but there are some that require a password that just won't allow that kind of access. These include private networks and library sites, which have huge amounts of information.

There are a number of ways to access the data of the "invisible web" though, and here are 8 search engines that are expert in just such a task, thanks to a great article on MakeUseOf. I'll give you a brief overview here, but see the entire article for more detail.

1) Infomine has been built by a pool of libraries in the United States. Some of them are University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, and the University of Detroit. Infomine ‘mines’ information from databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other resources.

2) The WWW Virtual Library is considered to be the oldest catalog on the web and was started by started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web. So, isn’t it strange that it finds a place in the list of Invisible Web resources? Maybe, but the WWW Virtual Library lists quite a lot of relevant resources on quite a lot of subjects. You can go vertically into the categories or use the search bar. The screenshot shows the alphabetical arrangement of subjects covered at the site.

3) Intute is UK centric, but it has some of the most esteemed universities of the region providing the resources for study and research. You can browse by subject or do a keyword search for academic topics like agriculture to veterinary medicine. The online service has subject specialists who review and index other websites that cater to the topics for study and research. Intute officially closed in July of 2011, but will remain available online for 3 additional years, but without any updates or revisions.

4) Complete Planet calls itself the ‘front door to the Deep Web’. This free and well designed directory resource makes it easy to access the mass of dynamic databases that are cloaked from a general purpose search. The databases indexed by Complete Planet number around 70,000 and range from Agriculture to Weather. Also thrown in are databases like Food & Drink and Military.

5) Infoplease is an information portal with a host of features. Using the site, you can tap into a good number of encyclopedias, almanacs, an atlas, and biographies. Infoplease also has a few nice offshoots like Factmonster.com for kids and Biosearch, a search engine just for biographies.

6) DeepWebTech has a product called Explorit that gives you five search engines (and browser plugins) for specific topics, but for a price. The search engines cover science, medicine, and business. Using these topic specific search engines, you can query the underlying databases in the Deep Web. There's a trial so you can get a feel for it and see if it's worth paying for.

7) Scirus has a pure scientific focus. It is a far reaching research engine that can scour journals, scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional intranets.

8) TechXtra concentrates on engineering, mathematics and computing. It gives you industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, teaching and learning resources along with articles and relevant website information.

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6 Tips For Marketing With Social Media

If you read this blog often you know that I'm always on the lookout for good information that I can pass along. Most of it, especially when it comes to marketing or social media, comes from outside the music world, so I try to adapt it so it's beneficial to musicians if I can. A recent post of that nature recently came from clickz.com called "6 Tips For Marketing With Social Media." I've taken their great points and adapted them so they're more appropriate for music, as you'll read. Here's what they suggested.

1. Start with a product with a high potential. Some merch has a higher marketing potential than others. For example:

T-shirt with a logo - low potential because every artist has one
Limited edition vinyl released signed by the artist - high potential

A t-shirt is so common that it doesn't give you much to talk about in social media, while something that's more limited does.

2. Define your target audience. Your entire fan base may not be your target, since there is fragmentation within it that you might not be aware of. Are you trying to reach your true fans who will buy anything? Are you trying to reach just the female part of your audience? Are you trying to reach just the ones in cold weather climates? Try to define your target audience as precisely as possible.

3. What do you want your audience to do? Think about this before you launch a campaign. Do you want them to:

- simply discover the product
- explore the product and learn about it
- create and share content about it to amplify the product's reach
- purchase the product

You're probably saying, "I want them all," but sometimes just defining a single goal makes your marketing job easier and more likely to succeed.

4. Choose your social network wisely. Not all social networks are capable of delivering the same results, and in fact, some are better than others at certain activities. For instance:

• Facebook's Timeline makes it ideal for product-related posts.
• Pinterest works well with collections and product-related content, but be careful because your audience might not be there.
• Twitter Cards bring images and details from a product page that now make it better at social merchandising, but be careful because it can also be considered SPAM.
• YouTube is great to tell stories if you're good at creating great video content.
• Instagram and Tumblr are great for user-generated and organic momentum.

5. Use as much visual product content as you can. Social networks today are a lot more visual than they were even last year. Get the best images that you can to gain the most attention, especially in mobile environments.

6. Take note of your process so you can reuse it. You'll be a lot more efficient if you think about what you're doing along the way in terms of using it again at a later time. As with everything, keep what works, but don't necessarily ditch the things that don't until you're sure they're not working for you.

Marketing takes some thought to be successful, but it's more about thinking about your audience rather than the rocket science aspect of it. All it takes is some time.

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Spotify Discovers Music Discovery Isn't Social

Last week Spotify introduced its updated user interface, something that users have been awaiting for some time. While this might seem all about the the features of the service, it's really a concession to the way people discover music when it comes right down to it.

If you've read Music 3.0 or attended any of my seminars, you know that there's always a section at the end called "What Next?" where I outline the coming technology and how it will affect our online lives in the near future. One of the predictions in this is section is "a new set of influencers" that people will follow to help them discover new music. In the traditional media past, that was the job of a radio DJ in the old beginning of FM days, or a selected reviewer in a music magazine. Soon that job will flow to a few trusted online sources, like Pitchfork, for instance.

Up until last week, Spotify flew in the face of that theory, figuring that music discovery was more of a social event. If you're friends liked something, chances are you would to listen as well. Their view on that has changed however. At the press conference last week, Spotify founder Daniel Ek acknowledged,

"Social has always been a very big part of what we do at Spotify. But finding people who can introduce you to music you care about has been hard. There are only a handful of people who are expert curators of music."

Ek goes on to say that these curators will be "journalists, trendsetters, and the artists themselves.....not just your friends, but really anyone on the music graph."

Yes, it's the "tastemakers" that we tend to discover music from, not our friends, at least much of the time. Ek goes on to say,

"For me, music is not social but is, in fact, the most personal cultural artifact imaginable. So when Spotify has shown me what my friends are listening to, I just realize this - I love my friends, but I hate their music."

The service will now suggest music to listeners not based on what their friends are listening to, but more on what they have listened to in the past, as well as known tastemakers. These new features are in beta testing now, and are slated to roll out at the beginning of the new year.

Seems like a step in the right direction, as long you follow the right influencer.

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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.

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Top 10 Earning Women In Music

Shakira - #10 on the list

Forbes just released their top "10 earning women in music" list and the results are far from surprising. If you look at the pop charts you'll see that's it's mostly dominated by women, and the major artists are easily able to take advantage of that popularity with touring and endorsements. One of the things to take notice in this list is the number of music women who have their own fragrance lines, something that isn't as readily open to men.

Here's the Forbes list:

1. Britney Spears - $58 million, thanks to touring, endorsements and a new fragrance line.

2. Taylor Swift - $57 million, from $1 mil a show and endorsements from Covergirl and Sony.

3. Rhianna - $53 million, from touring and endorsements.

4. Lady Gaga - $52 million, from touring, fragrances and music sales.

5. Katy Perry - $45 million, from touring and music sales.

6. Beyonce - $40 million, and she was mostly inactive this year. Doesn't include her new $60 mil endorsement deal with Pepsi.

7. Adele - $35 million, from touring, sales and publishing from her 25 million album sales of 21.

8. Sade - $33 million, thanks almost exclusively to touring. Maybe the biggest surprise on the list.

9. Madonna - $30 million, endorsements, fragrances, shoe line and royalties.

10. Shakira - $20 million, endorsements, touring and fragrances.

As you can see, there's plenty of money to go around once you enter the superstar region of the business. The big problem is being able to get to that point, of course, and it never seems to get any easier. Each of the above is a fairly large business unto themselves and requires a commensurate infrastructure, so the star's ultimate bottom line is far lower than their income. There are a lot of 5 and 10 percent deductions along the way.

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Psy Makes $8 Million By Giving It Away

Psy's "Gangnam Style" is an international phenomena that only comes around once a decade or so. Artists lucky enough to catch the tiger by the tail tend to become one-hit wonders ("Macarena" anyone?), and that's why you hope that the artist cashes in - it may be the only chance they'll ever have. In these days of fewer record sales and more streaming, there's an ever greater chance that the revenue from a huge hit will be smaller than ever. In many cases, the artist (more accurately their management) goes for tight copyright control to squeeze every last dime out of the song, which in these Music 3.0 days can be short-sighted.

That's not the case with Psy, however, who's hands-off attitude to copyright infringement has led to at least $8 million, not counting any concert or appearance fees he's collected. Here's how it works, according to an article in the Associated Press:

YouTube
"Gangnam Style" now has over 880 million views and counting, but Psy has over 1.3 billion views of all the videos on his channel. His income from that is about $870,000 according to estimates by TubeMogul, but don't forget that he has to split that with the company selling ads, then his management takes a piece as well. That's not all that much money for the huge number of views involved. Surprisingly enough, the US leads in views of the song.

Digital Music
The song sells for $1.29 on the iTunes Store and has been downloaded nearly 3 million times, which after Apple's split equates to around $2.6 million.

In Korea, subscription music is much more the norm than in the US, and most people pay around $10 per month. The song was streamed over 40 million times and downloaded around 3.6 million, but that only amounted to around $60,000.

CDs
Psy has sold 102,000 CDs in Korea which earned him only $50,000 (sounds low to me), but given that CD pirating runs rampant in Asia, you can bet that there were a lot more sold that he never saw a dime from.

Commercials
This is where the big payoff comes from. Reported Psy has made around $4.6 million for commercials for Samsung (he's the face of their new refrigerator) and mobile carrier LG Uplus.

Touring
There are no figures on this but you can figure that whatever other revenue he's made is dwarfed by his performance fees, probably by at least a factor of 10 even on the conservative side.

Other
The irony of all this is that Psy actually comes from money as his father, uncle and mother own a large chunk of a South Korean semiconductor manufacturer. Guess what? As soon as Psy hit #1, the stock more than doubled, and the family had an unexpected windfall.

So the take-away is that by using the song as promotion and not worrying about anyone stealing it for the gazillions of parodies, "Gangnam Style" became a global sensation that continues to pay off for Psy. The time he can ride this is limited, but he's managed to maximize the hit in every possible way. But he's not even the biggest grossing K-Pop artist, believe it or not, at least until his new album comes out in March.

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Even Music Celebrities Go Bankrupt

There's an interesting study on The Economics of Making Music put together by Bear Share that outlines just how difficult it is to make a buck in the music biz unless you happen to be a big corporation. As you can see by the chart on the left (which comes via MinorityFortune.com), there's a lot of money being made in the business, but the musicians who make it all possible are benefiting poorly, typically taking in only $23.40 for every $1,000 earned.

The study goes on to outline some shocking details regarding some major stars with giant earning power that were forced into bankruptcy, in some cases as a way to be released from an unfair contract. According to the study:

"Some music lovers are surprised to hear news of their favorite artists going bankrupt, but it does happen - and not always because the artist went on a wild spending spree. Bankruptcy is one of musicians' only defenses against bad record contracts. 

Despite TLC's overwhelming success as an R&B group in the 90's, they were for forced to file for bankruptcy due to the massive overhead costs they weren't able to pay. They earned less than 2 percent of the $175 million dollars generated by CD sales - about 40 times less than the profit that was divided among their management, production and record companies. Likewise, Toni Braxton declared bankruptcy in 1998 after generating $188 million dollars from CD sales; her record contract paid her less than 35 cents per album. 

The Goo Goo Dolls have generated $2 million in album sales, but filed bankruptcy because they owed so much money to their record label. Bankruptcy has become increasingly common over the years, even with many successful musicians. Even Jerry Lee Lewis and Michael Jackson, both members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, have filed bankruptcy. 

Sometimes legal troubles, debts or taxes are to blame for famous musicians filing bankruptcy. Other times; however, it is simply a way to get out of a contract. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is lobbying to change bankruptcy laws, making it more difficult for artists to file bankruptcy for the sole purpose of getting out of a contract."

Music has never been an easy business to make a buck in. Go back a hundred years and stories abound how an unsuspecting musician made pennies on the dollar for their work while someone else benefited. Even today with artists having a greater awareness and access to expert legal council doesn't necessarily mean that the outcome will be any different.

The best way to protect yourself is to be in the business for the right reason in the first place, and that's for the music, but you still have to surround yourself with the best team of professionals that you can afford.

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Zappa's "Roxy By Proxy" Promotion

I love Frank Zappa and spent a fair amount of time with him when he was alive (check out my Black Page and Waldorf Astoria stories if you're interested). Frank's family has been valiantly trying to keep his name alive since his passing, and son Dweezil has done a great job evangelizing his music with his Zappa Plays Zappa tours. Then came the Roxy By Proxy promotion.

The Zappa Project/Object of your Dreams: Roxy By Proxy! is the Zappa Family Trust's effort to raise at least a million dollars to fund the making of a film of Frank's 1973 performance at The Roxy in Hollywood. In order to do that, they're offering 1000 fans the right to become official "CD distributors." That means you pay a license fee of $1,000, receive a duplication master, and then have the right to manufacture and sell as many CDs as you wish, although you still have to pay a royalty of $1.20 on each one that you sell.

I love the idea of thinking outside the box here, and this is almost a clever way to do it, but the whole idea of being a "distributor" just doesn't cut it, in my opinion. First of all, if you "the distributor" expect to make money when you're competing with 999 other distributors, sorry, but it's never going to happen. I'm sure that Zappa fans still purchase CDs, but there's just not enough of them of them out there, especially when your competition is undercutting your price just so they can make their investment back.

What would have been better is if the Trust just came clean and said, "We're trying to raise money to fund a film that we know you want to see. Contribute and we'll send you an exclusive CD, and we'll even give you the right to give to your friends if you want." At least that feels a little more based in reality. After all, we see this same approach hundreds of times a day on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In fact, if they would've gone more towards the crowdfunding route, they might have added a few more tiers where they could've actually surpassed the amount they're looking for.

I understand that the Trust feels that they don't need to go to a crowdfunding site and pay them their cut since they already have a rabid fan base that they can readily access, but this whole issue of leading a potential donator into thinking that they might be able to duplicate and sell some CDs and make their money back is probably misplaced.

That said, I sincerely hope that they raise the funding to get the movie made. Can't wait to see it myself.

What do you think?

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Will Low-Power FM Stations Help Local Music?

While radio is decidedly old school media, it's still utilized a lot more than you think. Traditional radio is listened to more than twice as much as its online counterpart, and it's still perfect for breaking news, sports, and general car-based entertainment. The problem is that the programming has regressed over the years, especially when it comes to music. Where radio was once vital with local sounds, now you have a certain sameness to the playlists across the country thanks to the homogenized bottom-line-first programming of the station groups that own most of the stations.

It's possible that might change a little, thanks to an unexpected ruling by the normally staid Federal Communications Commission. Yes, that same FCC that has been afraid to peek into the future lest they step on the toes of big broadcasting has given us at least the possibility of something to cheer about and it's called Low Power FM (LPFM).

Originally sanctioned in 2000, LPFM has a maximum of 100 watts and a broadcast radius of 3 miles, but thanks to the lobbying efforts by Big Broadcast, the application process wasn't particularly easy. In fact, only a single LPFM station has been commissioned since then, and the majority of applications were by entities speculating on the popularity of holding a license and cashing in, rather than building stations.

The new FCC ruling set out a streamlined process that limits the applicants to only those that will actually build a station, and eases some of the bandwidth restrictions that Big Radio insisted on to protect their turf. This will all take place next year when the new application process go into effect.

What are the implications of LPFM? Maybe none, maybe a lot. It's been proven that radio is only as good as it's programming and talent. An LPFM station probably won't have much of either, just like college radio (the poster child for low-power radio). That said, it's also not obligated to a corporate playlist, so it's possible to finally have a return to an open playlist like the glory days of early-FM in the 70s (how I long for those radio days). Back then, you never knew what you'd hear next, but if you liked the DJ, you knew you'd probably like what he or she played. With no big money involved, we can only hope that some experimentation will be in order with no reason to focus on the the lowest common denominator dictated by the marketing department.

While we can't expect LPFM to change the broadcast world, it would be nice if we had some local alternatives, even if their reach is only 3 miles. Hyper-local radio is target at your community. The question is, will your community listen?

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10 Creative Rules Of Thumb

Here are some great tips on how to stay creative that that have been floating around various blogs for a while. Regardless of who created the list, it's still pretty good advice and something I wish I would refer to more often myself. Take a look:

Top 10 Creative Rules of Thumb:

1. The best way to get great ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.

2. Create ideas that are 15 minutes ahead of their time…not light years ahead.

3. Always look for a second right answer.

4. If at first you don’t succeed, take a break.

5. Write down your ideas before you forget them.

6. If everyone says you are wrong, you’re one step ahead. If everyone laughs at you, you’re two steps ahead.

7. The answer to your problem “pre-exists.” You need to ask the right question to reveal the answer.

8. When you ask a dumb question, you get a smart answer.

9. Never solve a problem from its original perspective.

10. Visualize your problem as solved before solving it.

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

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Sometimes Big Promo Doesn't Work

More and more, music mass marketing is working less and less. This is especially true for television, where once upon a time, an appearance on a popular show could mean a huge jump in sales. Take for instance an appearance on Saturday Night Live, which could mean at least 100,000 in sales; sometimes even more back in the good old days of limited media. This is becoming less and less the case however, as we get further into Music 3.0 where consumer's listening, watching and buying habits are dictated by the time they spend online.

Probably the best example of how little impact television can have came recently with the airing of Spike Lee's documentary of the making of Michael Jackson's Bad. This was basically a 90 minute commercial for the re-issue of the album during prime time of one of the best television viewing nights of the year, and it sold only 11,000 albums the next week as a result.

Let's go over that again - Michael Jackson, big album, Thanksgiving evening, 11k!

The worse thing is that it was a really great program, showing another side of Michael that few have ever seen, along with much of the backstory of the making of a big-selling album. Granted,  the record is 25 years old and MJ's music isn't currently hot, but it would have been interesting to see if a similar show on Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga (or even Psy for that matter) would've done any better. Maybe a bit, but I doubt it.

Several things are changing at once here. Television is losing it's impact, and people are getting more used to subscription music instead of buying it. I bet a lot of the audience that were motivated to listen to MJ afterwards just fired up Spotify or Pandora or Grooveshark or ..........

The fact of the matter is that I think more copies of Bad might've been sold with an online marketing campaign, and it would've been a  lot cheaper.

The estate of MJ no doubt made some big dollars from the network, but the show just proved that we're in a state of evolution in all media. Hang on for ride!

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

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