Music
Online Marketing: Hey Music Business – Learn How to Market Online Already!
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 19, 2008 | Share This
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Ah the record business. For a group of people who thrive on being hip, they just don’t get the Internet. Now the typical music mogul will say that they get it just fine, mostly in the rear. The Internet is where people go to steal money from them. Instead of whining like little babies perhaps they should look at their own sales and revenue figures. Even better they should try to apply some of the marketing lessons from search and social media.
According to the Record Industry Association of America’s own figures, more people than ever before are downloading singles and albums as well as ringtones and other items on the Internet. The online segment that in 2005 accounted for less than 10% of industry revenue counted for 23% in 2007.
Yes, but revenue is down overall they might say. True dat, but can this really be laid at the feet of file sharers, Muxtape, and CD burning? There are two things happening: First, a whole generation has grown up without reverence for the album format. They like a song, they download the song. The shift to single tracks from albums is actually a return to the record landscape that predominated until the late 1960s when the album began to dominate. The margin on albums is higher than on single tracks so the labels would prefer a return to the old days.
Hey, You, Get Off of My Name!
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 3, 2008 | Share This
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Bo Diddley, the pioneering rock n’ roll genius who died yesterday knew a thing or two about marketing and branding. Consider this: Ellas McDaniel re-dubbed himself as Diddley, had his first hit record with a song called “Bo Diddley” (the first of many times he would work his new name into a song title and lyrics) and made sure that the ubiquitous shave-and-a-haircut beat that was his trademark was referred to far and wide as “the Bo Diddley beat.” The man was SEO before there were any E’s to S.
Now imagine if you popped Diddley’s name into your search engine of choice and the results page featured a big ol’ ad that said “Bo Diddley Music” with a click- through to Chuck Berry’s site. Though Search Engines frown on this when the name is under copyright it does happen and in some cases is part of an overall marketing strategy.
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article that focuses on the naughty folks who contravene the search engine’s ban on using another company’s copyrighted name as a paid keyword. The accompanying vid however deals with a slightly different and murkier issue, perhaps because author Emily Steel is talking to someone from a company that hopes to get paid for protecting your good brand name from being sullied. Here it is in living Murdoch-vision:
The general practice of buying up terms, phrases and even copyrighted names associated with a competitor is not uncommon, though the effectiveness is open to debate. If your brand is the victim of this kind of keyword jacking it’s a terrible scourge. On the other hand, if your brand has used it to checkmate a rival’s campaign, it’s flippin’ genius.
A good example of this can be found in Reprise Media’s own typically thorough (excuse us while we plug ourselves) Superbowl Search Marketing Scorecard from this past February. CareerBuilder did a series of ads based on the theme of “Follow your heart.” The clever folks at Monster.com bought that phrase and other similar ones and even integrated it into their online ad copy. No doubt many job seekers who may not have been aware of Monster found that they offered an alternative to CareerBuilder that met their needs.
Whether or not you are using someone else’s brand name or campaign is maybe less important than why you’re doing it, and where you’re sending people once they click. Sending a bunch of folks who are looking for Bo Diddley to the Chuck Berry product only works if the landing page you send them to doesn’t make them feel tricked and hostile. Sending them to a page that says “If you like Bo Diddley, check out Chuck Berry’s CD” and includes the ability to sample some tunes could actually create a positive experience for the user.
This also can have some bearing on the price advertisers pay for their ads. Most search engines incorporate landing page content into their quality score – the algorithm that is used to determine the price they’ll pay in the auction. In fact Google makes this very clear in their Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines for AdWords. If your landing page doesn’t feature content that’s relevant to the keyword you’re buying? Prices will go up and in some cases your ads will even be deactivated. Not the kind of ROI most advertisers want.
Ultimately, the question of whether or not companies should be able to buy competitive brand terms comes down to intent – deception vs. comparison:
- Brand comparison is a crucial and age-old tool in the marketing toolbox – saying “if you like x, try Y” creates instant context for people. Think classic campaigns like the Pepsi Challenge and Snapple’s “We’re number 2.”
- But when users click on an ad, they’re expecting relevant content on the other end. If you don’t deliver, you may end up damaging your relationship with your user, and that kind of negative impression can be very hard to erase.
MySpace Music Teams Up With Big Labels
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | April 3, 2008 | Share This
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MySpace will turn MySpace Music into a joint venture with three of the four major record labels (EMI is sitting things out, at least for now). The new service will provide free, ad-supported streams; shareable, customized playlists; and DRM-free ad-supported or paid downloads. From the New York Times:
Visitors to the site will be able to listen to free streaming music, paid for with advertising, and share customized playlists with their friends. They will also be able to download tracks to play on their mobile devices, putting the new site in competition with similar services like Apple, Amazon and eMusic.
A subscription-based music component, where users pay a monthly amount for unlimited access to downloadable tracks, is also being considered, [MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe] said.
“This is really a mega-music experience that is transformative in a lot of ways,” he said. “It’s the first service that offers a full catalog of music to be streamed for free, with full community features, to be shared with all of your friends.”
MySpace has long been a great site for music discovery but has had trouble monetizing that. The social network was sued by Universal in 2006 (presumably that lawsuit’s being dropped since Universal will now be part of MySpace Music) and has a host of competitors in the music discovery space, among them sites like RCRDLBL and Muxtape. And undoubtedly, MySpace wants to capture some of the ever-growing online music sales business; Apple has just superpassed Wal-Mart as the top music retailer in the United States.
Last.fm Launches Free Streaming Music Service, New Biz Model
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 23, 2008 | Share This
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CBS-owned social music service Last.fm today announced a switch from playing song snippets to providing free streaming music, a move backed by an ad-supported business model. All four major record companies have signed on, as have 150,000 independent labels, making Last.fm’s inventory of songs larger than that of iTunes. From the CBS press release:
Martin Stiksel, Last.fm co-founder, said: “We’re giving the listener free access to what is basically the best jukebox in the world. The ability to dip into such a uniquely broad catalogue from your laptop, home or office computer, and listen to whatever you want for free represents a new way of consuming music that in turn might change the way you listen to music. In that respect, nobody else can currently offer what Last.fm is offering right now.”
There are some drawbacks to the new model: no downloads, and users will only be able to play a single song up to three times. Then they’ll be prompted to join the company’s subscription service, details of which are still forthcoming. Also, the site will not require users to register but will likely utilize cookies to track user behavior and target banner ads, though the company remains mum about exactly how they’ll track.
The new model is being compared to social network Imeem, which only offers user-uploaded tracks, and SpiralFrog, which is supported by audio ads as opposed to Last.fm’s banners [according to a quote in the BBC, but see update below for correction]. It more directly challenges Rhapsody and Napster, two subscription-based streaming models that, as Mathew Ingram rightfully writes, should be scared. But what’s most interesting about Last.fm, and what makes it a potential challenger to MySpace, as Mashable notes, is that it also offers a perk to unsigned artists who can upload their songs and receive royalties every time a song is played.
What’s curious about this is that it sets up a very attractive distribution model for new artists that will undermine all labels in the long haul. Then again, the incentive to sign on with a record label in the first place was fast-fading thanks to MySpace, which has become a really successful self-promotional tool for artists. Last.fm sweetens the pot with money, though it’s important to note we don’t know how much artists will make for each stream. The labels need Last.fm in order to monetize now, but Last.fm is probably the real beginning of the end for the music industry as it exists now.
And video is next: PaidContent.org writes that the company owns last.tv and execs say video is in the works, which may have big ramifications for strike-embroiled Hollywood and its writers.
Update: SpiralFrog’s PR agency wrote to let us know that SpiralFrog does not use audio ads, just banners (and SpiralFrog’s FAQ only mentions “ads on our pages,” implying banners). We got the information about audio ads from a quote in this BBC article, which reads “Last year saw the launch of Spiral Frog, another free service supported by advertising. Unlike Last.fm, it offers free downloads but has failed to make a major impact. Mr Jones from Last.fm said that may be because users are forced to listen to an advert with each track, whereas his service will be supported by banner advertising.” We should have stated that SpiralFrog allows downloads and requires registration, whereas Last.fm does not. We regret the error.
ISP Censoring in America: Coming Soon?
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 15, 2008 | Share This
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At the very end of last year, Australia passed legislation to implement nationwide, opt-out censorship of online porn and violence, requiring so-called “clean feeds” of its Internet service providers to protect the country’s children.
Until recently, the role of ISPs in the United States has been to provide unfiltered Internet access to users. But as of last week, there’s buzz that American ISPs may also start to engage in censorship (and some argue they already have) - though not by government order and definitely not under the guise of protecting anyone’s children.
Rather, AT&T said at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week that it may begin monitoring content on its networks to block downloads that violate copyright. According to ISP-Planet, as of Q3 2007, AT&T was the biggest ISP in the U.S., with just over 18% market share. So what AT&T does would have a significant impact on many Internet users in this country and would likely cause AT&T’s competitors to take note and possibly buckle to pressure from groups that are fighting tooth-and-nail to enforce copyright law. The music industry, which gave up on DRM just last week, is now toying with the idea of “digital watermarks,” which will track the movement of a file across P2P sites and ostensibly be used to make ISPs filter such content. From the New York Times’ Bits blog:
Mr. Cicconi [SVP, external & legal affairs for AT&T] said that AT&T has been talking to technology companies, and members of the M.P.A.A. and R.I.A.A., for the last six months about carrying out digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level.
“We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” he said. “We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.”
It’s a bit strange that AT&T would be in such close cahoots with the RIAA and MPAA; unlike its competitor, Time Warner, which has a hand in the ISP world but also owns plenty of media companies that would surely be thrilled if it decided to block illegal downloads, AT&T’s core business is communications - i.e., they don’t make any media (read: music or movies) the average consumer wants to steal. Granted, it’s a legal issue, but why enforce this instead of going after something more egregiously wrong? Isn’t, say, visiting a child pornography site, which the Australian government railed against, just a titch more reprehensible than illegally downloading music?
Also strange is that just prior to Ciccone’s comments, the FCC had announced that it will investigate America’s second-biggest ISP, Comcast, in follow-up to November 2007 claims from users that say it limited their access to P2P sharing sites. Comcast may face fines up to $1.77 trillion if found guilty, but denies any wrongdoing.
Note that while ISPs are poising themselves to become Internet cops, in which direct benefit to them is unclear, their monitoring isn’t just wrapped up in altruism for the RIAA. They are also looking for ways into the online ad revenue game: Less than two weeks ago, ClickZ reported that ISPs have begun to collect user data for behavioral ad targeting purposes, which seems now like it will be rife with privacy issues.
Sony BMG Drops DRM, Then Other Shoe
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 7, 2008 | Share This
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Music lovers let out a collective cheer when the last of the big record companies, Sony BMG, revealed last week that it will no longer enforce digital rights management (DRM), or copy protection, with its music. (EMI, Universal, and most recently, Warner Music, all jumped on the DRM-free bandwagon in 2007.)
Alas, today Sony BMG let the other shoe drop when they unveiled a rather cockamamie sales model that, as Duncan Riley on TechCrunch also points out, seems calculated to make their DRM-free efforts fail. Seemingly oblivious to how music is consumed online (on multiple levels), the record company expects users to go to brick-and-mortar stores to buy $12.99 gift cards. Taking a cue from soda-cap contests, users then enter redemption codes to download full albums.
First, online music should be available to purchase online; it sounds obvious, but apparently isn’t so. Second, gift cards are fine when you’re buying them for other people, but it’s goofy to buy one for yourself, not to mention a big waste of plastic. Third, buying full albums is a thing of the past, so why continue to impose this model on customers?
So that’s three strikes for this business model: Sony BMG should have quit while they were ahead. For now, let’s just hope this idea doesn’t catch on with any of the other labels.