Growth
drivers – what comes after streaming
The
pandemic-defined 2020 was an outlier year across digital
entertainment, with the extra 12% of time consumers
spent with entertainment boosting everything, including
music. One of the effects was that streaming grew more
than it would have otherwise, delaying the inevitable
slowdown in streaming revenue growth. This artificial 2020
boost meant that the slowdown impact was felt even more
strongly when it arrived in Q1 2021. Back in 2019
Spotify’s revenues grew 15.7% from Q4 2018 to Q1 2019,
while the majors’ streaming revenue was up 3% between Q4
2017–Q1 2018. In short, when the market was growing
faster, seasonality did not result in flat / negative
growth. Streaming is still in good shape and is going to
remain the core of recorded music revenues for the
foreseeable future, and Spotify’s price increases
will bring a little extra revenue in 2021, but it is clearly
time to start thinking about what comes next.
Writing
an informational band bio — 9 tips
An
informational band bio is a simple, straightforward
narrative that introduces you and your music act without all
that complex Hemingway-style writing a publicist might do
for you for several hundred dollars only to make you sound
too sensationalized and over-the-top for a band that’s
just starting out. An informational bio is about three
paragraphs long and is perfect for your personal website or
electronic press kit. Here are nine tips for writing
an informational bio for your band or solo artist career.
How
To Not Break Up Your Band
Keeping
a band together over a long period of time can be incredibly
hard to do, even for successful musicians with every
resource at their fingertips. In part, this is because the
relationships in bands are endlessly complex, but also
because pursuing the dream of music alone or with a group of
people is rife with challenges. It’s safe to say that
countless promising bands break up before they have the
chance to create truly great music together. This means the
longer you can keep yours humming along, the better chance
you’ll have at creating impactful music and realizing your
goals. The following advice is designed to help keep
bands together, but it’s important to say that lots of
bands should break up, especially the ones that are
built on unhealthy relationships.
8
Ways Musicians Can Make More Money in 2021
If
you’re a musician trying to make ends meet, you
shouldn’t have to rely on music sales and touring to
account for your bottom line. Here, we look at eight other
ways artists can pull down additional revenue during these
uncertain times. There’s no need to rely solely on
music sales and touring to bring in the big bucks. Here are
eight ways your music can make you even more money in 2021.
Let’s dive in and learn about all of them.
What
indie artists need to know about data transformation
There
is a fundamental disconnect between songwriting and the
recordings that bring them to the world. That means that
collecting all the money due to any creator can be a
daunting task. Enter data transformation. Data has
never been a sexy topic, but like an engrossing Greek
tragedy, it has layers of drama and intrigue if one examines
the problem indie artists are facing more closely. Low
royalty payouts from streaming, declining sync offers,
struggling to be playlisted, releasing music into the void
— it can feel like a plague to an indie artist to
release music in the digital age. And we’ve all had enough
of the plague. So, to get at the core of these problems, we
must first identify the dark mass that surrounds our
protagonist: and that is the disconnect between songwriting
and recordings. We then must identify the weapon that can
defeat the darkness: data transformation.
YouTube
is now generating $2bn a month from ads – and grew
faster than Netflix in Q1
YouTube‘s
advertising business is exploding. The platform’s
latest revenue figures were revealed last week as part of
the Q1 results of parent company Alphabet. They show
that YouTube is now generating an average of over $2 billion
every month from ads – and that it’s potentially on
course to generate somewhere near to $30 billion across the
course of this year. They also show that YouTube’s
ad business materially closed the gap on subscription-based
Netflix‘s revenues in Q1.
5
Tips for Covering Songs on YouTube
Looking
to get discovered, connect with other artists, or just
express your artistic talents online? Become a YouTube cover
sensation! Before you grab your mic and camera to
launch your own cover music channel, here are 5 tips to help
you connect with some of YouTube’s nearly 2 billion
monthly users!
‘Recording
In Progress’ Celebrates The Art Of Music Recording And
Ponders Its Future
Outside
of live performances, every note of music you’ve ever
heard in your life has been electronically processed before
reaching your ear. Recording, mixing and mastering capture
passing moments of inspiration, maximize their sonic
potential and preserve them for perpetuity. The technology
to do this has been constantly evolving since the birth of
recorded music in the second half of the 19th century.
Microphones and portable tape machines enabled the recording
of folk music in open fields and hotel rooms in the 1920s.
Later, deluxe recording studios were designed to
audio-friendly specifications. Eventually, luxury live-in
facilities were built where artists shut out the world for
months at a time to immerse themselves in the creative
experience. Nowadays, people record music at home on their
laptops, upload it to the Internet and become superstars.
What
a Publicist Does and Does Not Do for an Artist
So,
you just released a brand new song and you’re thinking
you’d like to get the word out; some blog write ups,
reviews, maybe spots on various playlists. In other words,
you’re looking for a little boost of publicity to drum up
excitement for the new release. You’ve heard the
words “PR” and “publicist” thrown around a lot
but if you’re honest, you’re not really sure what that
means or what they did. Well, you’re not alone. Actually,
most people have no idea what this means — including my
parents for the first two years after I became a publicist
myself (shrugs).
Here's
How Many Social Media Followers You Need to Make $100,000
Social
media influencers can make big money on platforms such as
TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. But it all depends on
followers and views. While big stars like Dwayne
"The Rock" Johnson, Kylie Jenner and soccer
Cristiano Ronaldo, (who each have well over 200 million
followers on Instagram), can pull in more than a $1 million
per post, according to Instagram analytics tool company
Hopper HQ, every day influencers don't need don't need as
many followers as you may think to make some cash.
According to a new "social salary" calculator from
music licensing platform Lickd.co, here's how many followers
you need on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok to generate
$100,000 in earnings.
AFM,
SAG-AFTRA distributes $70M to rightsholders
The
AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights
Distribution Fund – an income source that most musicians
barely know exists – has announced a record $70 million
distribution. The AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual
Property Rights Distribution Fund, a performing society
founded to collect and distribute royalties to non-featured
performers on sound recordings for songs played on satellite
radio, non-interactive streaming, and other digital formats
domestically and internationally announced a record
distribution in 2020 of $70 million to rightsholders.
The $70 million figure for 2020 tops last year’s
disbursement by more than 10 million dollars
How
New Artists Should Invest In Their Music Career
The
vast majority of young musicians are building a career with
limited resources. Not only do they have to balance their
pursuit of music with jobs and other commitments, but they
often have minimal financial resources. Every dollar
matters. Musicians want to grow, but they also want to
produce a good product, and sometimes, it’s unclear how to
do both with a small budget.
Now
part-owned by a major corporation, how might SXSW change?
An
iconic conferences with a largely stellar reputation,
Austin’s South By Southwest has reigned supreme among
music conferences. Now that the brand is partly owned by P-MRC
(owner of Rolling Stone, and The Hollywood Reporter, among
others) there has been much speculation over how the event
might change. Music conferences come and go over the
years, but one that not only keeps going but continues to
with gravitas is South By Southwest. SXSW has always been
thought of as not only the king of the hill for these types
of gatherings, but remains respected for not being strictly
a money-grab (although there’s plenty of that involved).
