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.
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Posted by: Xylia | July 04, 2009 at 07:22 PM
"I lament however that a GOOD SONG, a really good song, may never be heard over the noise and that for marketing reasons alone a REALLY BAD song will get heard. This is that part that I would like to fix."
It's the Simon Cowell phenomena - where the glossy wrapper and the selling is all - and substance counts for nothing. And there's a marketing illuminati who decide tastes not follow them.
Maybe bands like our can ride on the backlash - like the political blogs did when Murdoch bought the new channels.
I was listening to Rock the Casbah the other day - Joe Strummer can't sing - but the track is amazing - can you imagine him winning the X-factor?
Posted by: Ian | March 20, 2009 at 01:12 PM
Hi Rick
I think you're being a tad idealist – ‘just hone your talent lad and you’ll outsell the big boys’.
Talent is highly subjective - beyond a level of credibility it’s about getting to the audience who’d like you. Can you imagine a band likes Blond Redhead being universally liked by DJs? Their break came from a famous musician discovering them and championing them with a label.
Granted there are great outlets - especially indie radio and press (KLAX, Indie103s, KEXP, Spin, Skratch, etc). But when it comes to mainstream - (especially in UK) there's a lot of payola - and little free play. Most music getting to the masses comes from centralised databases, cultivated relationships, expensive pluggers, etc. And the BBCs, XFM, Virgins, etc of the world still have a signed / unsigned mentality – where for example XFM play you if you get enough of your mates to vote for you (how utterly patronising – like we’re a bunch of kids in a garage)
As well as musician I’ve had to become a promoter – keeping a database, building relationships, managing a PR budget, etc – but I’m convinced established labels can and always will do that much better.
Posted by: Ian | March 20, 2009 at 12:56 PM
Wow. This is like watching "American Idol" play out on the Internet. Everyone wants to be a star but there are so many "everyones" that few will make it. Let's face it, if you have a million dollars you can make a crappy song famous-listen to your local radio station. The digital age has now socialized music so that everyone (with a computer) can be heard a little bit, and a little bit more with some marketing. I don't judge if this is good or bad, just an observation. We raised the background noise level. I lament however that a GOOD SONG, a really good song, may never be heard over the noise and that for marketing reasons alone a REALLY BAD song will get heard. This is that part that I would like to fix.
Posted by: Ravestar | March 20, 2009 at 10:59 AM
Quang Ly, you hit the proverbial nail on the head. Marketing is the barrier to entry, not distribution.
I have designed MANY artist web sites, with ecommerce, email, analytics, news archives, message boards and blogs. I can give you all the tools to run your business and can show you via analytics what is and isn't working. But the bottom line is, it all comes down to having great product and marketing it.
No web tool is going to give you success. No report can give you a marketable product, or a marketing budget.
There is far too much focus on distribution and reports, and not nearly enough on marketing -- email, advertising and live event promotion. But those things are not sexy and don't get easier with a widget or a fancy bar graph.
Posted by: Mike Rapp, Generator LLC | March 20, 2009 at 09:52 AM
To Ian,
I understand your points - and i'm not sure that this is the right place to be having a chat!!! but i read your post and just thought the following:
do you not think that the labels have the same hard time as you do? getting things noticed, via press, radio, TV, etc... they do. 9 out of 10 major label acts fail. Its hard getting things noticed full stop. There's so much music out there it's incredible. The point is that the labels are less like the "gatekeepers" every day. Its more an even playing field. Its a more democratic space in that majors can't just pump money into marketting to make things sell. those days are gone. Radio, MTV is much less powerful and print never sold records anyway. However, this doesn't mean its any easier. But, i think if your music is good you have an equal chance at getting radio play, iTUNES promotion, Sync, etc as a major. The best marketting you can have is the song itself. Spreading because its so good you have to pass it on.
anyway, just ranting now. Carry on with all the stuff you do and if the musics good you'll get a break - a sync, radio play, a tour. But you don't need a label - the best thing you can have is good tunes that sell themselves. from the bottom up- not the top down!
Rick
Posted by: rick | March 20, 2009 at 09:29 AM
Interesting comments so far.
Just a couple of notes:
To Rick: The music industry professionals we're referring to in our marketing pitch are music supervisors, ad agency music departments, program directors and video game developers who seek music. These are valuable licensing opportunities.
More later...
Posted by: Mike McCready | March 20, 2009 at 09:26 AM
We’re doing the DIY thing – production and distribution sorted. Marketing really is where the gates go up and relegate us to our 200 myspace hits a day – compared to the 10,000+ of many signed bands.
We know the people who like us like us a lot – we have a market. But to reach out to that market only goes so far when you’re a micro-label.
I bought the electronic version of the indie bible (a must by the way – and worth every penny) – from which I created a database for tracking, label printing, etc. Typically we send out 30 CDs an evening around the globe to radio and press (200 this week) – and it works in the sense that everyday someone new is playing us or writing about us.
But however hard we try we’ll never get onto big transmitter playlists or being chased by the likes of Rolling Stone or even NME, so we won’t be heard in clubs and on duke boxes, prime time radio shows, etc where bands can really break out.
Labels are still the gatekeepers, which is kind of irksome because they’re no longer plugging great bands– but mostly banal crap.
Ian
www.myspace.com/soshush
Posted by: soshush | March 20, 2009 at 07:41 AM
hi there,
I really cann't see what this site has over google analytics, or checking your myspace, twitter etc. The only thing that really interested me was the p2p statistics which isn't even available yet! (although its not hard to log in to emule, pirate bay, etc and search for yourself) It really just appears to be another widget that brings elements together - thats ok, but not revolutionary and its information i already have. I also didn't like the intentionality of the sales pitch "that industry professionals can access this" - i thought we were bypassing the labels!!! DIY stylee... or do they mean industry professionals like agents, managers, publicists - let me tell you that good industry people have their ear to the ground and hear about your band through your successes (gigs, myspace heat, a great song!). I don't think this tool will help you here - so why are they shouting about the ability to hit "industry proffessionals" - who do they mean??? If you are going it alone and need some great statistics - this wouldn't be a selling point for a product i would choose. Its yet another widget that does an ok job at stats. thats all.
Posted by: rick | March 20, 2009 at 07:36 AM
Well to quote Pat Boone the other day he said
that too many artists sound the same''
although it is all about marketing, but imagery..sexual mostly..I see I am not the only one that believes that..But there are a lot of great singers out there but not that great of musicians..they may can read tabs but rarely sheet music..I frequently visit garageband,ourstage soundclick and myspace and I hear a few good songs..too many gigs per year cut down on your creativity..also what is happening is the fans vote most of the songs to the top in these above mentioned ... but rarely does the best song remain at the top ..I am a gavel god for ourstage at the present and i also entered but the song I honestly think is best is sitting at about # 70 & no it isn't mine) ha ......believe that ha ..
yes marketing has a say , but it doesnt always have the best song at the top...across the board that is...it has to appeal to the younger audience also..its too easy for musicians now a days to electronically produce a song which 20 years ago would have been left in the basement of the record company..and in the latter 70's & 80's paid dj's paved the way to jamming songs down our throats or ears to make a hit ..I never did believe in record plays ..its record sales that counts in my book..
..ha in the 70's you had to sound good to get a gig ..but that isn't true anymore...
and another thing you may have a million seller and become rich , but it doesn't mean you are a professional...anyway kids from 10 to 22 have control of the market .., myself ..I have always loved different kinds of music ...but they are doing it with our money..ha ...any comments ?
Posted by: Bobby Jon Key | March 19, 2009 at 11:06 PM
It is huge burden to stay on top of it all, yet it is a required essential to get your music heard in a massively diluted audience space.
As a musician, I want to spend my time playing instruments, singing, writing and recording songs, not trawling statistics and keeping up with technologies for managing marketing plans.
Perhaps finding a friend / fan / associate that is, firstly very interested in your music, and secondly willing to take on the 'marketing and management' side of the equation for a percentage return is the way forward. They can then keep their finger on the pulse of marketing changes and have a vested interest in making the 'business' do well, whilst you can hone your songs and skills as a musician. The more time managing business, the less time playing your instruments or singing.
I am exploring this option myself.
Posted by: Jai Honeybrook | March 19, 2009 at 10:47 PM
The barrier to entry in the music business many years ago was due to production/recording/distribution costs. Putting out an album would cost hundreds of thousands or even millions. Since few could afford to do so. There was less competition in the old media space like MTV or Best Buy.
These days, the barrier to entry isn't production/recording anymore. The barrier to entry is MARKETING. Recording and distribution costs are at a level practically anyone could afford thus creating almost a saturation of music out there. Unfortunately, this makes music almost a commodity where the monetary value has been reduced significantly. However, the price of music nowadays also reflects the cost and distribution itself which has been significantly lowered.
Marketing and promotion now are now the barrier to entry and having tools help do it efficiently. Whoever, has the best marketing strategy AND execution will have the highest chance of success that can be determined by (but not limited to) visibility, respect, and monetization. And of course, let's not forget a GOOD SONG.
Having analytical tools do certainaly help in finding the best bang for the buck. It helps answer the question "which medium/strategy gives me the biggest return?". The return doesn't have to be defined in terms of cash. But also fans, visibility, plays, gigs, etc..
If you can see the social trend, artists are now more and more responsible for things that relate little to do with the creative process of music itself such as marketing, promotion, website, myspace, or facebook.
QUESTION: How does an artist sustain juggling all these responsibilities at the same time being creative?
Posted by: Quang Ly | March 19, 2009 at 04:38 PM