The Long Fail: the cost of digital distribution

Digital distribution as well as promotion has undoubtedly been the best thing that could have happened to music fans as well as musicians. Even bigger content owners are finally seeing the opportunities (instead of the threats) that come  with the technical change of delivering ‘media’ over the last ten years. It is now easier than ever for artists to connect to their fans and delivering the music to them, gatekeepers have been eliminated and (in theory) artists can reach out to millions of music fans out there through the internet. So far, so good.

Everyone who works in music knows that there are various new challenges that have developed through new digital delivery methods and those challenges can make it difficult to monetize digital music. I won’t be going into the issue of file sharing (there are enough people out there who have something to say about that) but I want to explore a common misunderstanding about digital media: “digital distribution is free” (or at least very cheap). It is not at the moment.

Click to read more ...

Nobody knows the future.

Nobody knows the future.

That’s a hard but crucial lesson to learn.

If even ultimate insiders like Greenspan, Bernanke, and Paulson don’t know the future, then neither does Jim Cramer, your stockbroker, Nostradamus, nor you.

We have a human need for certainty that desperately yearns to believe that someone can turn our future from unknown to known.

Even if we logically understand that it’s impossible, we’re emotionally sucked back in and fooled again when someone important tells us with such conviction what the future will hold.

But nobody knows the future.

Click to read more ...

An industry with a great future behind it

I read a great article today about Sister Ray Records in London. It was my favourite record store in the capital. Or at least - I thought it was. In fact, Sister Ray was not my favourite record shop because I liked Sister Ray. It was my favourite record shop because it fitted a romantic, nostalgic notion about London independent record shops.

And that ‘nostalgic’ bit is kind of weird, because I didn’t grow up in London, but in a suburb about 13,000 miles away at the bottom of the planet. And I’m not nostalgic about Jim’s Record Spot in Panmure, even if that was where I bought my first album with my own money (David Bowie’s ‘Scary Monsters’, since you ask - but it was a toss-up between that and Donna Summer’s ‘The Wanderer’).

London independent record shops mean something. And to me, Sister Ray encapsulated that. Fine. But it’s not a great way to continue to do business. As Brett points out in his article - when you actually look at it on its own merits, and take all that nostalgia stuff away, Sister Ray was dark, overpriced and staffed by people who’d rather you’d just go away. And that might have been fine once. It just isn’t now. There’s no room for any of that. Things have changed.

But that’s symptomatic of a wider problem, rather than a misreading of the times by a single record store.

Click to read more ...

Is your album a starting line or a finish line?

People often asked, “How much does the average artist on CD Baby sell?”

Others would take the numbers on the “about” page and divide them: $85 million paid out to 250,000 available albums = $340 earnings per album. Now we know how much the “average” album sells!

Problem is: the numbers are right but the answer is wrong, because it groups together two completely different types of approaches to an album release, giving an inaccurate average for your type.

For some artists, releasing an album is like the starting line in a race. The gun goes off! They work it! They spend hours a day pushing, promoting, selling, striving. For the next few months, they never stop. Reaching new people by any means necessary, whether playing live for strangers in strange venues many times a week, or joining new communities online.

For those types, I’d say the average income (through my one little store) was $5000. (And 50 of them earned over $100,000 each.)

But for many artists, releasing an album is like the finish line in a race. They’ve always wanted to make a record. They did it. It’s done. They give some for free to friends and family, and glow in the compliments. They might do a record release concert and make a website, but in terms of effort spent, they’re done. (Sometimes from satisfaction, but sometimes from entitlement: “Now that my brilliant album is done the world will recognize my genius!”)

For those types, I’d say the average income was $20.

The people who would ask about the average were usually artists trying to predict how well they would sell on CD Baby.

Because 50% of all sales on CD Baby were returning customers just browsing for new music, it was possible to sell a few albums without doing anything at all.

But the important thing is it’s up to you which kind of approach you want to take.

Is your album a starting line or a finish line?

Eco-touring - survival is the mother of invention (or something)

Not sure how I missed this first time round but Geoff Hickman (aka DeadBeatGeoff) was recently interviewed on BBC 5 live about the whole idea of Sustainable, or ‘Green’, touring. Here’s the piece from the radio:



It’s something that’s been getting a lot of interest of late, largely thanks to Radiohead’s attempts to do the low-carbon eco-tour thing (read their road manager’s thoughts here).

But as usual, the Radiohead stuff is a massive red-herring. Very very few musicians are in a position to think about their own lighting show (unless it’s an Orbital-style torches-mounted-on-your-head approach). No, the situation with Televox, the band Geoff manages, is way more pertinent. They are a small club-level band, trying to play some shows and build an audience. They’re not wondering whether to air-freight or charter a plane for their 35 tonnes of back-line and lights. They’re trying to work out if they can get an amp on a train or not…

This all piqued my interest because Lobelia and I did such a tour last year. Back then, I still owned a car, and was used to loading up my car with my bass-friendly PA, a pile of instruments, whoever else I was working with and driving to the gig. (even at this stage, I’m one step down from the ‘need to hire a van’ stage, but we’ll get back to that). But for our tour, we wanted to do it all on the train - I’d done a two week tour like that on my own back in Oct 2006, and we wanted to get Interail (UK)/ Eurail (US) passes and use trains all over the continent.

Click to read more ...

6 things I wish I knew the day I started Berklee

Talk I gave to incoming first-year students at Berklee College of Music today (September 5, 2008)

#1 : Focus. Disconnect. Do not be distracted.

My favorite part of the movies is the training sequence, where a young Bruce Wayne, Neo or Kung-Fu Panda goes to a remote location to be trained relentlessly, nonstop, past all breaking points, until they emerge as a master.

The next few years can be your training sequence, if you focus.

Unfortunately you’re not in Siberia. You’re surrounded by distractions.

You’re surrounded by cool tempting people, hanging out casually, telling you to relax.

But the casual ones end up having casual talent and merely casual lives.

Looking back, my only Berklee classmates that got successful were the ones who were fiercely focused, determined, and undistractable.

While you’re here, presidents will change, the world will change, and the media will try to convince you how important it all is.

But it’s not. None of it matters to you now.

You are being tested.

Your enemy is distraction.

Stay offline. Shut off your computer. Stay in the shed.

When you emerge in a few years, you can ask someone what you missed, and you’ll find it can be summed up in a few minutes.

The rest was noise you’ll be proud you avoided.

Focus. Disconnect. Do not be distracted.

This is your #1 most important challenge. If you master focus, you will be in control of your world. If you don’t, it will control you.

Click to read more ...

Are fan-funded models the future of the recorded music business?

Does last weeks announcement of another fan funded music business model called bandstocks, reinforce the feeling that labels are beginning to loose their attraction to release established artists records? 2006 saw the first real roll-out of fan funded model sellaband.com. Since then sellaband has gone on to have 23 artists reach the $50,000 US dollar threshold to record an album. In 2007 Slicethepie.com appeared on the fan-funded radar and now we have another twist to the model in the form of bandstocks.

What are the differences between each of these fan funded models and what are the pros and cons for artists, fans and the entrepreneurs who have established them? What are the wider implications of these new models for the traditional recorded music labels and publisher’s alike?

Lets drill down on what each of these models offer the artist and fans/investors.

Click to read more ...

Please Buy My Record: The Futility Of Flogging Music

This is the rough text of a talk I delivered at Oxford Geek Night, which was held at The Jericho Tavern in Oxford, 27th August 2008. It’s quite long. Sorry about that.

***

I was pondering the other day whether I actually have a field of expertise. I thought for ages, and couldn’t come up with anything, and then in a blinding flash I realised, with a slight sense of despondency, what it might be: being in bands that people have never heard of. I’ve been doing it for years, now, and it’s incredibly easy. You get together with a few mates, write some songs, play some gigs, labour over some half-baked recordings, and fail to achieve any success whatsoever. It’s like falling off a log, seriously, and if you haven’t tried it, you should give it a go.

One thing that nearly all my bands had in common was a complete inability to get people to give us money in exchange for the recordings we’d made. As I’ll explain later, the MP3 revolution – if I’m allowed to call it that – has made that failure even more apparent, and the pain even more acute; it’s just few weeks since I went down to my local tip and recycled approximately 1,500 unsold CD albums in order to make room for my girlfriend’s burgeoning magazine collection. Her tatty copies of Vogue and Elle Decoration are worth more, square foot for square foot, kilo for kilo, than my CDs. I’d always suspected this, but that trip to Wandsworth dump confirmed it.

This talk was going to be called The Futility of Flogging Music. I’ve tweaked this slightly, because I’ve noticed that Columbia Records seem to be effortlessly selling CDs by The Ting Tings. So I changed it to The Futility Of Flogging Your Own Music. Although, actually, it’s probably just possible to flog your records to gullible family and friends, so let’s call it The Futility Of Flogging Your Own Music To People You Don’t Know Very Well.

Click to read more ...

What does it mean to be a 'professional' musician.

One of the things that constantly amazes me about the discussions around the future of the music industry is how often it’s taken for granted that

• a) all musicians are trying to become celebrities and
• b) behaving ‘like a rock star’ is an acceptable reason for famous musicians not bothering to interact with fans.

I had a conversation the other day with a bloke who works in new media for a large independent label (I say ‘conversation’; he actually shouted at me at a party for 20 minutes, but I’m told he’s rather nice when he’s not drunk). While talking about musicians and social networking, he shot down the idea that musicians should be part of their own online strategy by basically saying that it’s ‘too hard’ to get them to do it and they ‘don’t understand it’.

The problem with this line of thought is that it’s predicated on a myth about musicians playing pop stars. It’s based on the notion that their unwillingness to provide the necessary online material to make their web presence worth having is excusable because hey, they’re a rock star, you can’t expect them to help out.

Click to read more ...

Should you go digital-only, and skip the CD?

Should you go digital-only, and skip the CD?

The real question is: How much of your potential audience are you willing to exclude?

We’re in transitional times. A lot of people have iPods. But most still don’t. A lot of people get all their music online. But most still don’t.

If you decide not to put your music on iTunes or Rhapsody - (say, if you have cover songs and don’t want to bother with the paperwork) - your music will never be heard by the millions that get all their music on iTunes or Rhapsody.

But if you decide not to have your music on CD, your music will never be heard by the millions that still do all their listening on CD. (Even if they listen to streaming clips while sitting at their computer, they do all their real listening in the car, or on the home stereo.)

So the answer for 2008 is : if you’re serious about being a professional musician, you need to do both.

If you’re just playing around, and never expect even 100 people to want your music, then just upload to MySpace like everyone else does, and don’t make a CD.

But in these long-tail days with over a million bands on MySpace, having a professional CD - a beautifully designed and manufactured CD - really sets you apart and shows you’re serious to anyone in the music industry receiving your CD. Investing $1000 into manufacturing CDs shows that you plan to make at least $1000 selling them. Not spending the $1000 is like saying, “I don’t think I’ll ever make $1000 doing this.” Then you wonder why a booking agent or label is not interested?

To close with a telling example:

When visiting Apple iTunes, I had lunch with the guy who’s in charge of independent music editorial - the one who chooses who gets featured placement.

I asked him, “What’s the best way for me to turn you on to something I think you’ll love?”

His answer? “Send me the CD.”

I said, “Uh.. really? What if it’s already on iTunes? Shouldn’t I just send you the link?”

He said, “Yeah. I commute an hour each way to Apple’s office. I do all my real listening in the car, so I need the CD.”

How To Get From Full Time Day Job To Full Time Musician - Meet John Taglieri

A few weeks ago I spoke at Bob Baker’s Indie Buzz Bootcamp with 5 other music industry vets: Derek Sivers, Nancy Moran, Bob Baker, Tom Jackson and John Taglieri. We all delivered same message: Make great music that is a full expression of your creative self, then go out and connect your expression to people using technology and with a little learned marketing knowledge and discipline you will earn money. John Taglieri delivered an inspiring talk about what he did to go from full time day job to full time musician

As a social networking cheerleader who works full-time creating exposure for artists online I often find myself asking in my head: Why all of my artists be more like John?  John Taglieri is a rare breed of musician: A natural sales person who understands the importance of working just as hard on his musical craft as he does on his marketing and sales and for him it comes naturally.

I know that this is not the case for a lot of artists who can get fully frustrated with the idea of sales and marketing and they “just want to play.”  I’ve heard it thousands of times: “I just want to play, I hate doing that online stuff,” if you hold on to this attitude you will be left behind in the dust.

Click to read more ...

Songwriters who don't perform?

I did an interview today with Diana from savethesongwriter.com, and she said it was OK to republish some of it here:

Q. Not every good performer is a good writer, nor is every good writer a good performer. Do you have any suggestions as to how a writer (i.e. lyricist and/or composer) should proceed in order to get their songs covered?

Work backwards. See sivers.org/call-the-destination and sivers.org/get-specific.

First, figure out exactly who should be recording your song. Do your research and find out what songs that artist has recorded by other writers. Then Google those songwriters and song titles to see if interviews have revealed how that writer got that cut.

If nothing is found online, ask Diana if you can contact the writer in the name of savethesongwriter.com to interview them about how that artist chose to record their song.

Once you’ve done this research (which really only took you an hour, tops) write down at least five different ways you can reach this artist the way they like to be reached. Don’t stop at one idea. Come up with five and do at least three of them. Persistence really pays off.

Q. While becoming known is a desireable goal for a performer, many excellent songwriters will never be famous, nor is that necessarily a goal. How do you suggest a songwriter proceed in order to have their songs covered and develop a source of income?

Be where music is being made.

I used to work at Warner/Chappell Music Publishing in New York City. One of our most successful writers was only a lyrics-and-melody guy. So he would hang out at studios where many of the producer types, especially in R&B, had leftover grooves and tracks that they had never turned into songs. He’d just say, “Toss me your leftovers. Let me see if I can turn it into something even more valuable for you. If you don’t like my ideas, no problem, it’s still your track.” He’d just take home a copy of their groove/track for the night and sing to it, seeing if he could turn into into a cool song. About one out of every five songs he co-wrote like this was impressive enough that the producer liked it, and would often get it cut by whatever artist he was working with.

On the flip side, if you’re more of a music-only person, not so into writing lyrics or melodies, co-write with recording artists, letting them come up with the words and melody to your tracks. They’ll be happier with that because they can sing words they wrote, and the song is almost sure to be cut that way.

Q: What words of advice do you have for the new, up-and-coming songwriter?

Commit to constantly improving.

Don’t think your songs are etched in stone. Every song can be improved. Changing a single note or word can make or break a song.

Read all songwriting books. Read Paul Zollo’s interviews with the legendary songwriters. Read Jack Perricone’s book about melody. Read slowly, thinking how these ideas can not only inspire new songs, but improve your existing songs.

Never underestimate the power of an arrangement. Prince’s song “Kiss” is loved by millions because it had such a unique arrangement. If it had been a typical bar-band blues arrangement (the chords are just a I-IV-V blues) - it would have been unimpressive.

Maybe you’ve got great songs that aren’t getting the attention they deserve because you didn’t continue your creativity into the arrangement and instrumentation. People think they can hear though things like that, but they usually can’t, so it’s up to the writer. Maybe try never calling a song done until you’ve recorded it in five radically different arrangements.

Which comes to the last point : have a home studio. If you need to spend a ton of money at someone else’s studio every time you want to record your songs, it’ll hold you back. Spending just $1000 on equipment (decent mic, compressor, input adaptor, and software), then taking even 10 hours to learn how to run your home multi-track studio setup well, will pay off immensely.

From Exposure to Conversion "How to Create a Real Fan" - Part 2

Thanks for the comments I received on the Fan Funnel model we employ at ReverbNation.  I’m still looking for more feedback, so please speak up if you have any.

Now, to continue the train of thought begun in the first post…

The Fan Funnel, in any incarnation, is incomplete.  It is a ‘stock’ measurement in that it tells you how many fans you have in each section of the funnel at any given time.  But it fails to measure some important things like the trajectory the Artist has (rate at which fans are entering the Funnel or moving down the funnel), and how deeply engaged those fans are with the content, to name a few.  As a result of this deficiency, we developed a proprietary metric for every Artist that uses ReverbNation called a Band Equity(TM) Score.  Artists use this in conjunction with the Fan Funnel.

Band Equity(TM) takes into account four factors that add up to the current value of the Artists’ portfolio of fan relationships (normalized as a ‘score’), as well as the trajectory of that value:

(1)  Breadth
How many people does your content touch, overall?  How many listen or even view it in a given time period?  Having your content on many web pages, touching many people is a great way to understand the total conversion ‘potential’, and might be summed up as ‘awareness’.  All else equal, an Artist whose content touches more people has a higher potential  for converting fans and developing relationships than an Artist whose content touches fewer.

(2) Influence
How frequently do those people seek out a second instance of the content (like play a second song or video or view the blog after they play a song)?  What is the ‘open rate’ on your emails to fans (what is the probability they will actually open and read it instead of just deleting it when it comes in)?  How long do they play a song or video before they turn it off and do something else?  All else equal, an Artist that garners more engagement per interaction has stronger and deeper relationships with their fans.

(3) Recency
When was the last time you engaged your fans?  All else equal, an Artist that had their fans engaged yesterday has more Band Equity(TM) than an Artist that last engaged them six months ago.  Recency causes your Band Equity (TM) to deteriorate over time if the # of fan interactions and level of engagement drop off.   Think of this as the main ‘trajectory’ element.

(4) Access
Of your total ‘FANS’ and ‘LISTENERS’, how many of them can you contact without the assistance of a social network?  If the only way you have to communicate with your ‘FANS’ is via a MySpace Bulletin, then you do not have the Band Equity(TM) that another Artist, all things equal, has if they can send a custom email or other custom message promoting their show or new release (full disclosure:  ReverbNation provides a free email service for Artists, Labels, Managers, and Venues).  This element cannot be underestimated by Artists.  Social networks are a great place to RENT fan relationships, but the most savvy and successful Artists find ways to OWN their fan relationships, so they can access them when they want, and how they need.

From these four elements we construct a Band Equity(TM) Score for each Artist (and we also build our Charts from those scores, because we believe that it measures the right things).  It is updated once per day.  The goal is to raise their awareness of these important factors in their success, and to give them visibility into which promotional/marketing efforts deliver the desired result - stronger, deeper, and more fan relationships.

 
Let’s face it, record labels, talent buyers, gig promoters, and brands (people who pay the Artist) do not believe in MySpace friend counts anymore.  The numbers can be easily spoofed and a few bad apples have spoiled it for everyone else.  Artists, likewise, should not measure themselves by a metric like this alone, as the correlation between MySpace friend totals and commercial success is dubious, at best.  That is not to say that establishing friend relationships at MySpace is not a valuable endeavor (it can definitely add to awareness, and MySpace is probably still the best place to go to harvest fan relationships).  But, as a single metric for understanding the ‘financial potential’ of your band (notice I did not say the ‘artistic value’), it falls short.  We provide tools for the Artists to actually incorporate the activity happening at MySpace, Facebook,  blogs, homepages, etc, into the Band Equity (TM) Score, so they can have a global view of their success.  Its a big music world out there on the web, and Artists need a way to consolidate and understand how those fan relationships are changing across the board.



 

From Exposure to Conversion - 'How to Create a Real Fan' - Part One

Steve Lawson recently posted an entry on understanding and measuring the path that fans take from simply listening to a song, all the way to ‘conversion’ into a fan.
 
That got me thinking about the Fan Funnel metaphor we use at ReverbNation.  I am looking for feedback from Music Think Tank readers on the steps below and the process we use to enable artists to essentially operate a “Fan Funnel”.  Our goal is to provide a framework for understanding the process, and to provide tools for the Artists to experiment with marketing and promotion efforts so they can see what ‘works’ for them.  Here is a crash course in what the FAN FUNNEL  is:

 
Step 1 - Exposure
People must be exposed to the content.  Once exposed, there is some probability that they will either move down the funnel, or pass the exposure along to friends who may move down the funnel. People who check out the content are called ‘LISTENERS’.  Certainly the quality of the content matters here.  Good songs and good videos will have a higher probability of moving folks down the funnel, but for ALL artists, increasing the number of exposures will have a positive impact on their raw conversion numbers.  As a result, we began to provide tools for increasing exposure for the artist (widgets that make it easy to post the music and let fans spread it, street team functions so that the Artist can encourage existing loyal fans to spread it for them, applications for social networks, etc).
 
Step 2 - Starting A Relationship With The Fan
Once a person is exposed to the content, it is imperative that the Artist offer up some way for them to identify themselves to the Artist as a ‘FAN’ of the music.  This could be going straight to a ‘conversion’ by letting them join the street team or providing them with a purchase option, but most often it simply manifests with a person joining the mailing list or just identifying themselves as a ‘FAN’ of the Artist.  We ensure that potential ‘FANS’ can do this with every exposure tool we offer.  Its critical that Artists OWN this ‘FAN’ relationship for themselves, and not RENT them from the various social networks on which the relationship was created – more on the importance of this later.
 
Step 3 - Converting FANS Into STREET TEAMERS
Once you OWN the relationship with the ‘FAN’, you have a ‘pipeline’ of folks that you can talk to, on your own terms, and in any way you wish.  This is critical to success by our observations, as this allows the Artist the most flexibility in the messaging they convey to their ‘FANS’.  The next logical step, beyond asking them to buy a product (ticket, song, t-shirt), is to ask them if they want to exchange loyalty or behavior for something of value to them (something you can give away that actually deepens the relationship with them, like a backstage pass).  This is the act of building a ‘STREET TEAM’.  Artists that have ‘STREET TEAMS’, all else equal, find much more success than those that do not.  In addition, these Artists have the ability to execute marketing and promotional programs for less money than those that do not possess a ‘STREET TEAM’, as they work for non-monetary items like being put on a guest list, etc.
 
Step 4 - Getting Fans To Promote You
Now that you have some ‘STREET TEAMERS’, the next step is to give them tasks to do that promote your music or add more ‘FANS’.  This can take many forms, but usually involves prompting them with the right tools and clear instructions on where to post your content on the web in order to help you (something you need to OWN the relationships to do properly).  Many Artists have an untapped base of extremely loyal fans who have never been engaged to actively help them grow their popularity.  This is a wasted marketing asset.  The most successful Artists that we have observed tap into their fans at least once per month to help them spread content, recruit new fans, or promote a specific product (we provide tools to help them do this).  You are probably thinking that this can only help established Artists, but we have seen the power of this tool for even the newest Artists, and it is POWERFUL.  Remember, Artists with smaller followings often have a familiar relationship with their fans (read: friends and family) where established Artists only have an affinity relationship.  It is often the case that these close relationships can be the seed crystal that these Artists need to grow from obscurity to local recognition in their area.
 
That is the ‘FAN FUNNEL’ in a nutshell, and it is the framework with which we encourage Artists to view their business.  We provide ‘FAN FUNNEL’ stats directly to every Artist that uses our site in hopes that they will use it as the framework for understanding how to approach the challenges they face at growing their popularity.  It is based on the empirical evidence we have around the things that make a ‘successful’ Artist.  Soon we will be able to incorporate the actual sales data that come back from digital retailers like iTunes, closing the loop on how the activities of the ‘FAN FUNNEL’ impact real business objectives like selling music.
 
But the ‘FAN FUNNEL’, even as it grows in scope, is deficient in some respects.  It does not take into account the relative value of your content above other Artists (comparing you to standards in your genre), nor does it factor in a few other things of critical importance to understanding how you are doing, overall, at growing your fan base in both breadth and depth (especially depth).  For this, we developed an overall metric of the Artists’ ability to develop and nurture fan relationships called ‘BAND EQUITY’.  I will post a follow-up entry on how we look at this concept, but I’d love your feedback on the FAN FUNNEL in the meantime.