Music Business

In a previous post I spoke about developing a strategy for fan engagement. One of the best tools that we encourage Bandzoogle members to use to engage with their fans is a blog. A blog is essentially a web log, an online journal where you can post entries and where your fans can leave comments. Blog posts can be used to announce news (album, tour, etc.), document experiences (recording, touring, etc.), or offer anecdotes from your personal life (passions outside of music, funny pets, etc.). Posts can be mostly text, mostly photos, or even video. Here’s why blogging is great for engaging your fans:

Why Blogging is Great for Fan Engagement

Blogging is one of the best tools to engage your fans with because it’s interactive. Your fans can leave comments, which you can then respond to, creating an ongoing conversation. Also, if you host your blog on your own website (and you should), it allows you to engage with your fans on your own terms, without tons of ads and links trying to take them away to view other content.

Blogging also creates a stronger connection to your fans. It’s a great way to show your personality and give fans insight into your career, which can help turn casual fans into super fans. Your blog also adds context to your music, and that’s how fans will come to value it more. They might be fans of your music already, but if they become fans of you on top of that, then the music gains an increased perceived value. Our CEO David Dufresne likes to make the comparison of having your music in a gallery versus at IKEA.

Other Reasons to Blog

Besides being a great tool to engage your fans with, there are other benefits to blogging:

Drives people to your website

Blogging is one of the best ways to drive people to your website. Every time you create a new blog post, it’s an excuse to invite fans to check out your website. Some artists create a blog separate from their website and host it on one of the various blogging platforms, but why give traffic to a site that you don’t own?

Instead, host the blog on your website that you own, where you can collect valuable data to know where those fans are from, what songs they listened to, how long they stayed on your site, etc. And by using yourcall-to-action, you can get them to sign up to your mailing list, or shop in your online store.

Gives you content for social media

Many artists struggle with what they should talk about on Facebook and Twitter. Creating new blog posts gives you great original content to push out to your social media profiles, and in turn, drives people back to your website.

Shows that you’re active

Blogging is one of the best ways to show that you are active in your career. If a potential fan visits your site, enjoys your music (which you made easy to listen to), and then sees that you have months of regular blogging under your belt, they might click on a few posts to get a better sense of your personality. If they really like what they read and feel a connection to you, you might have a fan for life.

Blogging is great for SEO

Improving your SEO (search engine optimization) is another great reason to blog. Simply put, the more you blog, the more Google can find you, and the higher in the search results you will potentially appear based on the keywords, titles, and content of your blog posts.

If You Start Blogging: Remember the 3 Pillars

If you decide to start blogging, always keep in mind the 3 Pillars of Music Fan Engagement. Blogging must be in your own voice (authentic), you have to be consistent, and to really see results, you have to sustain it over the long term.

Just as an updated blog shows that you’re active in your career, inconsistent blogging can create a negative impression. Focus on posting on a regular basis, rather than trying to make each post perfect. You don’t have to blog every day; once a week or once every 2 weeks is a good pace. As a minimum, you’ll probably need to blog once per month to keep it looking current and relevant.

And of course, it goes without saying (but I’m saying it again): Never leave your fans hanging. If a fan responds to a blog post, thank them. If they ask a question, answer it. This will encourage them to keep reading your posts, and might even inspire them to share your content, buy some merch, and go to your next show.

Via Hypebot

From Billboard’s groundbreaking decision to factor YouTube views into the charts, to the “Harlem Shake,” to the historic agreements covering UGC content and Vevo videos, YouTube is becoming the mainstream music business.

Yet, the ugly truth is that there are currently billions of streams of music being watched by millions of people on YouTube, for which songwriters and their music publishers are receiving no money.

Ever see a wildly popular a capella version of a hit song sung by a teenager?  How about a short musical parody on YouTube? Chances are that the company distributing those videos is a Multi-Channel Network (MCN), paying little or nothing to songwriters and publishers.

MCNs like Maker Studios and Fullscreen Media are aggregators of original content on YouTube. There are hundreds of them currently operating, garnering tens of billions of views a month. With backing from Google, Silicon Valley venture capital firms or large media companies, MCNs are distributing hundreds of hours of music related content and selling tens of millions of dollars of advertising, with almost none of it going to songwriters and music publishers.

Like a record label signing an artist, MCNs sign video creators to deals that give the MCN rights to produce, market and/or distribute the creator’s content on YouTube.

With deep pockets and an appetite for eyeballs, MCNs are acquiring content so quickly that now virtually any YouTube video with an audience is now distributed by one of them. As TV viewers migrate to the Web, I’ve heard the media refer to MCNs as the next Cable Television. That could spell trouble. Cable TV pays millions to songwriters and music publishers every year. MCNs? Virtually nothing.

Last year, the National Music Publisher’s Association, on whose board I sit, reached an agreement with YouTube covering user-generated content created by amateurs and uploaded to YouTube; an historic achievement.

The thing is, MCNs are not covered by the UGC agreement because they are members of the YouTube Partner Program: a special designation that allows them to receive advertising opportunities and other services from YouTube.

To become Partners, MCNs agree to clear the rights to all music they use and indemnify YouTube against any claims relating to music. Once that happens, a songwriter or publisher making a claim needs to go to the MCN rather than YouTube. There is no notification process in place to inform rights holders that a video has been signed by an MCN.

Concerned that MCNs may be streaming your content without licenses? Good luck finding out. YouTube’s Content Management System, which tracks content on YouTube, does not flag MCN content. While YouTube’s matching and fingerprinting technologies pick up MCN videos, the matches are not disclosed to rights holders. The only way to find an infringement is via manual search by individual video; even then, in the thousands of searches we’ve done for MCN content, we’ve never seen search results appears if the name of a song is not in the title of a video.

Infringements aside, how good have MCNs been about getting licenses for the music they broadcast on YouTube? In a word: abysmal. Maker Studios signed a deal with only one major music publisher two weeks ago. It has been in business for over 4 years, building huge audiences streaming a capella videos. Fullscreen Media, another leading MCN, has agreements with only two of the majors. Neither MCN has licensed more than a handful of independent publishers, and the terms of their agreements with majors have not been extended to the trade. Both companies should do so immediately and NMPA will be enforcing its rights to make sure that they do.

Until then, herein lies the irony of the YouTube landscape: If a 6 year old kid sings a song and puts it on YouTube, the writer gets paid. If she’s any good and actually obtains an audience, an MCN like Maker Studios — with $35 million in VC funding from Time Warner, the Murdoch family and others — will sign her. Then, the money stops flowing to the writer, whether the video stops streaming or not.

Multi-Channel Networks have raised millions of dollars of capital, aggregating eyeballs on the backs of songwriters. It’s time for them to clean up their business and pay a fair price for the music they use. [Billboard.biz]

Editors note: YouTube, Maker Studios and Fullscreen Media declined to respond.

Matt Pincus is founder/CEO of SONGS Music Publishing whose writers include Diplo, Dev, Conor Oberst, The Mowglis, and many others. Pincus is also member of the Board of Directors of both the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and ASCAP.

Regardless if you’re a musician or music consumer, your music life is about to change. Slowly but surely digital music distribution has been evolving from downloads to streaming, but that transition has been really picking up speed over the last 12 months. With Spotify leading the way thanks to reams of publicity, more and more consumers are finding that the joy of renting music beats owning it by a long shot.

While it’s been long rumored that Apple has their own streaming service up their sleeve, several developments reveal the change that is about to come.

First is the fact that Jimmy Iovine’s Daisy project (named after the first computer generated song) just received a $60 million injection from the likes of Warner Music Group’s owner Len Blavatnik, Fort Worth billionaire Lee Bass and Australian financier James Packer. This is a serious investment by some deep pockets that know what they’re doing and don’t like to lose. Then comes word that Apple’s Tim Cook recently took a meeting with Iovine to be briefed on the project. Does that mean a collaboration? We don’t know, but at the very least, Apple has a good working relationship with Iovine, since he was one of the first to sign Universal Music onto iTunes back in 2001. Together they’d be a powerhouse, a true 1200 pound gorilla. Chances are that Apple will chose to go it alone and just stay at 800 pounds though. It doesn’t need a partner, but if there’s something there worth buying, they have lots of money.

Then comes word that Google has been quietly making deals with all the major labels for their own YouTube-based subscription streaming service to be launched later in the year.

If all this were happening a couple of years ago we would’ve looked to only one of these prospective services to be left standing at some point, with the others falling by the wayside. But this is a different time, with the streaming business far more mature thanks to the likes of Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Slacker, et al. It’s now probably possible that all of these new services survive if they’re at least half-way decent in their user operation and offerings.

This is definitely going to be a big win for consumers, with nearly an unlimited selection of songs available for a relatively small monthly fee (not sure what the price point will end up being, but $9.95 keeps being mentioned). Consumers are quickly seeing the advantages of renting their music.

It will be a different story for artists and songwriters however. By now everyone knows how little the royalty can be from a stream, with stories abounding about income lost by the writer and artist. Although a full transition to streaming will be a godsend for the labels, with steady monthly income actually bolstering their bottom line, you can bet that not much of that will trickle down to the artists – at least at first.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but within a matter of time, you’ll see the entirety of the management and law categories of the music business devise a better way to get paid, and eventually force the labels to fall in line. And when that happens, it will trickle down to the DIYers who insist on doing it their way. To what degree this all takes place, we’ll have to wait and see.

While we’re currently in the era of Music 3.0, we’re about to see the next stage of the music business. Welcome to Music 3.5!

Via Music Think Thank & AlLindstrom

In what likely will be a trend for the next few years, Sony/ATV is the No. 1­­­­-­ ranked music publisher, based on its market share of the top 100 songs as compiled by Nielsen BDS.

For the fourth quarter, Sony/ATV, which includes administration for EMI Music Publishing, posted a share of 25.8%, which is up slightly from the 25.7% share that the combined entity tallied in the third quarter. On June 29, 2012, a Sony Corp. of America-led consortium completed the acquisition of EMI Music Publishing and assigned the company to Sony/ATV for administration.

In the fourth quarter, Sony/ATV, which also took the No. 1 ranking in the top 100 country songs with a 22.9% share, claimed a stake in 52 of the top 100 tracks, including Rihanna’s “Diamonds” (No. 2), fun.’s “Some Nights” (No. 3) and Ne-Yo’s “Let Me Love You (Until You Learn to Love Yourself)” (No. 5). In the prior quarter, the two combined song portfolios had a piece of 53 songs among the top 100.

For the second consecutive quarter, Kobalt Music Group ranked second, with 16.5% in the fourth quarter, which is down from the 17.5% it posted in the third quarter but up from the 15.6% it had in fourth-quarter 2011. For fourth-quarter 2012, Kobalt placed 25 tracks in the top 100 songs, down from 29 in the third quarter. Kobalt’s shares included Maroon 5’s No. 1 track, “One More Night”; “Diamonds”; and Ke$ha’s “Die Young” (No. 7).

Universal Music Publishing Group continues to be on the rise, this time moving up in the rankings to No. 3, with a 15.9% share, versus the 12.6% it had in the third quarter when it ranked fourth. In fact, that third-quarter tally marked an improvement from the second quarter, when UMPG had an 11.3% share. But it’s down from the 16.3% it had in fourth-quarter 2011, when it was ranked No. 2 behind EMI.

For fourth-quarter 2012, UMPG had a piece of 39 songs among the top 100, up from the 35 it had in the third quarter. Its top songs included “One More Night,” Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven” (No. 4) and “Let Me Love You.”

Even though it gained in market share, Warner/Chappell Music fell to No. 4 from No. 3 in the third quarter when it had 13.1%. For fourth-quarter 2012, Warner/Chappell posted 14.2% and placed 32 tracks in the top 100, down from 37. But that’s better than the No. 5 ranking it had in fourth-quarter 2011, when it had 10.4%. W/C’s top songs included “Some Nights,” “Locked Out of Heaven” and Alex Clare’s “Too Close” (No. 6).

BMG Chrysalis ranked fifth, the same as in the third quarter, with its market share falling slightly to 5.3% from 5.5%. BMG had a share in 18 of the top 100 songs, including “Locked Out of Heaven,” Chris Brown’s “Don’t Wake Me Up” (No. 11) and Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” (No. 18). In fourth-quarter 2011, BMG had a 7% share and ranked No. 6.

For the fourth consecutive quarter, Downtown Music Publishing appears in the rankings, this time at No. 6 with 3.9%, up from the 2.7% it had in the third quarter. In finishing sixth, Downtown placed eight songs in the top 100, one more than the prior quarter. Its songs included “Don’t Wake Me Up” and Phillip Phillips’ “Home” (No. 12).
Also on a four-consecutive-quarter streak is Words & Music Copyright Administration, which ranked No. 7 with a 2.2% share based on the five tracks it placed in the quarter’s top songs, which included Carrie Underwood’s “Blown Away” (No. 36).

Big Loud Bucks posted a 1.7% share, good enough to return the publisher to the rankings for the first time since second-quarter 2009. In placing eighth, Big Loud Songs had six tracks among the top 100, including Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” (No. 24) and “Blown Away.”

Razor & Tie’s piece of “Home” places the publisher at No. 9 with a 0.93% share — a drop from the 1% it had the last time it was in the top 10 in fourth-quarter 2011.
Rounding out the rankings, Jerk Awake Music’s share in Demi Lovato’s “Give Your Heart a Break” (No. 43) kept the company in the top 10 for a second consecutive quarter, with 0.89%.

Martin Karl “Max Martin” Sandberg was the top songwriter for the quarter with a share in six songs among the top 100, including “One More Night,” Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” (No. 8) and Katy Perry’s “Wide Awake” (No. 20). [Billboard.biz]

The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought recovery might have begun.