This
week, we talk with Mike McCready, the co-founder and CEO of Music
Xray. With services like Music Xray, but also with other tools Google
Analytics, artists can access trending and traffic information easier
than ever. TuneCore wants to know why this information is important,
and how can it actually be used to reach new fans or increase sales.
The labels were only ever going to survive as long as they remained the powerful gatekeepers. Like bouncers at an exclusive nightclub on a January night in Manhattan; you suck up to them while you seethe at them for making you stand out in the cold. The longer you wait, the more resentful you get (yeah, been there).
The music labels were society's music filters. They were responsible for finding the best talent, nurturing it, promoting it and distributing it all over the world. They provided valuable tracking and trending services to the artists, hired focus groups and market tested the music before spending hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting the songs. The labels ensured that your album stood out in a physical music shop that had 10,000 titles. In the end, these efforts were paid for by the artist because the labels would keep all proceeds until the costs were recouped and only then would they start to pay the band. They charged an arm and a leg and however much more they could fit into the fine print for these services.
Now however, the Web provides us with unlimited shelf space and there are more than 10 million titles online. You have to do the work yourself because you want to ensure your songs stand out and you have to do it at a fraction of the cost the labels were paying. But how do you know if your promotion and marketing efforts are working, where they are working and where you should direct additional efforts?
I’ve been in the music business for about 16 years. For five of those years I worked in venue management in Europe and was involved in contracting the largest concerts that came through Barcelona – and that included everybody from Madonna to Springsteen to Prince, Backstreet Boys, Clapton and Metallica. In that time I got to know a lot of label executives, managers, promoters and the artists themselves. When I speak with them today the first thing we comment on is how much things have changed. In my few years as an artist signed to a label, it was all about distribution and placement in the shops. That’s no longer a worthwhile goal for most artists because the shops are all closing. But it was also about radio play, finding and targeting your market, building a fan base, having a street team or fan club and knowing if your efforts were working, making adjustments to your efforts and again seeing if they were working. Doing those things today is as necessary it ever was but labels are doing it for fewer and fewer artists. For the last eight years I’ve been working in the digital music space trying to help shape the future of the new music industry and there hasn’t been a more exciting time than now to be an artist.
A number of companies are emerging to solve the problems only the labels used to be able to address and some of the best tools are those that offer market analytics. They collect and organize information for you and show you clearly how you are doing. One very useful and powerful tool is Google Analytics. Google Analytics enables you to see in real time how many hits your web page is getting, what other sites are linking to yours and also from where in the world people are accessing it. Now, it’s easy to see in real time if people in Paris suddenly start entering your website. That can alert you that something has happened in France that is generating awareness for you. The service offers a number of other cool features too and the basic version is pretty powerful and it’s free.
Tracking your music sales is also important. TuneCore, for example, provides a report to artists that not only show them how their sales are going, but also a breakdown by zip code of where those sales are happening. This is useful for many reasons. Most importantly, it’s another indication of where you’re getting traction. That can mean you might want to consider doing even more promotion in that area or book a gig there.
A smart company in the UK has launched a service called SoundOut that will take your song and for a fee will run it through a number of online focus groups and provide back to you a report indicating which market demographic might be most receptive to your song. At Music Xray we’re trying to provide additional data on the traction a song or a band has by offering a score generated by a computer that analyses your music and tells you your songs’ market potential. Additionally, we track in real time how many times your song (or your band) is mentioned on Twitter, on blogs and how many P2P trades a song is getting. Those are all indicators of the market demand for a song or a band.
These analytic services are going to be absolutely key to your future. You can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re starting from and you can’t correct your course if you aren’t able to see how (or if) your promotion and marketing efforts are working.
These online tools are changing the landscape very quickly. More and more bands are going it alone and they have the tools to do it. Radiohead left their label and released their album on their own and used many of these kinds of tools to track their own progress. Just the other day Counting Crows announced they too are leaving their label to go it alone. Granted, these are established bands with brand names. Few artists get to start out on their own with the same advantages but soon we are going to start seeing bands “breaking” all over the Web and bands and their managers need to make friends with analytic tools that will help them find their market and then focus like lasers on it.
The music labels were society's music filters. They were responsible for finding the best talent, nurturing it, promoting it and distributing it all over the world. They provided valuable tracking and trending services to the artists, hired focus groups and market tested the music before spending hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting the songs. The labels ensured that your album stood out in a physical music shop that had 10,000 titles. In the end, these efforts were paid for by the artist because the labels would keep all proceeds until the costs were recouped and only then would they start to pay the band. They charged an arm and a leg and however much more they could fit into the fine print for these services.
Now however, the Web provides us with unlimited shelf space and there are more than 10 million titles online. You have to do the work yourself because you want to ensure your songs stand out and you have to do it at a fraction of the cost the labels were paying. But how do you know if your promotion and marketing efforts are working, where they are working and where you should direct additional efforts?
I’ve been in the music business for about 16 years. For five of those years I worked in venue management in Europe and was involved in contracting the largest concerts that came through Barcelona – and that included everybody from Madonna to Springsteen to Prince, Backstreet Boys, Clapton and Metallica. In that time I got to know a lot of label executives, managers, promoters and the artists themselves. When I speak with them today the first thing we comment on is how much things have changed. In my few years as an artist signed to a label, it was all about distribution and placement in the shops. That’s no longer a worthwhile goal for most artists because the shops are all closing. But it was also about radio play, finding and targeting your market, building a fan base, having a street team or fan club and knowing if your efforts were working, making adjustments to your efforts and again seeing if they were working. Doing those things today is as necessary it ever was but labels are doing it for fewer and fewer artists. For the last eight years I’ve been working in the digital music space trying to help shape the future of the new music industry and there hasn’t been a more exciting time than now to be an artist.
A number of companies are emerging to solve the problems only the labels used to be able to address and some of the best tools are those that offer market analytics. They collect and organize information for you and show you clearly how you are doing. One very useful and powerful tool is Google Analytics. Google Analytics enables you to see in real time how many hits your web page is getting, what other sites are linking to yours and also from where in the world people are accessing it. Now, it’s easy to see in real time if people in Paris suddenly start entering your website. That can alert you that something has happened in France that is generating awareness for you. The service offers a number of other cool features too and the basic version is pretty powerful and it’s free.
Tracking your music sales is also important. TuneCore, for example, provides a report to artists that not only show them how their sales are going, but also a breakdown by zip code of where those sales are happening. This is useful for many reasons. Most importantly, it’s another indication of where you’re getting traction. That can mean you might want to consider doing even more promotion in that area or book a gig there.
A smart company in the UK has launched a service called SoundOut that will take your song and for a fee will run it through a number of online focus groups and provide back to you a report indicating which market demographic might be most receptive to your song. At Music Xray we’re trying to provide additional data on the traction a song or a band has by offering a score generated by a computer that analyses your music and tells you your songs’ market potential. Additionally, we track in real time how many times your song (or your band) is mentioned on Twitter, on blogs and how many P2P trades a song is getting. Those are all indicators of the market demand for a song or a band.
These analytic services are going to be absolutely key to your future. You can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re starting from and you can’t correct your course if you aren’t able to see how (or if) your promotion and marketing efforts are working.
These online tools are changing the landscape very quickly. More and more bands are going it alone and they have the tools to do it. Radiohead left their label and released their album on their own and used many of these kinds of tools to track their own progress. Just the other day Counting Crows announced they too are leaving their label to go it alone. Granted, these are established bands with brand names. Few artists get to start out on their own with the same advantages but soon we are going to start seeing bands “breaking” all over the Web and bands and their managers need to make friends with analytic tools that will help them find their market and then focus like lasers on it.
Related Posts
