Marketing Essay

"In the Music Industry, the power of marketing online is the most useful asset in the promotion of music products." To what extent do you agree with the statement? 50 marks.

The internet has made promoting and marketing music so much easier than it ever has been before, as you can promote your music from the comfort of your own home. The Poison Control Centre uses Tumblr to regularly update their fans from the road. After each show they share pictures, videos, and posts about their experiences, even down to thanking the sound guy, door person, the bartender and, of course, the fans. They do it right by updating frequently, providing a wide variety of content, and always remaining authentic. This helps their band to grow because their marketing is a two way process. While some of the things they do to market their music only involves one way interaction, things really start to take off when they make interaction with their fans a two way thing. For example, instead of relaying messages to fans and then shutting their ears, they reply to fans who have something to say about their updates. By using their Tumblr tour blog, they get their fans more involved in their career and therefore they create a more loyal fanbase who will stick around for a lot longer. 

The internet offers artists endless opportunities to further promote their music to people from all over the world with no boundaries. The internet was one of the main components that helped One Direction reach the level of fame they have now. After they left the X-Factor, there was a fear that the group would diminish and leave their "five minutes of fame" era. However, to avoid this, the UK record labels decided to use the internet to their advantage. The group's success is also testament to how, in this digital age, UK record labels have become experts in building fan bases around the world and have embraced social media and placed it at the centre of marketing campaigns to ensure global success. The band joined the dots with its constant presence via Facebook, Twitter and the official 1D website, where an interactive Bring Me to 1D map enabled fans to follow what was happening around the world. Millions of fans took part and this enabled the band to broaden a more loyal and inclusive fanbase, similar to The Poison Control Centre, but at a much larger scale.

An example of an approach of online marketing that wasn't as typical as others, was Odd Future. The identity of the group is largely credited to the founder, Tyler the Creator. The success of the movement started and was cemented online with more than 20 albums offered free through the group's website, building a loyal fan base in return. OF made money independently since early on, selling homemade merchandise directly to fans, offering lots of limited edition garments and one off products, all designed by Tyler, breaking down the barrier between artist, production and consumer. They later combined that approach with their highly successful tours, launching pop-up stores in every city before performing. They meet and greet at the stores, take photos and sign autographs to give their fans an unparalleled access to the group, a hip-hop movement of which are notoriously hard to reach. OF makes their money mainly from merchandise which isn't as common in the industry, because tour merchandise has always been present and popular, but OF redesigned the experience. As opposed to selling cheap,. generic t-shirts featuring printed logos on a table as you enter the venue, forcing the fan to pay over the odds, they turn it into a whole companion experience to the show.

Similar to how OF offered their music free of charge, it has become quite popular for artists the build their email list through free downloads. Email is one of the best ways to directly reach your fans, but sometimes it can be hard to grow your subscription list. They created a download webpage that gave visitors a free music download in exchange for their email. At shows, they walked around and handed out custom fortune cookies with the URL of the download page and a short message from the band. This gave the band an opportunity to spark conversation and develop relationships with fans.

However, if you only promote your music online, you're missing out on a big section of the market. The internet has opened many opportunities for artists that were never available before, however many opportunities are bypassed by only focusing on online marketing. Gigging is one of the biggest reasons that you shouldn't stick to online music marketing methods. By gigging, you get to connect face to face with your audience, make instant money by selling merchandise and physical CDs, and make money from royalties. Supporting other artists/bands in gigs is also a great way to get your music heard and known by a larger group of people, especially if your music is in a similar genre to the act you are supporting because the fans attending the concert will be interested in your genre of music already.

Promoting your music outside of the internet through meet and greets with fans, handing out free singles on disk, and handing out flyers to gigs is a great way to create a more inclusive relationship with existing fans and to extend your fanbase. In conclusion, I think that the internet is the most important way to keep your music relevant and constantly promote your music, however just because there are lots of opportunities online doesn't mean that the opportunities outside of the digital world aren't just as important.

Marketing Notes

Case Studies on Successful Music Marketing

• Arcade Fire (interactive music video using Google Street View): Users are prompted to enter the address of their childhood home at the start of the video. While watching the video, scenes from your old neighbourhood are pulled in using Google street view.  The elements of new technology, interactivity, nostalgia, experimentation, and personalisation all aided in making this video a huge hit.

• One Direction:  The group’s success is also a testament to how, in this digital age, UK record labels have become experts in building fan bases around the world and have embraced social media and placed it at the centre of marketing campaigns to ensure global success.The band joined the dots with its constant presence via Facebook, Twitter and the official 1D site, where an interactive Bring Me to 1D map enabled fans to follow what was happening around the world. Millions of fans took part. Tens of millions engaged.

• Gossip Grows on Trees– Building Your Email List with a Fortune Cookie: Email is one of the best ways to directly reach your fans, but sometimes it can be difficult to grow your subscription list. They created a download web page that gave visitors a free music download in exchange for their email. At shows, they walked around and handed out custom fortune cookies with the URL of the download page and a short message from the band. This gave the band an opportunity to spark conversation and develop relationships with fans.

• The Poison Control Centre-  Tumblr Tour Blog: The band uses Tumblr to regularly update their fans from the road. After each show they share pictures, videos, and posts about their experiences, even down to thanking the sound guy, door person, bartender, and of course the fans. They do it right by updating frequently, providing a wide variety of content, and always remaining authentic. 

Digital marketing and the music industry

1. Content marketing: less is more, and relationships are everything

The first is that the deluge of content will cause so much noise that the bar for successful content will be raised extremely high. As a result, we’ll see savvy music companies trying to do more with less i.e. working on a small number of very creative campaigns. 

 2. More music / brand partnerships

In 2013, brands injected £104.8m into the UK music industry, a 6% increase from 2011. Given the increasing number of success stories and research around how music affects consumer behaviour, I think we’ll see more brands jumping on the opportunity of using associations with artists to develop their brands in 2014. 

3. A serious adoption of mobile and user experience

Across all of the music website we have access to, approximately 20% of website visits come from a mobile device. This number varies quite a lot between streaming platforms, artist websites, B2B services, and other types of website, but one thing is true of all of them: the proportion of visits from mobile or tablet devices is increasing.   

4. The year that Google gets a grip on music

Google has been under a lot of pressure from the UK government regarding the prominence of illegal download sites in their search results.   Earlier this year I speculated that Google Play Music All Access was not about competing with other music streaming platforms (as much of the press suggested), but more or less a move to improve their search results. 

More than 25m searches for music are made in Google every single month. None of the streaming platforms capitalised on this opportunity. As such, Google had a problem: with a mission statement of “delivering the best result to the user as quickly as possible”, and the best result being illegal, behind a pay wall, or covered in ads, it had to respond with a solution.  

5. Visual media will become more important

We already know that infographics are, on average, the most shareable form of content in the music industry. In general, shorter attention spans are making ‘quick content’, such as infographics, Vine videos, and tweets more appealing. I think this consumer trend will shift more music companies to consider the visual aspects of their digital marketing strategy. At the artist level, I think their will be more adoption of platforms like Instagram and Vine to share updates from the band.  

Marketing

Marketing is often most effective when it is a two way process...

While some of the things you do to market music will only involve one way interaction, things will really start taking off for you when you make this interaction with fans two way. You don't always want to be relaying messages to fans and then shutting your ears, instead you should reply to fans who have something to say about your updates on social media. They want to continue the conversation you started. By getting fans involved in your career, you're creating more loyal fans who will stick around for a lot longer.

Marketing of your music is an on going requirement...

The marketing of your music should begin as soon as you've a good level of talent to promote. While the degree of marketing you undertake at the time will depend on what exactly you have to promote and what else you have on your plate, marketing should be an ongoing process for as long as you're trying to become a more successful musician.

If you only promote your music online, you're missing out...

The internet has made it easy to sit and promote your music from the comfort of your own home, however by only marketing online, you are losing out on many opportunities. Gigging is one of the biggest reasons that you shouldn't stick to online music marketing methods. By gigging, you get to connect face to face with your audience, make instant money by selling merchandise and physical CDs, and make money from royalties.

Raising awareness...

Being talented and letting people know about your talent are two very different things. As well as making music that people want to listen to, you need to get them to give you a listen in the first place. New acts are coming out all of the time fighting for people's attention, to the stage that if you tell people online you make music and give them a free copy of your music, most people won't even download it. Its because of this that you need to convince people that your music is worth trying out. This is what music marketing is. By marketing your music, you are showing people that your music exists and convincing people to give it a try. If these two things don't happen, don't expect to do too well!

Music Marketing From Push to Pull

“In media and advertising everything is switching to pull. Push Marketing is on its way out.” There is an imminent difference for the consumer receiving information from a push strategy to a pull strategy. 

Push example; passive, the marketing campaign is in control of the message being sent out and how it is received by potential customers. 

Pull example; active, the recipient of the marketing campaign is in control of the message and their decision whether to act or not. 

“Generally the shift from push to pull has been viewed as a shift in power to the consumer away from advertisers and so is bad news for marketers.”

With the increase of social networking platforms and users, with emphasis to Facebook, social networking has become a major and focal part of music marketing adopting the pull marketing strategy. Pull marketing shifts emphasis and attention onto the customer, the essential attribute is to market in the correct places and know where and who your target audience are.

I conclude; as consumers gain access to a greater number of options/platforms and more information about such services, those consumer will become more demanding on resource providers. Requiring services to be made available on consumer terms, when and where they want them, rather than when and where it is convenient for the resource providers to deliver them. In addition, as mentioned above consumers are demanding the ability to configure their own products from resource providers, leading to rapid growth in options and music services. Inevitably, shifting music marketing from push to pull. 

The Odd Future of Hip Hop Marketing

Fans queued up dressed head to toe in ‘Supreme’ waiting patiently for Odd Future to arrive. Chants of “wolf gang” break out in the queue stretching several streets as members begin to make their way into the “OF Sweatshop“, a unique one day only pop up store, selling exclusive one off garments which amount to a majority share of the outfit’s income seeing as they, unusually, give all their music away free.

The identity of the group is largely credited to the founder, Tyler the Creator. The success of the movement started and was cemented online, with more than 20 albums offered free through the group's website, building a loyal fan base in return. OF made money independently since early on, selling homemade merchandise directly to fans, offering lots of limited edition garments and one off products, all designed by Tyler, breaking down the barrier between artist, production and consumer. They later combined that approach with their highly successful tours, launching pop-up stores in every city before performing. They meet and greet at the shop, take photos and sign autographs, giving their fans unparalleled access to the group, a hip-hop movement of which are notoriously hard to reach.

Tour merchandise has always been present and popular, but Odd Future redesigned the experience. As opposed to selling cheap generic t-shirts featuring printed logos on a table as you enter the venue, forcing the fan to pay over the odds of course, they turn it into a whole companion experience to the show. 

The Problem with Streaming Exclusives

Jay-Z’s ambitions for TIDAL has triggered a lot of discussion about how streaming models can evolve.  One focus has been exclusives with a number of references to TIDAL ‘doing a Netflix’ by commissioning exclusives.  Netflix can attribute much of its growth over the last couple of years to its flagship ‘Netflix Originals’ such as ‘House Of Cards’ and ‘Orange Is the New Black’.  It is an appealing model but the Netflix Originals approach cannot so easily be transferred to music.

There are three main types of exclusives:

1.    Service Window: album is released exclusively to a single music service for a fixed period of time e.g. only on TIDAL for 1 month

2.    Tier Window: album is released across one type of music service tier before others e.g. only on paid subscription tiers for 3 months

3.    Service Exclusive: music service acquires exclusive rights to an album so that it will never appear anywhere else unless the service decides to let it

The first two will become increasingly common components of the streaming landscape over the next couple of years. If free tiers are to have a long term role alongside paid tiers they have to be more clearly differentiated.

TIDAL and Apple look set to become the heavyweight players in the Service Window, duking it out for the biggest releases.  TIDAL will argue it pays out more to rights holders (75% compared to 70%) while Apple will argue that it can directly drive download sales (which is where everyone still makes their real sales revenue).  Apple will have to play that card carefully though as it stands just as much chance of accelerating download cannibalization as it does driving new sales.

The Problems…

• Scarcity: ‘House Of Cards’ is only available on Netflix. It is a scarce asset, which is not something that can be said about any piece of recorded music.  As TIDAL found with the near instantaneous Beyonce YouTube leak, music scarcity is ephemeral in the YouTube age.  As long as YouTube is allowed to hide behind its perverse interpretation of ‘Fair Use’ and ‘Safe Harbour’ there will be no music scarcity. 

• Consumer expectations: Consumers have learned to expect their video experiences to be fragmented across different platforms and services, to not find everything in one place.  For music consumers however the understanding is that catalogues are either near-complete or useless.  So if all music services suddenly started having high profile gaps then subscribers would be more likely to unsubscribe entirely than they would be to take up multiple subscriptions.  

• Industry relationships: Netflix started out as a pure licensee, paying TV companies for their shows.  Now it competes with them directly when commissioning new shows.  It has become a frenemy for TV companies and is finding many of its relationships less favourable than before.  And this is in an industry that is built up the frenemy hybrid licensee-licensor model.  The music industry does not behave this way, so any service that took up the Service Exclusive model could reasonably expect itself to find itself developing tense relations with labels.  Which could manifest in those labels giving competitor services preferential treatment for their own exclusives. 

• Appetite for risk: Buying up the rights to the latest release of an established superstar is the easy part, and we already have some precedents though neither were exactly run away successes (Jay-Z’s ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’ with Samsung and U2’s ‘Songs Of Innocence’ with Apple). But being a label, at least a good one, isn’t simply about signing proven quantities, it is about taking risks on new emerging talent.  And that doesn’t simply mean having a DIY platform on a streaming service – though that can act as a great talent identification tool.  If streaming services want to start playing at the label game they need to also start nurturing and marketing talent.

• Limited horizons: Stream is still only a small fraction of recorded music revenue.  So a release that only exists on streaming, let along a single streaming service, is only going to deliver on a fraction of its potential.  TIDAL and Apple especially could easily choose to loss-lead and pay over the odds for Service Exclusives to ensure artists aren’t left out of pocket.  But that only fixes part of the problem.  An artist locked into one single streaming service will see his or her brand diminish. With touring becoming the main way many artists make money the album is the marketing vehicle and if that album is locked behind the pay wall of one single music service the marketing potential is neutered.

Analysing U2's Marketing Mistake

1. People want to pull, NOT PUSH: By and large users of any platform hate to have information pushed to them. We hate being shouted at, even if its being done electronically. By not pushing the album so hard, it would have alleviated the feeling that people were getting an unwanted musical virus planted on their phone or computer.
2. Downloads are over: When the entire world is turning to streaming music wholeheartedly, why would Apple hold onto this vestige of the past by thinking that anyone wanted to download an album's worth of files?
3. The band just isn't as cool anymore: They're all in their 50s and while they've done an admirable job staying relevant beyond the life span of most artists, to a massive number of younger people its just, "Who is U2 and why are they sending me their spam music files?"