Beyond TikTok: Where’s the white space for short-form, user-generated video in 2019?
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View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) http://hotpodnews.com/presents.... A Newsletter about Big Ideas in Music and Technology, by Cherie Hu This is issue #57, published on July 25, 2019 Happy Thursday everyone!
First off, a few podcast-related updates:
👉 Episode 9 of the Water & Music Podcast, featuring Deviate Digital CEO Sammy Andrews, is now live! Inspired by one of Sammy’s columns in Music Week (https://www.musicweek.com/analysis/read/viewpoint-sammy-andrews-on-how-the-biz-needs-to-get-connected/076380) , we unpack why there remain so many stubborn data silos among artists, labels, distributors, promoters and streaming platforms in the music industry, and what steps we might be able to take to address the problem. You can access the episode on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ciuYfdGm7lVEltfcoqafa) , Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/gh/podcast/episode-9-ft-sammy-andrews-music-business-needs-to/id1454221845?i=1000445000657) , Google Podcasts (https://play.google.com/music/m/Dhmirgaayur4aqx7jk6ml75yqde?t=Episode_9_ft_Sammy_Andrews_The_music_business_needs_to_break_down_its_own_data_silos-Water__Music) and wherever else you listen to audio; full show notes with intro/outro music credits and timestamped talking points are available on the Transistor page (http://waterandmusic.transistor.fm/9) .
👉 Starting next week, I’m going to include full, edited transcripts of the latest Water & Music podcast episodes as part of this newsletter. I care deeply about accessibility, and want to make sure everyone can learn from all the insights packed into each interview through whatever means they prefer to consume media. The transcripts will come out on alternating Thursdays at 12pm ET, which means this newsletter will now publish new issues weekly rather than biweekly — hopefully that doesn’t create too much clutter in your inbox!
👉 I had a blast as a guest on the tenth episode of the podcast Dougie Poole’s Special Delivery (https://soundcloud.com/jmcaggregate/dougie-pooles-special-delivery-10) , which was taped live at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn. Jordan Michael Iannucci asked me a lot of great questions about the impact of algorithms on music streaming and the shared interests of music and tech companies. The episode also features musical performances by GABI (https://gabi-ny.bandcamp.com) as well as Dougie himself. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever else you listen to audio!
Now, onto today’s essay… Beyond TikTok: Where’s the white space for short-form, user-generated video in 2019?
** And why should the music industry care?
In the wake of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” spending a record-tying 16 weeks (https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8523567/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-16-weeks-five-burning-questions) at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, TikTok continues to eat up much of the public’s attention when it comes to using user-generated videos and memes to break new talent. Aside from Lil Nas X, a handful of other musicians now have label deals off the backs of their songs going viral on the app — including Supa Dupa Humble (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-10/tiktok-is-the-new-music-kingmaker-and-labels-want-to-get-paid) (Roc Nation) and Sueco the Child (https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8512556/atlantic-records-signs-fast-rapper-sueco-the-child-exclusive) (Atlantic Records) — and seemingly everyone in music is attempting to launch challenge-driven TikTok campaigns in the hopes of achieving similar success.
Importantly, it’s not just the Chinese-owned video app that’s absorbing the ongoing music-industry hype around short-form video. Earlier this week, Triller (http://triller.co) CEO Mike Lu sent me the below photo of an official plaque from Def Jam Recordings and the RIAA, commemorating the startup’s role in helping YG’s song “Big Bank (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z61GFxVD8K4) ” go multi-platinum. To both of our knowledge, this marks the first and only time a tech platform has ever received a plaque from the RIAA — and I won’t be surprised if labels follow suit with TikTok, particularly as they take on a more direct role in A&R globally (https://radiichina.com/tiktok-drops-an-album-vows-to-help-musicians-be-heard/) .
(What does it even mean for Triller to “sell two million copies of a record” though? It seems like a classic case of imposing old-school benchmarks on a totally different digital landscape. But I digress.) Def Jam’s commemorative RIAA multi-platinum plaque for Triller. Taken by Triller CEO Mike Lu.
In times like these, however, I think it’s crucial to take a step back from the hype and explore what the long-term play really is for short-form, user-generated video, beyond chart-topping memes alone. More specifically, I want to question the notion that short-form, social video 1) is a zero-sum game, and 2) is reaching its “peak” with TikTok’s dominance.
It’s difficult to overstate the significance of mobile video, which remains one of the world’s fastest-growing communication mediums. According to eMarketer, adult consumers in the U.S. spend an average of 3.6 hours daily (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LD7-6PoH8d0Cl4ijBwBPLxKM343SL2LhAOmkXCUWNjI/edit#slide=id.g5c222ecd4a_0_452) viewing digital media on mobile devices, and 2019 will mark the first time (https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-time-spent-with-mobile-2019) they spend more time engaging with a mobile device than watching T.V. Deloitte’s latest report (https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/industry/technology/digital-media-trends-consumption-habits-survey.html) on digital media trends adds that nearly 40% of U.S. consumers spend over one hour per week watching short-form video clips on social media.
There’s an unspoken perception that the companies currently dominating this space — TikTok, Snap, Instagram, Triller and so forth — are too big to fail and/or beat. Some analysts have claimed (https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/03/facebook-shares-have-peaked-as-social-media-has-become-zero-sum-game-says-analyst.html) that social media runs on “zero-sum economics” (i.e. one player’s loss is another’s gain), and that the added impact of network effects (https://a16z.com/2016/03/07/all-about-network-effects/) (in which a network becomes more valuable to users the more people use it) makes it more difficult than ever for newer entrants to gain any traction.
That said, there is now an equally powerful force moving consumers away from mass-audience media, and more towards niche networks and forums for self-expression (e.g. see the recent funding rounds for Patreon (https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/patreon-60-million-series-d-funding-1203268597/) and Substack (https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/16/substack-series-a/) , which were announced on the same day). “Instead of seeing winner-take-all markets, we’re seeing all kinds of network effects companies — from messaging apps to sneaker marketplaces — splitting markets among multiple players,” Andreessen Horowitz partners D’Arcy Coolican and Li Jin wrote (https://a16z.com/2018/12/13/network-effects-dynamics-in-practice/) in December 2018.
Short-form, user-generated video is no exception to this trend, to the benefit of founders looking to break into the market. I’ll offer some ideas below on the opportunities at hand — first from the perspective of founders, then from that of the music and entertainment industries at large. But first: WTF is “white space”?
It may be helpful to clarify my use of the phrase “white space (https://hbr.org/2010/02/where-is-your-white-space) ” before moving on. It’s a somewhat ambiguous piece of business jargon that refers to any valuable opportunities for a company that its product and revenue model don’t currently meet. For this newsletter, I’m going to focus on the white space with respect to use cases for short-form, user-generated video that I think incumbents like TikTok, Snap, Instagram and Triller have not yet sufficiently addressed.
A Fast Company survey (https://www.fastcompany.com/984778/where-do-you-look-whitespace-opportunities) from 2008 lays out five different ways that businesses define “white space,” in descending order of popularity: * Finding a new audience for an existing product * Defining an entirely new product * Repurposing a technology for disruptive entry * Evolving current products to expand existing markets * Creating complementary products
I think “finding a new audience for an existing product” and “evolving current products to expand existing markets” are both lost causes for new founders in short-form video, because incumbents can just accomplish those tasks themselves. It’s difficult to compete on scale with a company like TikTok that reportedly spends (https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktoks-videos-are-goofy-its-strategy-to-dominate-social-media-is-serious-11561780861) over $1 billion annually on advertising.
In contrast, I suspect there’s more opportunity in defining entirely new products and technologies and creating new, complementary products. In particular, there’s a burgeoning ecosystem of what Olivia and Justine Moore, investors at CRV (https://www.crv.com) , recently referred to as “creator infrastructure (https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/22/what-vidcon-means-for-the-future-of-social-media-platforms/) ” — i.e. tech that empowers everyday consumers, not just the top 1% of celebrity influencers, both to create new content and to grow legitimate businesses around it. That notion of building infrastructure for the future, more inclusive generation of creators permeates all the opportunities I discuss below.
(An important disclaimer is that my analysis focuses on Western markets — so if there’s anything happening elsewhere in the world that you think would drastically alter or invalidate my conclusions, please let me know by replying to this email!) Niche creative communities
Similar to how the music-distribution sector is gradually segmenting itself (https://medium.com/@cheriehu42/what-stems-upheaval-reveals-about-music-distribution-s-new-middle-tier-32fa1b2f4872) based on artists’ different needs and goals, there is arguably an opportunity for new video-centric apps to enter the market by focusing on specific user segments. Smaller incumbents like Triller and Dubsmash (https://www.forbes.com/sites/cheriehu/2019/02/19/dubsmash-is-far-from-dead-but-can-it-really-survive-its-second-life/) already accomplish this somewhat with their focus on hip-hop/rap music, but that still leaves a lot of room in terms of actually helping users build brands and businesses on-platform.
One example of a more focused app is Rapchat (http://rapchat.me) , a hip-hop- and rap-focused music-creation app and social network that just launched (https://medium.com/@sethmills21/rapchat-evolved-w-video-5ecc6e83ad88) a video layer six weeks ago. (Interestingly, the startup previously partnered (https://blog.rapchat.me/rapchat-x-triller-collab-to-bring-music-videos-to-your-raps-featuremechallenge-ca91256b5a13) with Triller for essentially outsourcing video creation for users.) Renowned producers like DJ Pain 1 (https://rapchat.me/producers/A0241540-95A2-11E8-95EA-C19D4D6B9E92) post original beats regularly on Rapchat, while the likes of K CAMP (https://rapchat.me/beats/777F9A51-A277-11E9-8FA2-B3BACA567801) and Marlon Craft (https://rapchat.me/beats/3BEB9441-9849-11E9-9808-334ACC8DD7BD) have launched branded challenges on the platform; Musical.ly’s former President of North America Alex Hofmann also sits on the board. Any producer can submit their own beats to the platform, which are checked against an internal content-recognition tool to prevent copyright infringement.
“We don’t have hundreds of millions of users, but we do have a really specific user base that brings a lot of value to the right artists,” Rapchat co-founder/CEO Seth Miller tells me. Outside artists and entertainers looking to partner with Rapchat know they are tapping into a highly-focused creative community with a disproportionate amount of care for the craft — to the tune of over 50 million raps updated to the platform to date, which could be an ideal testing ground for a new or upcoming single. Science-enabled accessibility
There is still a wide-open space to build software that does to video what Instagram accomplished for computational photography.
This is the mission behind TRASH (http://trash.app) — a new startup that, besides having a great name, uses original machine-learning algorithms to automatically analyze, stitch together and edit multiple pieces of user-generated video footage. While Triller also incorporates automatic video sequencing into its interface, TRASH takes things multiple steps further and aims to make it easier for the end user, with a selection of hashtags for soundtrack searching and a wide variety of algorithmically-driven, customizable presets for a video’s overall “vibe.” For example, if you select the “Happy” vibe, “your video will be edited to an upbeat and uplifting track, it will have a bright filter on it, and it will be edited in a way that feels happy,” according to the app’s FAQ page (https://trash.app/FAQ.html) . Screenshots from TRASH’s creator beta. From left: a selection of preset “vibes” and “soundtracks,” plus a list of results for the #scifi soundtrack hashtag. Taken by me.
Having recently presented at machine-learning conferences (https://debug-ml-iclr2019.github.io/cameraready/DebugML-19_paper_33.pdf?source=post_page---------------------------) in addition to receiving seed funding from both tech investors (https://www.dreammachine.vc/portfolio) and the National Science Foundation (http://seedfund.nsf.gov/awardees/phase-1/) (NSF), TRASH, which is in limited creator beta, sees itself more as a science and A.I. company than as a consumer-facing app. “We’re doing foundational research in science and building our own models and neural networks, not just fine-tuning or using TensorFlow and other off-the-shelf stuff,” Hannah Donovan, founder/CEO of TRASH, tells me. Geneviève Patterson (https://genp.github.io) , a former researcher at Microsoft Research New England with a background in computer vision, is TRASH’s chief science officer.
Notably, Donovan has an extensive background across business, product and design in the world of music and tech. She was formerly general manager of Vine, co-founder of This Is My Jam (https://www.thisismyjam.com) and design lead at Last.fm and The Echo Nest. While TRASH is definitely not as music-centric as more consumer-facing apps like TikTok and Triller, there are some parallels in terms of the underlying machine learning involved. “Similar to how in music you can analyze a song for metadata and sequence it into a playlist based on that, you could use computer vision to analyze video clips and sequence them into rough cuts that the user can edit afterwards,” says Donovan. She also tells me that the company is working with partners like Treble (http://treble.fm) and Epidemic Sound (https://www.epidemicsound.com) to help source licensed music for now, and any artist can also submit their music to the “TRASH Music Collective” for consideration by emailing music@trash.app.
There is also an underlying mission to make video editing more accessible with A.I., the same way apps like Boomy (http://boomy.com) are using machine learning to open up music creation. In an interview with TechCrunch, Donovan shared (https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/24/trash-launch/) that during her experience doing user research at Vine, she would often meet users who thought they were “not technical enough … [or] not smart enough” to edit their own footage, despite how powerful their phone cameras were. The way TRASH is tackling that gap for now is with what Donovan calls a “deletion approach,” in which the app gives users a set of possibilities and lets them make their own choices after the fact.
“It’s how clothing subscription boxes (https://reallifemag.com/give-me-what-you-want/) work: you pick a general style, get a box in the mail and say, ‘I like all this stuff, but not these shoes,’” says Donovan. “Or pruning Spotify playlists: people listen to Discover Weekly and save the tracks they like. In these cases, people who otherwise lack fluency in a creative activity are now able to participate in it. It’s much easier to start from something than from nothing.”
Many other players in video are also investing in backend technology that fundamentally changes the creative process itself. Vimeo acquired (https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/15/vimeo-has-acquired-short-form-video-creation-platform-magisto/) A.I.-driven multimedia-editing platform Magisto (https://www.magisto.com) in April 2019, for a reported $200 million. Mobile video app Firework (https://fireworktv.com) is working on a technology deemed “Reveal” that stitches together both horizontal and vertical video in a single shot, allowing viewers to rotate their phone seamlessly as they’re watching a given piece of content. New forms of monetization (no, not brand deals!)
Creator monetization seems to be a consistent thorn in short-form video’s spine. TikTok has nailed the virtual-currency game, bringing in as much as $5.5 million (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/30/tiktok-owner-bytedance-what-to-know-about-the-chinese-tech-giant.html) a month from in-app purchases — likely in part because of its Chinese ownership, meaning its parent company is operating from a culture that doesn’t even bat an eye (https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/tencent-music-uses-tipping-to-rack-up-revenues-why-arent-western-music-streaming-platforms-doing-the-same/) at the sight of micropayments.
But that success is virtually nonexistent elsewhere in the mobile video world. Triller launched (https://variety.com/2018/digital/global/music-video-app-triller-launches-monetization-feature-1202870268/) in-app creator monetization in July 2018, to the tune of teen influencers raising as much as $50,000 in just a few days, but the feature has generated little fanfare ever since. Lu confirms to me that monetization is “on hold for now and no longer a key focus of ours,” as the company shifts to “driving growth” for the app overall.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities for newer video apps to solve the problem. For instance, Rapchat is currently working on building in-app distribution with a yet-to-be-announced partner, which would enable users to distribute and monetize their Rapchat recordings directly on third-party streaming services. They’re still ironing out final details of how their agreements will be structured, but Miller tells me that royalties would be split threeway among the producer of the original beat, the rapper who overlaid the vocals and the Rapchat company itself.
It’s unclear whether this kind of model will solve some of the deeper issues with creator monetization across the board — including spread, i.e. only ~1% of creators actually monetizing meaningfully, with the remaining users left in the dust. Nonetheless, Rapchat’s setup would tether creation to distribution within a single interface to an extent that we haven’t yet seen in music, but is increasingly par for the course in other industries (e.g. what Anchor (https://anchor.fm) does for podcasts). So… what does this mean for the music industry?
All of the apps mentioned above demonstrate a potential opportunity for artists, labels and other players in the music industry to embrace more market segmentation for short-form social video, in a way that is additive and complementary rather than purely competitive. Those who put all of their eggs into the TikTok basket will evidently miss out on the diversity of other opportunities available.
“The younger audience on TikTok, in the 10- to 18-year-old range, consumes and shares music really quickly, but you can’t throw a song on TikTok and conclude it’s going to be a great record just because it does well on that platform,” Drew de Leon, founder of music-tech community The Digilogue (https://www.thedigilogue.com) and director of digital marketing at Def Jam, tells me. “It’s just one piece of the overall conversation. You have to take a 360-degree point of view and look at how it’s performing on YouTube, Instagram and other streaming and social platforms.”
Indeed, one potential danger of the hype around TikTok — which, importantly, we also saw around Vine and Musical.ly pre-acquisition — is that artists tether their success too closely to those of tech platforms. As Alyssa Bereznak recently put it (https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/6/27/18760004/tiktok-old-town-road-memes-music-industry) in The Ringer, we tend to bucket artists “into subcategories based on the video-centric social networks that helped vault them to fame.” The emphasis here is on fame and the often unbalanced expectations that come with it, particularly from a music licensing perspective*.
“There are three big levers that anyone who licenses music wants to pull: fame, money and data,” Vickie Nauman, owner of digital-music consultancy CrossBorderWorks (https://www.crossborderworks.com) , tells me. “Labels and publishers look at these kinds of apps and ask: Is this going to help us break artists and get our music in front of the right demographics? Is it going to help us earn money? And can we get some sort of data and intelligence about what music is working out there?”
For any early-stage startup, particularly in short-form video, money and fame are usually off the table with respect to how they can compete with existing players. But what they can focus on effectively is nailing a specific demographic that’s valuable to artists and rights holders, and outpacing competitors in understanding data about that demographic’s preferences and behaviors. “That’s really critical for the music industry: you can’t ask a startup who’s just out of the gate to focus entirely on scale, or you’ll miss the point of segmenting the market,” says Nauman. “You really want to cultivate startups who are understanding and developing for the nuances of different audience types.”
The questions that the music industry asks of the next wave of more niche video apps should also be more nuanced than simply, “Can you break this track?” To whom are you going to break your track — and why them? How will this service transform the opportunity users have to participate in the process of breaking that song, beyond just making a new meme? Will it help grow the pie for artists at large, or remain a winner-take-all market?
It’s no coincidence that this dynamic of market segmentation and focusing on niches is similar to the importance of sustainable local A&R ecosystems in surfacing the best emerging talent to the wider mainstream; incidentally, Lil Nas X first debuted his song on Triller (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYuMEyx_uRI) before blowing up on TikTok. “It’s a matter of saying, ‘Wow, I’ve really seen this artist grow,’ versus, ‘Wow, I saw this artist blow up but haven’t heard about them in a year,’” says de Leon.
There is also an A&R-esque analog here of “thinking globally and acting locally.” In other words, I’m not trying to discourage people from thinking about their next TikTok campaign, particularly if they’re looking to chart a song; rather, I’m trying to encourage people to see experimenting with and fostering new niche use cases and audiences as complementary to the coveted “Old Town Road” model of growth. In Donovan’s words: the appeal of this new ecosystem “has less to do with ‘going viral,’ and more to do with the fact that everyone is now holding a rectangle of glass in their hand.” 🌊 *ADDENDUM: Short-form video and music licensing
I was going to include several more paragraphs above about the relationship between short-form video and the future of music licensing, but I figured this essay was already long enough :) So I’ve moved those additional notes into a separate article on my Patreon page (http://patreon.com/cheriehu) , which you can access if you join the $7/month tier. ✨ If you’d like to support even more thoughts and conversations on music and tech, I encourage you to become a paying member of the Water & Music ecosystem on Patreon (http://patreon.com/cheriehu?utm_campaign=Water%20%26%20Music&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter) . For as little as $1/month or as much as $40+/month, you can access a wide range of perks including: * A closed, members-only Discord server, consisting of regular updates and analysis on the most important music and tech news * Exclusive essays * Previews and bonus material for my freelance articles * Monthly video hangouts with me * Live meetups and events (forthcoming!!)
…and much more! Thanks so much for reading! ✨ Follow-up from Issue #56: More notes on the “no-code” movement in the music industry
I’m pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to my previous newsletter (https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?u=3d1b6946215346237ceeb999b&id=8853c19c97) about applying the tech industry’s “no-code” framework to the entire value chain of digital music, from creation to distribution and marketing.
After gathering as much feedback as I could, I decided to build a new, sleeker version of the no-code music marketplace on Airtable (https://airtable.com/shrPuGM5nCFbvcGNM) . Verson 2.0 features 20+ new companies, as well as several new categories spanning licensing, analytics, networking/relationships, marketing/advertising, e-commerce and more. The meaning of “no-code” in this context is admittedly looser now — referring to apps that streamline/automate an activity that would otherwise require a highly specialized set of skills and/or relationships to accomplish, e.g. navigating convoluted recording and publishing contracts, or getting access to the proper talent and business support.
The table will be regularly updated whenever appropriate, as more companies enter the sector. Let me know if you have any additional feedback or suggestions for other apps/companies to add to the database! My writing elsewhere
In the wake of Apple reportedly investing (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-16/apple-plans-to-bankroll-original-podcasts-to-fend-off-rivals) in original podcasts, I wrote a primer for Hot Pod (https://hotpodnews.com/apple-music-and-exclusive-podcasts-a-primer/) about the range and history of exclusive content on Apple Music, and why the music industry’s dependence on exclusives has actually declined over time.
On my Patreon page (http://patreon.com/cheriehu) : * I wrote a review and recap of the book Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Community in Nashville (https://www.patreon.com/posts/28483494) — a sociological study that provides a useful framework for understanding the motivations and strategic orientations of independent artist-entrepreneurs, regardless of geographic location. * Later today: I’ll be posting a new piece about the case for including more musicians and music-industry execs at influencer events like VidCon. The inspiration for writing this came from a recent conversation I had with someone in the music biz who told me that there was no one from YouTube Music present at VidCon 2019, which I found absolutely baffling. You can register for the $7/month tier (https://www.patreon.com/join/cheriehu/checkout?rid=3203028) to access the article!
What I’m listening to
The Recode Decode podcast just published an interview (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/splices-steve-martocci-wants-to-remake-music-business/id1080467174?i=1000445270207) with Steve Martocci, co-founder/CEO of Splice (http://splice.com) . I’m still listening through the interview, but it offers a good overview of Splice’s business model, and also dives into Martocci’s own experience as a seasoned entrepreneur (he also co-founded and sold GroupMe) and his transition from a founder to a proper CEO leading a company of 100+ people.
Khruangbin released an echo-heavy dub version of their album Con Todo El Mundo (https://khruangbin.bandcamp.com/album/con-todo-el-mundo-n-s-america-edition) , titled Hasta El Cielo (https://khruangbin.bandcamp.com/album/hasta-el-cielo-con-todo-el-mundo-in-dub-n-s-america-edition) , and it is absolutely hypnotic and otherworldly and lovely (and yes, the Pitchfork rating (https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/khruangbin-hasta-el-cielo/) is much too low).
I managed to get an early listen to Rich Brian’s upcoming album The Sailor, which will be released tomorrow (July 26). I am blown away by how mature, multilayered, punchy and orchestral his new sound is, in terms of both verses and production (crafted with the help of Bekon (https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/8098188/bekon-interview-new-album-get-with-the-times-kendrick-lamar-damn) , the producer behind several tracks on Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN.). The lyrics and music video for “Kids (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L4PAeWXun8) ” offers a solid preview of the type of message and perspective that Brian will lay bare throughout the rest of the album. Epilogue
I will say it for the 1,000th time: Playlist placement isn’t artist development (https://twitter.com/cheriehu42/status/1067873158705893378) . And this time I’m not alone. Music-industry veteran and Humble Angel Records owner Kieron Donoghue recently published a blog post (http://here.org.uk/2019/07/24/playlist-placement-is-not-a-marketing-strategy/) about why playlist placement is not a marketing strategy — focusing on the recent buzz around emerging artist Aaron Smith as a case study. Smith, who is signed to Apple-owned creative-services company Platoon, recently got significant playlist support (https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-and-apple-go-big-on-independent-artist-aaron-smith-and-get-uk-record-labels-talking/) on both Spotify and Apple Music for his debut single “Unspoken.” But while he already has ~320,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, only ~800 of them have converted to followers. That’s a 0.25% conversion rate from listeners to fans, which is far from ideal IMO.
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