10 Most Profitable Merch Items

One of the mistakes that many artists and bands make is not paying attention to what kind of merchandise they're offering, opting for the standard t-shirt rather than looking for other less expensive but more profitable items.

The chart on the left outlines the 10 most profitable merch items, according to Jakprints, and as you can see, 6 of them (single and full color stickers, patches, magnets, guitar pics and buttons) are fairly inexpensive to manufacture, ranging from $0.20 to $0.40 each. The surprising thing is that most of these items generally have at least a 400% markup to as high as 750%.

While t-shirts are a perennial favorite, the biggest problem is the multiple sizes that you have to stock, and the space required for the inventory. There are a lot of other items that get the promotional job done for a lot less money and hassle.

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Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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The Real Reason Behind YouTube’s New Music Streaming Service

By now you’ve heard the reports that YouTube is preparing its own music streaming service, and although the company hasn’t officially confirmed it, accounts of numerous recent private showings of the service to select partners have appeared. On the surface you can look at the prospect of a YouTube music streaming service and ask why it’s necessary, since parent company Google already has one of its own in Google Play Music All Access (this name has to be at least four syllables too long). Then you might wonder what YouTube has to offer that’s not being offered by numerous other services already. I’m glad you asked.

Let me say up front that I have very little insider information on the subject and haven’t seen the service myself, but you can figure a number of things out by just looking at the current landscape of the streaming music business and Google and YouTube’s place in it already.

First of all is that terribly long name for Google’s existing music service (Google Play Music All Access). I don’t care how big a company Google is, that’s not a brand that a user can get behind. Imagine a kid trying to explain this cool new service she just found and then tries to spit out that tongue twister of a brand name. About the only thing you can count on her getting right is “Google.” 

YouTube, on the other hand, is a brand that everyone knows, and most kids already use  it to discover their music. It has a built-in hard-core audience that contains precisely the prime demographic for consuming music (14 to 24 years old), plus another billion (with a “b”) or so active users. Adding a streaming music function becomes only just a new YouTube feature, not a new service. 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.

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.

Developing Your Social Strategy

Social media is a big world and it can easily become confusing. Which networks should I be on? Are some more important than others? Which one should I concentrate on? Here's an excerpt from the new Social Media Promotion For Musicians book that gives you a different way to look at your online presence, and how all the platforms fit together when it comes to promotion.

"There are a lot of online elements that every artist, band or brand has to be involved in these days in order to be an effective online marketer. It’s pretty easy to get confused and either not know where to begin, or throw yourself scattershot at all of them, which usually means that your efforts will be ineffective when it comes to promotion. If we just look at the major components, it looks something like this:

Your website

Your email list

Facebook and Google+ posts

Twitter

Music releases

YouTube video posts

Blog posts

Throw in any of the 100+ additional networks available and it’s no wonder why artists, bands and music execs become bewildered by it all. We can make things a bit simpler by separating these components so they fall into one of three categories; content, interaction and tactics. If we break all this out, it looks like this:

Content: the places online where you place the material that you generate, like information about your band, music, videos, or blog posts. Interaction is all the social networks where you might interact with your fans and followers. These include:

• Your website
• Your mailing list
• Your blog
• Your videos on Youtube and other video sites
• Your music files on Soundcloud or other music hosting sites

Interaction: the places where you regularly communicate with your fans, followers, clients and customers. These include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Pinterest
• Bookmarking
• Any other social network

Tactics: everything required to define and refine who you are and your position in the online world. These include:

• Branding
• Strategy
• Measurement

All this gets more interesting when we put into the form of a Venn chart on the left and watch how the categories intersect.

As you can see, where all three category circles cross, a new element pops up - promotion. This isn’t possible without all three elements combined, which goes to show just how synergistic they all are. Use only one or two and you fall short; use all three and new possibilities for promotion arise."

You can read additional excerpts from Social Media Promotion For Musicians and other books at bobbyowsinski.com.

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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.

The Social Media Promotion For Musicians Book Is Here

Bobby Owsinski's Social Media Promotion For Musicians, the manual for marketing yourself, your band and your music online, is finally available.

The book shows you how to stop just using social media and learn how to promote with it, as you’ll find a host of online insider tips and tricks that that will help you gain more fans and followers, increase your views, and grow your ticket and merch sales.

Social Media Promotion For Musicians shows artists, bands, engineers and producers the latest techniques and strategies to increase your online presence more effectively and efficiently than you ever thought possible. Best of all, anyone can do it!

In the book you’ll discover:

• How to increase your online exposure to increase your fan base
• How to have more time for creating by saving at least an hour every day on common social media operations
• Exclusive promotional tips that boost your views and followers
• How to uncover and develop your brand
• The secret behind successful tweets and posts
• Why a mailing list is the key to your ticket and merch sales
• 10 ways to make sure that fans, music critics and bloggers, bookers and promoters, and agents and managers always have your latest information
• Ways to optimize your YouTube channel and videos to maximize your views

and so much more.

Social Media Promotion For Musicians covers all aspects of a musician’s online presence on the most widely used platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, blogs, Pinterest, bookmarking sites, as well as personal and band websites and newsletters.

Check out the bobbyowsinski.com website, where can see the table of contents and read excerpts. The printed book is available from Amazon, as is the Kindle version.

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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.

Twitter To Kill The Music App Nobody Knew It Had

News is now leaking that Twitter is on the verge of killing its #Music app, as the company revamps its music strategy in preparation for its IPO. Some of you reading this are probably saying to yourselves, “I didn’t even know Twitter had a music app!”, and that’s the whole point. The company didn’t do much to promote it, which leads to some interesting speculation.

#Music was launched in April and actually had a reasonable first week or so, but usage dropped like a rock after that, getting no traction from the early adopters and no buzz to bring in other users as a result. The app was based upon the infrastructure of We Are Hunted, a company that Twitter acquired that specialized in new music discovery, which was to be the trademark of #Music. But sometimes things don’t work out as planned, as Twitter made two strategic mistakes with the app.

First of all was timing. Introducing #Music in April might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out to be a very flawed decision. While not knowing exactly what the corporate thinking was, it would seem that the plan was to get some action in music to spike their IPO a little (which was still unannounced at the time). By having a successful music product, the assumption might have been that it could’ve went to market with that additional feather in its tail and goosed its opening share price as a result. But would that really have mattered? I’ve read valuations of anywhere between $10 to 20 billion that are expected once the IPO is launched, so would a successful #Music really have added much more? 

In retrospect it would’ve been better to wait until after the IPO to launch a music app, as it could’ve ridden on the coattails of all the publicity already being generated. Plus, there would’ve been extra cash to invest in the project to flesh it out more if needed. 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.

Google Unviels A New Search Algorithm

Musicians, artists, bands, record labels, agents and managers interested in high search ratings should be interested to know that Google recently introduced a new search algorithm, their first major upgrade in 3 years.

The new algorithm is codenamed Hummingbird and supposedly affects about 90% of Google searches. It was introduced because the company sees the future of search as one using longer and more complex queries, and much more conversational in nature. It also paves the way for users speaking their requests directly into mobile phones, smart watches and other wearable technology that the company sees for the future.

The biggest feature of Hummingbird is the way it may interpret requests, but the way it ranks the search results may be a bigger jolt to those who practice SEO (search engine optimization) on a regular basis. Since the algorithm is intelligent, it doesn't focus on indexing of websites as much as interpreting what the request is all about. As a result, it's possible that some of the previous SEO techniques of keywords tags and seeding may become less important, while the actual content on the page will become even more important than ever.

It's another good reason to remember that content really is king. If you have a site that has a lot of helpful info that a visitor is searching for, that will always be the best SEO that you can provide.

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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.

More People Are Listening To Internet Radio

If there's any doubt about the popularity of streaming music, a new study by Edison Research should put it rest. The survey of more than 3,000 people age 12 and up about their online music consumption definitively proves that streaming has truly arrived. Here's what the study found:

• More than 80% of smartphone owners said they listen to some kind of Internet radio on their mobile gadgets. 

• A majority of Web users -- 53%, to be precise -- listen to Internet radio outlets, including personalized streaming, live online audio and music on-demand.

• Slightly more than two-thirds of those surveyed said they listen to more online radio than they did a year ago as they access content on more Internet connected devices. 

Surprisingly, that doesn't mean that terrestrial radio is losing listeners though.

• 90% of the survey participants still listen to terrestrial stations. 

• Almost 9 of 10 people listen to radio in their cars, but only 17% use Internet radio.

Expect to see these rates rise shortly as more users turn to iTunes Radio and Beats Music and the new YouTube music streaming services are introduced.

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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 The SFX IPO Is Bad For EDM

SFX Entertainment’s recent IPO (Initial Public Offering) seems to have met both some backlash and bad timing, as it’s stock continues to struggle to come back to its original IPO price of $13 per share. Part of this is due to the stock market having a case of the yips over our boys in Washington being unable to come together to fund the government, so there’s your bad timing. The other part is due to the IPO stock offering being on the high side to begin with, much like the Facebook IPO last year.

But the fact that we’re even talking about the stock price rather than the company’s impact on music is the problem here, and it’s a symptom of a larger malady that pertains uniquely to the entertainment business. Once a company goes public, it becomes beholden to the stockholder and not the customer, and that’s bad for a company based around a totally creative product. In this case its music, more specifically electronic dance music (EDM), where SFX has made its big play.

Just a refresher on SFX - it’s the brainchild of chief executive and chairman Robert Sillerman, who saw how EDM was becoming the next big trend in music and wanted to cash in on its popularity. The company went on a buying spree, rolling up several event producers as well as online music store Beatport, and was planning on using the IPO money for additional acquisitions of other major EDM events.

It’s great when someone has so much confidence in a part of the music industry that he invests heavily in it, and then convinces Wall Street to invest as well, but that also brings about a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning that when big money comes into something artistic, the art inevitably gets squeezed out in favor of something safer and more likely to result in a profit. 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.

Spotify And Pandora Pros And Cons

Streaming music is taking off and predictions are that its 29 million worldwide paying subscribers will grow to at least 191 million in 5 years (I think it will be more). In the meantime, Spotify and Pandora are the big dogs on the block for the moment (expect iTunes Radio to take that mantle soon). Here's a pretty good set of pros and cons between them, courtesy of The Music Bed.

Keep in mind that the above is from the consumer's point of view. There's a whole different set of pros and cons when it comes to the artist and songwriter, but it mostly stems around the fact that the royalty rate is so low. Keep in mind that if the number of paying subscribers raises by the factor of 6 as predicted, so will the revenue streams to artists.

It's probably not possible to get a higher royalty rate from streaming services in that few of them make money as is due to the already high cost of the content. That said, the tiny royalties won't be so small with a lot more subscribers on board.

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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.

The 20 Highest Paid Hip Hop Artists

This year's Forbes Top 20 Best Paid Hip Hop Stars list is here. Although there are few surprises on the list, the one thing that did stick out was how far the earnings at the bottom of the list were. As you probably surmised, Diddy, Jay Z, Dr. Dre and Nicki Manaj dominated again. Take a look.

1. Diddy ($50 million)
2. Jay Z ($43 million)
3. Dr. Dre ($40 million)
4. Nicki Manaj ($29 million)
5. Birdman ($21 million)
6. Kanye West ($20 million)
7. Lil Wayne ($16 million)
8. Wiz Khalifa ($14 million)
9. Ludacris ($12 million)
10. Pitbull ($11 million)
11. Drake ($10.5 million)
12. Snoop Lion ($10 million, tie)
12. Eminem ($10 million, tie)
14. Kendrick Lamar ($9 million, tie)
14. Pharrell Williams ($9 million, tie)
14. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ($9 million, tie)
17. Swizz Beatz ($8.5 million)
18. Tech N9ne ($7.5 million)
19. 50 Cent ($7 million)
20. Lil Jon ($6 million, tie)

Read the article on Forbes for more details.

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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 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.

Another Piece Of The Music Business Evolves

It’s rare when a trade association reinvents itself. After all, they mostly fall into the same trap as most corporations, trying to maintain the status quo rather than experiencing the change needed to keep growing. Associations, like many companies, generally don’t want to experience the pain that evolution can bring, even if it’s in it’s own best self-interest.

That’s why the re-branding of NARM (the National Association of Recording Merchandisers) to become the Music Business Association is so impressive. The board recognized that we live in a totally different world than when the association began in 1958, and it needed more than just a coat of paint to be relevant to its members in our current Music 4.0 world.

The new Music Business Association will divide its attention around six sectors that now make up the new music business: digital products, information technology, physical products, knowledge, management, touring and legal/business affairs. This division recognizes that the music business has evolved to become far more than just selling music products in brick and mortar stores as when it began. Addressing these different sectors also acknowledges that the in order to grow, the organization has to represent more areas of the music business than just retail, which really was at the core of NARM in its previous iteration. 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.

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.

Twitter's Interesting New Usage Numbers

Twitter recently filed to go public and within their S-1 (the document that the SEC requires all public companies to make about their basic business and finances) where a number of very interesting usage statistics.

• Twitter has 100 million daily active users.
• It has about 215 million monthly active users, but 169 million (77%) are outside of the United States.
• 75% of Twitter users access it via a mobile device.
• Since it's inception in 2006, there have been over 300 billion tweets.
• More than 6 million websites have integrated Twitter.
• Most of the users outside the US are from Argentina, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. 

Of course there was some interesting financial stats as well, like:

• Twitter looks to be doubling in growth this year, with revenue projected at $656 million this year.
• 87% of its revenue comes from advertising, with the rest coming from licensing agreements with companies that want better access to the platform.
• 65% of it's ad revenue comes from mobile devices.
• The company still isn't profitable, losing around $80 million last year.
• It could be worth as much as $20 billion when it finally goes public!

It will be interesting to see what happens when Twitter finally goes public, since so many times a company changes because it becomes more worried about it's stockholders than its customers. That said, it should be an interesting ride, at least in the beginning.

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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.