This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
Steve Corn is the CEO and co-founder of BFM Digital, an independent music company specializing in digital distribution, marketing and promotions. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, where he studied jazz piano and composition, he got his start in the business as a film composer and performing musician. His company Corn Music Services, Inc. pioneered the licensing of master recordings, sound effects and images to global mobile providers and was one of the first companies to work with ringtones, ringbacks and wallpaper on mobile devices. Through that company, he provided consulting and licensing services for clients like Universal Studios, Fox Interactive and MySpace. During his diverse career, Steve has also worked as a music distributor, new media and licensor, as Executive Vice President of Licensemusic.com, the first all-inclusive online music licensing service. Additionally, he was Vice President and General Manager of Megatrax Production Music, a production music library that worked with many major entertainment companies worldwide. Prior to founding BFM Digital, he worked for many years at LIVE Entertainment (now Artisan Entertainment), where he was responsible for negotiating soundtrack deals and managing the publishing rights for both theatrical and home video releases. He has over two decades of business and management experience in music supervision and media licensing.
I recently got to talk to Steve about his experience in the industry and how BFM Digital and its competitors help musicians navigate the digital music landscape. He also shared some insight about how artists can go about choosing the distribution partner that is right for them.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk, Steve. How did you get into the music business, and what led you to start BFM Digital?
SC:
I am a former self-unemployed film composer. I went to Berklee College of music, then moved out to L.A. and basically did every music odd job any musician could do to support themselves. I was very proud that I was making my living entirely in music until I had my first baby. I was a keyboardist, programmer, player and worked with MIDI before there even really was MIDI. Because I needed to earn a living, I had to understand exactly how the money flows. I took Deep Throat’s advice to heart and followed the money, which was in some of these digital elements.
Eventually, I found myself on the licensing side of things, both as a licensor and a licensee. I was VP and general manager of one of the largest indie music production libraries – Megatrax – as well as running the music department for a small film company called Live Entertainment. I’ve seen your background, and I think you and I probably have some of the most diverse backgrounds. You might rival me in the number of roles you’ve had.
I started BFM after spending a couple years with the first – and I still think the best – music licensing company, which was Licensemusic.com. I was their EVP. It was definitely a company too early for its time. Shortly after I left that company, I engaged in what I call “forced entrepreneurship.” I got involved with ringtone licensing on the masters side. I had a good friend – Steven Weber – who is my co-founder and partner at BFM Digital. He made a good living from it for about 14 years setting up international licensing deals for domestic indie labels and vice versa – bringing indie labels into the U.S.
Just about the time iTunes started, post-Napster, his business was suffering, because CDs were tanking, and licensing CDs and albums was a dying industry. So, he had the label relations, I had the dot-com experience, and he and I decided to found BFM Digital. The original name of the company was “Big Fish Media.” While that name is gone, the guiding principle remains: “big fish, small pond.” We played the classic chicken-and-the-egg situation: How do you get distribution deals with iTunes, Rhapsody, etc. without the content, and how do you get the content without the deals. We did both simultaneously. I naively thought back then – eight years ago – that 50,000 tracks would be the goal of a good distributor. But now we have close to 250,000 tracks, and we’re still considered boutique.
I never understand how the aggregators that have continued to grow, whose initial battle cry was, “We’re specialty. We’re boutique. We’ll take care of your music and your rights and be able to give you attention,” work. I’ve watched the shift and seen these companies become large, with catalogs that are often larger than some of the major labels. I don’t fully understand how they have the bandwidth to take care of anything beyond shooting the content out to the distributors.
SC:
That’s essentially what’s happening with some of the companies that started as boutique companies now. Yet, they still have the “partnership” model – the revenue share (rev-share) model. And this is wonderful if you’re aligned with the artist: If they win, you win and vice versa.
Having skin in the game motivates people, for sure.
SC:
Exactly. And I’m not sure how some of them justify a rev-share model when they’re, for the most part, as much about mass-produced distribution as TuneCore is. I don’t see a way they can provide the level of service they started out offering and still profess to offer when everything is dashboard operated, and it’s very difficult to get a brainstorming session with your label representative. As an example, people who sign up for TuneCore – or CD Baby, who has a similar mindset even though they combine a set up fee with a reduced rev share – know the company is not professing to be a company dedicated to getting your message out. They admit to doing things the way they do them, charging a fee for it and that’s that, for better or worse. Some of these other “full-service” companies are in somewhat of a downward spiral in their rev share percentages in order to keep them more competitive, when in reality they aren’t offering the services they advertise, even if they really do want to offer these services.
We’ve always had the philosophy from Day One that we’re going to curate the content we represent in the manner of a true distributor. And by the way, if you noticed, in a recent blog entry, I felt obligated to clarify the use of the word “aggregator” vs. the use of the word “distributor.” Because, I do believe TuneCore is much more of an aggregator model. When I think of the distributor model, I think of in terms of companies that use old-fashioned business models that would develop spiff programs, sales programs and help you try to promote, package and place your content with PAP (price and positioning). Placing is so important, now more than ever before. And I’m not even talking about discounting; I’m talking about holding the price point. A distributor is the proactive partner of a label in working with retail outlets. An aggregator is someone who accumulates content. TuneCore is an aggregation model, and they charge a fee.
When I look at myself and some of my competitors, we all profess to be a distributor model in which we offer a true partnership-level interaction. However, you’re absolutely right: When you now have a combined catalog of something close to four or five million tracks – and if I’m wrong, I apologize to them – there’s no way that can be done using a true distributor model.
At BFM, we’ve always been selective about the people we represent. And I’m not saying we represent the world’s greatest art in the music industry, because we represent stuff that sells that I’m still mystified as to why it sells. But we work with our partners. We are available to brainstorm, and we do a lot of active strategizing. We’re not dashboard oriented. We’re people oriented.
Obviously, as a guy with a licensing background, I’m going to guess you guys have an in-house licensing department. And you’ve already talked about PAP – price and positioning. If you’re an artist shopping around for a distribution deal, wondering if there’s a rev-share model that would make sense for you, what are the qualities and services you should be looking for in a potential partner?
SC:
Actually, I think that’s the wrong approach. You shouldn’t be looking for the services, because when you put the services down on a piece of paper, they can all appear generic. I think the two things you’re most shopping for when you’re trying to partner up with a distributor – and this also applies to when you’re trying to decide if you want to go the TuneCore route or some other route – is, first, the access to knowledge. So, in the case of my company, you’re looking for access to my information and my track record of ten years of being in the digital music business, the information of having made every single mistake a distributor can make so you don’t have to. So, you’re looking for access to that knowledge and then a company that can help tell your story. If you feel it’s important to get your product either featured, placed or if you want to submit it to specific programs – for example, Amazon will have a “Genre of the Month” program, etc. – you also need a distributor who can help get your story told, which is about who you are, what your release is and why anyone should care about it. And how the distributor does that is not as important as whether or not they can do that. The methodology can vary greatly. The success of what they do is the true measure.
I like to joke that in the beginning, we didn’t have a dashboard-type technology at BFM, because, quite frankly, we couldn’t afford it. We were completely bootstrapped and self financed. And now we choose not to have one, because we don’t like the concept. I don’t want people uploading and clicking a check box; that can be done through a spreadsheet. I want people to say something a little different about the process.
I’ll give you a real-life example. There’s a well-known artist from the 60’s and we released his first U.S. album in 20-25 years last month. He’s been recording in Germany – where he’s really big – all throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. He has a catalog of 16 albums, and we’ve been discussing how to release that catalog. Of course, we’re going to put the albums up as they are. But he’s looking for ways to release his catalog that really preserve his legacy and his career. He was thinking about coming up with different compilations or different periods, in a similar way to how The Beatles put out their Red and Blue albums from the ‘60s. He’s looking for something that can capture the same kind of developmental art throughout his career. And he’s a digital novice. He doesn’t know what’s available and what’s possible. And we’re looking at his catalog and trying to figure out what’s going to be best for him, his career, his wishes.
We do that for artists of all ilks, not just for someone of his stature. You also might have an artist that has an album where half of its done, he has a video for one single, and he’s coming to us saying, “What should I do? Should I release a single or an EP? Should I wait until the album’s done? Should I put out a video?” If an artist has management or PR, we’re just another part of the advisory team. We help them decide how to put out their music in a way that makes the best sense. We also look at timing scheduled – what’s needed for a promotion on iTunes, what’s coming up in three months on Amazon, whether Rhapsody is doing a special feature, etc.? In that respect, we really earn our percentage. If a project succeeds, we succeed. And if it doesn’t, it’s usually no fault of anyone’s in particular. It’s the risk we’re willing to take.
You guys are a little different from a lot of your competitors, because you curate. You don’t accept everyone who knocks on your door. If I put myself in the mind of an aspiring musician in the beginning phases of my career, and I’m just trying to figure things out, my questions for a distributor are probably going to be, “This is who I am, this is what I do. Can you get me these deals on Amazon and iTunes? And is there any point in going to the distributors that represent less than five-percent of the marketplace? What kind of in-house services do you have that are going to support the efforts I’m already making in terms of licensing, etc.?” Obviously, getting guidance on questions about whether they go physical or digital is going to be a given for artists coming to a company like yours. But, I think my question, if I were an artist especially, would be about the rest of the support that is available to me.
SC:
There are so many moving parts to that equation. If you’re a completely unknown artist with your first release, and you have no gigging plans and nothing scheduled, then we have to figure out how hard you’re going to work. We don’t work with artists that give us an album and say, “Go ahead and break me. And, by the way, only keep your 20 percent.” Because, let’s face it – labels get 80 or 90 percent, because they’re spending money and they’re – arguably – earning their keep. I’m not going to break an artist for 20 percent. That flips the model, and there’s no reason for that.
If an artist is willing to work hard, I’m willing to match their effort. So, if they have the right market drivers, then we can tell them what services might be amenable to featuring them. If they have the right kind of song that might have a place or opportunity in TV, film or commercials, we can present that option. But as you know, you can’t count on a licensing placement to break your career.
Of course not.
SC:
Everything we do has to be considered complimentary to what an artist does. It doesn’t mean an artist has to have management, PR, a booking agent, touring or a gigantic team. We work with some artists that are incredible DIY people, but they prefer to go with us because they want us to put together their one-sheets presented to service or they want our advice on release schedules. Even if they’re doing a short, one-week tour in, let’s say, Italy, we’ll pick up the phone and call the services in Italy and see if we can do an in-house.
All the services that we offer come down to the same generic categories: marketing; promotion; design; copywriting; social media. Everyone that has a rev share model claims to have these types of services. And we have everything everyone else has. It’s how you apply it that makes the difference. Many of our competitors apply it through a dashboard of widgets and services that give you great access but still force you to do it all yourself. I don’t quite understand that mentality. If you’re going to do that, then don’t profess to be a partner, because people can find that on their own.
It may sound anachronistic, but we don’t have a dashboard to go and create a widget. We have partnerships with companies that create widgets, or we can help you create the widget yourself.
The one thing I know because I’ve come from the label system and have done both coaching and freelance product management is that I’ve never seen a widget break an artist, ever.
SC:
Yes. That’s probably one of the most apt statements I’ve ever heard. Yet, they’re so cool, you need them.
They’re helpful. You don’t want to make it more difficult for anybody to absorb your music and your message, but I have yet to hear the conversation:
“How did you get to the top, Lady Gaga?”
“I had an email widget.”
That’s just not going to happen.
SC:
That’s really true.
But that’s an excellent point, even though there are some great services out there. Last night I was looking over the panels for NARM, and I was making some comments. One of the panels was on outsourcing as an artist or a label. The tools available out there are so amazing.
Sometimes, we’re hired just to coordinate all these tools. An artist might come to us and say, “I really love Onesheet.com,” or “I really love FanBridge. But I don’t have the time to manage it.” We offer such coordination services – and that usually involves a modest fee if there’s a time commitment. But a lot of times, we’re that fifth band member whose role it is to manage all the band’s social media and online presence. We do have a whole suite of label services if someone needs it. We can push radio, write copy, do design, create and modify and update social media, create marketing programs. We can do any and all or none of the above.
It’s kind of laughable now, but we spent six months designing pre-built marketing packages when we launched our marketing department a couple years ago – silver, gold and platinum levels. We’ve only sold one of those, because every package had to be customized.
Speaking to your earlier point, I think digital technology has put a lot of people in business in musician and label services. And it has made them think they can templatize something that by its nature defies being shoved into a box. I appreciate how difficult it is to scale a company like that. But I think it’s problematic to think the same suite of services are going to apply to one artist and also the next. I’ve seen that play out many times, and I’m glad to hear that it’s more a la carte for you guys now.
SC:
You touched on scalability, which is a really interesting point to me. In my recent blog entry about the IODA/Orchard merger, I talked about what some might consider to be the benefits of scaling up two large companies into one larger company. Often times when that happens in any industry, the larger company might have additional buying power to get better rates and pass on the savings. I think Big Lots or Wal-Mart operate on that philosophy.
But in the music industry, scalability only benefits the VC investors. It doesn’t benefit the labels. That’s because there is a general tendency for all the digital services to make their deals as uniform as possible. So, the rates that a companies like, for example, The Orchard and IODA are getting from iTunes, Rhapsody, Spotify are the same rates we’re getting. And they already have ten times as many tracks as we have. Having 20 times as many tracks isn’t going to help them get a better rate. Sometimes they have a better advance or setup fee, but then they get into the realm of the Majors. And, I just read that Weird Al is suing Sony. One of the claims is that they didn’t pay him his pro-rated share of advances they got from different services. Getting advances or set up fees isn’t actually a benefit to the labels. Being larger – and scaling higher – doesn’t create any efficiencies or benefits to labels.
Shortly after the merger between IODA and The Orchard recently, it was announced that both companies were laying off people. I’m paraphrasing this, but they said they were reducing the number of staff in order to provide more efficient client services. That doesn’t quite make sense to me: Fewer people, better service? It doesn’t add up.
I think you’re right. When big money becomes involved with art, you cease looking at songs as songs. You start looking at them as pieces of copyright that you can trade on. I think if you put yourself as the gatekeeper between artists having access to rights like that, the potential breakage becomes the benefit of the gatekeeper and not the people standing in front of the gate.
SC:
And to be honest, as a company that has larger numbers than most of my labels, I tend to benefit from Spotify as a whole a little bit better than any individual label. But on the other hand, we are still on the same side of the table as our labels.
I may have disagreements with the flat-fee model. And honestly, I think a lot of TuneCore’s public standing seems to be in support of indie artists, when in fact, it’s quite arguable that they make way more money on most of their releases than the artist does. But at least they don’t profess to offer something they’re not offering.
It really does come down to the fact that if you’re in the music business, you need to spend a little money to make a little money. You should subscribe to Billboard. There is $200 per year that you’re not necessarily going to recoup, but it’s okay to spend some money. There are some things you have to invest in. It’s just that if you have certain needs in your digital distribution that you want your distributor to meet, you have to be very careful you’re making the right investments, because you could be penny wise and pound foolish.
When do you advise someone to go after a distribution partner vs. a flat-fee model?
SC:
Probably one of the best examples of that would be this guitarist that I tried to sign and didn’t – a very well-known guitarist. I met him a few years ago at Midem. He just happened to be invited to a dinner I was part of, and I was sitting across the table from him in my “I’m not worthy” mode. I’m in Valley Village, Studio City in California. And he lives very close by. We had an earnest talk about using us vs. TuneCore. He said, “Hey listen, I have my fan base. I put out anything, and everybody that wants to buy it will know it’s available and come buy it. I don’t need anybody to tell my story.” He has a rabid fan base, and he doesn’t need me to come up with promotional features. He’ll get features. Even if he doesn’t, his fans know where to find him.
Oh, I know what you mean. I was the A&R guy for Dream Theater. That just involved saying, “Sounds like the last one. The same 250,000 people will buy this one too.”
SC:
Exactly. For him, the argument to have a rev-share model wasn’t quite as compelling as it might be to most people. If I flip back to that ‘60’s artist, who also has a fan base, but that’s a slightly different story. His fan base is not digital. They may not even be online or may just be getting online. And he is the type of guy that needs an active digital partner. If he went to TuneCore, he would not have his story told and would probably not be as discoverable.
So, you have two legacy, prominent artists. With one, there’s a great case for a flat fee, the other a great case for a rev share. I would say there’s a time and place for everything. Unfortunately, most artists and labels who are releasing material really do need help in deciding how to release it and how to get their message out. And those people really aren’t well served by a flat-fee model.
Unfortunately, we can’t service hundreds of thousands of artists like TuneCore or CD Baby. That’s why we’re selective. And when artists come to us, we have to like the music and figure out if we can be of service to them. Usually, when it comes to us vs. another rev-share model like IODA, etc., then the selling proposition becomes “access,” “brain trust,” “past successes,” etc. When it’s compared against a flat-fee model, it’s usually about what someone needs. And sometimes they don’t need us. And that’s okay, because there’s room for all of us in the digital landscape.
To learn more about Steve Corn and how his company works with artists, check out the BFM Digital website.
Vincent Borel is the co-founder of Webdoc, a social place offering an engaging way to share and unite with others through interactive, multi-media posts about their interests, passions and events and engage with their fans. A lifelong music fan, Vincent started his career as an engineer at Dolby Laboratories, where he was an engineer working on product development for a variety of surround sound products. After earning his MBA, he went onto work as a business strategy consultant for Nestlé, where he focused on offline marketing strategies. Eventually, his passion for understanding the many ways technology and social media affects the way people connect to brands and share information via the Web led him to start Webdoc with Stelio Tzonis, Cyril Pavillard, Mathieu Fivaz and Alexandre Tzonis. Through Webdoc, Vincent and his partners have created an environment where users can easily start expressive conversations and pull video, audio, photos and more from across the Web.
I had the opportunity to talk to Vincent about what he has learned about technology and fan engagement throughout the course of his career and how Webdoc works. He also shared some examples of how artists are using his platform and other new technology tools to build highly-personalized relationships with their fans and get their music and message out there.
Thanks so much for taking some time to talk, Vincent. What led you to found Webdoc, and what is the vision of the company?
VB:
I’ve always had a passion for music, but I’ve never been a great musician. I decided I was going to contribute to the industry one way or another. I started off my career as an engineer at Dolby Laboratories. I was doing a lot of the product development for all the surround sound for both the professional and consumer ends of things.
After doing that for a few years, I wanted to see the other sides of the business and not just be involved with product development. I wanted to be more front facing and also push myself outside my comfort zone. So, I did an MBA and then for three years did some strategy consulting – helping businesses worldwide – for Nestlé.
I heard that you brought chocolate to Pakistan.
VB:
Exactly. You raise a very interesting point, because I started consulting so I could do something totally different. I did not want to do anything related to technology. I thought this was the best way for me to understand how consumers buy products. And food is a product we see every day. Why do people end up buying one product over another? I thought working with Nestlé would be a very interesting part of my professional life. It also brought me to very interesting places, like the Middle East. I actually never ended up going to Pakistan because there was a bit of turmoil going on when I had planned to go. But I did get to go to many places in the Middle East and Asia – places I would have probably never gone had I stayed in technology my entire life. The experience showed me the reality of the fact that not everyone has an iPhone or an iPad. People use the Internet in Internet cafés, and the food products they buy are not always refrigerated like we’re used to. It was definitely a big eye opener.
But after doing that for a few years, I really had this desire to get back into technology. And while I was working at Nestlé, I was always involved in personal projects fulfilling my passions for sport and technology. And that’s when I met my partners at Webdoc, and we started talking about the Web and how it was evolving. They were actually working on really interesting products for education. They were bringing this concept of interactive white boards to classrooms. And that was great, but it was actually a really tough vertical, because when you work with education, you have to deal a lot with the state and the government. That was when we all said, “I love this idea of merging content and being able to create content on the fly. But I wish it was on the Web. I don’t want to have this document on my website. I want it to be available everywhere so I can share it.”
The name Webdoc comes from that idea. The “document” has always been around, but it has taken different shapes and forms as history has moved along. We think in the future a Web doc will be a type of document where you’re able to pull in not just media – pictures, videos and sound – but anything the Web brings, which are all these powerful, interactive elements.
Webdoc encompasses the idea of the Web and the “document,” and it allows you to use the Web as a language to express and share.
The idea of pulling from different disciplines and putting the information together makes sense to me. But my question about Webdoc is, do you see it as a portal on its own, or is it a place to distribute and disperse?
VB:
It’s both. I think for us, the idea is that today, the creation happens on Webdoc, but tomorrow it could happen anywhere. And the consumption happens on Webdoc, Facebook, on your blog and anywhere else. We see the Web as a very widely-distributed platform. So, we don’t believe in having central elements. For example, you might wonder why, when you’re looking at a map, you have to stay on the page and are unable to use it anywhere else. I think making elements that are more portable brings a tremendous amount of value. Even if you think about YouTube, it was consumed for many, many years outside YouTube before it was a destination site. It was on Myspace, blogs, etc. It is still in all these places today, but there is tremendous traffic on the YouTube site as well.
Part of our philosophy with Webdoc is to make your content consumable anywhere. Wherever your audience is, you should be able to provide that content.
From the outside looking in, it feels like there are a lot of applications, and it’s so open ended, that this whole concept hasn’t come into its own in many ways.
VB:
We see this concept as something that is very broad. But as we see it, Webdoc is the most expressive way to share on the Web. The context in which you express yourself is key. So, when I talk about fashion, I will express myself in a certain way. And I’ll use different elements to talk about music. What you’ll see in the evolutions of Webdoc is that it’s very text driven, and the forms of expression must be very spontaneous but very specific to the context you’re in.
Obviously, people in the Arts have rallied around Webdoc. A lot of your most active contributors are music- and entertainment-related brands. You have people like Jack White. How have you seen artists effectively use your platform for marketing?
VB:
It’s interesting. When people talk about marketing, they often think about push marketing and the idea of creating content and blasting it out. Certainly the Web has dramatically amplified the ability to create and virally spread content using social networks like Twitter, Facebook and blogs. There are a lot of venues where you can just feed content so it can be spread. That’s certainly one very powerful method, but the Web was never meant to be a one-way pipe.
We’ve seen very interesting things happening on Webdoc. We really believe in the notion of having social spaces where people can interact using any form of expression they want. It could be simple text, or it could be videos or a combination of videos and pictures. People should be able to combine any number of elements. We’ve seen several artists and brands use it more as a place to engage around rich content. And that engagement could be anything. People often think of campaigns or contests. But actually the most successful ones we’ve seen have involved sharing life events. For instance, maybe I’m in a band and it’s my lead singer’s birthday. How can fans interact with that person they love? How can you create a space where people can express themselves and unite together? You want to really give them a sense of community while still allowing for freedom of expression.
The UK band One Direction, who did very well on The X Factor in 2010 has used Webdoc repeatedly to create a real community and space. They had tremendous engagement. In one case, they had 6,000 posts in less than 48 hours. And when I say “post,” I’m not talking about a “Like” or a comment; I’m talking about rich, unique posts where people were expressing themselves or sending well wishes to the person whose birthday it was. If you tried to do the same thing elsewhere, you might get a little more in terms of volume, but the quality would probably be lower. You’d probably get 4,000 “Happy Birthdays.” And there would be little interest in seeing what other people are saying. When, as an artist or a band you provide a bit more freedom in the way people can express themselves and make it extremely simple, you’ll see that people are spending more time looking at what others are doing. And their personalities come through more in their posts. We’ve seen people spend 15-30 minutes in a single community around a single life event like a birthday. That’s really tremendous.
To come back to marketing, we note that marketing has become a lot less of a push than a two-way or multi-way interaction where people are sharing and generating buzz around something.In fact, one direction was the trending topic in the UK during that week.
Twitter is a very fertile ground too. Typically people create a post on Webdoc and tweet it out to their followers: “Hey – check it out and tell me what you think!” And people go check it out and make their own and share it. You get to realize the true potential of Internet marketing.
With the way Internet searches work currently, having a primary destination – like a website or a Facebook profile – seems to be the most effective method for artists, musicians and other brands. Do you think having a particular destination online will matter less in the future, when you’re able to express yourself more clearly to an unshaped community of connections? It seems like the success of Webdoc suggests we’re moving away from the norm.
VB:
It’s funny, because while the Web is becoming very decentralized, and this ability to spread, share and disseminate content wherever you discover it is becoming more possible, it’s also increasing the importance of destinations. And you can see it today with artists and their websites. When MySpace first came around, a lot of people dropped their websites. Then suddenly, today, you see a lot more artists putting more effort into their own websites.
I don’t think there’s a specific answer to your question. I don’t think having your own website will go away, but the website will just have to fit your purpose. But I do feel that people are going to be discovering content in multiple places. And you have to make sure that wherever those people are, they get the best experience they can. That might be on your website, but it could be somewhere else. And if it’s somewhere else, what are you providing?
Whenever the issue of the Web comes up when I’m coaching people, I often tell them that the goal is creating an on-going, multi-media dialogue with fans and potential fans. And it never occurred to me that this goal might be possible to achieve under one roof, but it seems like Webdoc is providing tools to do exactly that.
VB:
One of our frustrations when we were defining Webdoc was this idea that you might say, “I have these great photos on Instagram and very cool videos I found on YouTube. I wish I could combine them to say something. But the only means of expression I have today are single media. So I can share one video, a few pictures or a link to a URL.” When you’re talking, you’re usually using more than a single word. And I feel that due to technical constraints, working with one piece of media at a time made sense until today.
As time goes on, the Web – browsers, etc. – is getting a lot more powerful. If it’s easy for me to combine two videos, why should I be limited to just sharing one video at a time? And by doing it this way, you’re putting a little bit more weight on the type of message or content that you’re sharing. And we all know about the fatigue of Facebook; sometimes you look at your Facebook feed, and you feel exhausted. Within a couple hours, if you haven’t read your messages, some get buried, never to be seen again. I feel like when you look at the Facebook timeline, it’s interesting that it’s all about the curation you do for the important events for a brand or a band.
It’s important to have continuous engagement. But it’s also important to bring certain events to life. So, you can put up a single video. But what happens when they watch the video? Are you driving anything more than just awareness? It’s really interesting. I think we’ll see a lot more happening in this direction in the future.
Do you have some examples of the work you’ve done with Webdoc?
VB:
Yes. The first is one of the first case studies we did with Universal around Nirvana. Of course, Nirvana is an amazing band. And last year was the 20-year anniversary of Nevermind, so they wanted to get fans to share their memories. When we started the discussion, we showed them what could be done. And we said, “The true power of it is that you’re probably going to generate some really cool content.” But until we show it to them, there’s always this question mark: How is this going to happen, and what is it going to look like?
Nirvana posted the content on their Facebook page, and there was just a ton of engagement from real fans. You could imagine walking into their rooms, as if they had a collage of posters. It was the feeling of going back in time and seeing what kind of memories people had. It was about mixing pictures with videos and adding a personal touch to it. People posted pictures of their homes, using a single type of media. And some people just posted text. Other people posted a picture with a SoundCloud file.
It shows that Webdoc is about this ability to say it in any way that makes sense to you.
Then, to go back to the birthday example I was talking about earlier, on a band member’s birthday, One Direction managed to get over 10,000 posts. And they were very different from the ones in the Nirvana example. This shows that the personalities of the fans that follow a given band are all different. Fans express themselves very differently, and it’s key they have the opportunity to express themselves in ways that fit their personality.
Creating things like this before was impossible. Fans are able to express themselves through the different Webdoc tools without having to learn anything. They sign up, and they can just start posting their webdocs. It reminds me in many ways of the original idea of “fan mail,” which was always people writing and making drawings. This is the closest thing to it on a digital level. The Web brings the unique ability to make this “fan mail” public in a single space. It’s all the fans of a particular band finding themselves in one place talking about the same thing. And you get this very powerful movement. I share my own posts, but I also get to see what other people are posting. That stimulates the fan base and strengthens the bonds between fans of a particular band and each other and fans and the band itself.
And do you have any other examples?
VB:
Swedish House Mafia is very popular in Europe and growing in the U.S. as well. The band wanted to get their fans involved in the design of their new single called “Antidote.” They asked fans to submit their t-shirt design on Webdoc. The cool thing was that all the photos were visible to everyone. So, it was stimulating their fan base and enriching the community. The quality of the submissions was simply amazing.
Then, the band selected the top 10 and came back to the fans and said, “These are the 10 we selected. We want you to vote.” And again, they put up all the designs and let people in the community vote. It was on their Facebook page, but they did it through Webdoc.
That’s great. And you guys have an app you can install on Facebook.
VB:
Exactly. And that’s a perfect segue to another example. We believe you have to engage your fans at all times. So, The Script is in the recording studio right now. They were playing with something called “money shots.” You take a bill, fold it in half and put the face of the person on the bill in line with your own and take the picture. They were having a lot of fun, so they thought, “We should really ask the fans to do the same thing. It would be great to see what theirs look like.” So, they made a video and used Webdoc to post it. The video basically said, “Hey guys, post your money shots here.” Using Webdoc, they found a way to group together their fans from all over the world in a single, social place around some original, rich content. Some of them are really, really funny. Again, it’s a testimonial to the fact that their fan base is not just in the UK. You have people from all over the world participating. And all the fans are having fun while browsing what other people are doing and gaining inspiration for their own photos.
It’s very simple, yet it’s so powerful that you can get your fans to communicate. And it’s the fact that everything is in one place, so you can see it all at once. If I were to do this on Facebook, I would be able to show it to my friends on my own stream. But maybe my friends are not fans of The Script. So, I wouldn’t see all the other cool posts from fans in Korea or other places that I’m certainly not friends with because I don’t live there or speak the language. There are no boundaries here, and it’s very similar to Twitter; I get to connect to people who have shared interests and see what they’re doing.
And that’s an amazing campaign, too.
VB:
To get back to your point about Facebook, we have an app currently. But the Facebook pages have just changed, so we released something new now that everyone has switched over. The app has much bigger icons so the content is featured more prominently on your timeline. And, like the new Facebook pages, you can bring forward different views. The default view will be the timeline. But the second default is the photos. And using Webdoc I can put any other views I want. As an example, one of the views The Script put in was these “money shots.” When you click on it, you get that view. And the view is the same on Facebook as what you see on Webdoc. You can see all the posts on your page, and people are able to participate.
The new Facebook app provides a social space for your fans to interact. You can change that social space on a daily basis if you want. One day it could be the “money shots,” the next day it could be “Share your personal stories about the first concert you went to/your favorite music video/your favorite song.” Regardless of what you choose to highlight, you’re able to get fans to interact through rich media posts and content all in one space.
To learn more about Vincent Borel and his platform and see an introductory video, visit the Webdoc site.
As an artist, you need to take advantage of a variety of different marketing tools available to you in order to help tell your story, connect personally with your fans and turn more people onto your music. But sometimes it can be overwhelming to try to keep up with all the latest mobile and tech apps and know which ones are actually going to be useful to you, and which ones will just distract you from your most important task – creating and performing great music.
The SXSW music conference in Austin just wrapped up a couple weeks ago and, over the years has been integral to jump-starting the careers of many musicians. However, in the past few years, the tech- and social-media-focused component of the festival – SXSW Interactive – has introduced many game-changing apps to musicians and music fans worldwide. Even Twitter got its 160-character start at SXSW in 2007 by mounting TVs along conference hallways and streaming live tweets from attendees. Since that year, attendance at SXSW has tripled and SXSW Interactive has become a launching pad for the latest platforms and mobile apps.
The folks at PromotionalCodes.net — a site that provides an array of resources to those who invest in products and services online — recently put together an info graph that outlines the most influential tech start-ups that have come out of SXSW in the past few years. The graph also points out four different “apps to watch” that emerged from SXSW Interactive 2012 and were most closely aligned with the conference theme of the year, which was “convergence” (and in mobile app terms, that means the integration of “social media and daily life”):
Source: PromotionalCodes.net
As SXSW has become more and more crowded with artist showcases, it is interesting to note that SXSW Interactive seems to have developed as a more substantive launching point for tech startups, whereas – while still an important networking and live performance opportunity – the live music part of the conference has become somewhat of a challenging environment for artists trying to get heard and reach new audiences.
What’s your experience with using apps and mobile tech in your marketing? How has your career been impacted by these apps or by other types of technology? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.
Kristin Bredimus is Vice President of Community & Artist Relations at OurStage, a music-centric social media platform that provides undiscovered artists with unique opportunities to share their music to fans and industry people. With over a decade of experience in music business, Kristin got her start photographing local bands while attending art school in Boston, which eventually led her to a career as an artist manager helping musicians through the process of recording, music releases, touring, negotiating record and licensing deals and promotion. She went on to become the Director of the NEMO Music Festival – where she managed over 400 artists on 30 stages across three days – and the Boston Music Awards. She started working with OurStage in 2007 as a consultant, working her way up to her current role as an advocate and advisor to the more than 225,000 artists and 4.5 million fans that use the platform.
Kristin recently talked to me about how her passion for working with emerging and independent artists began and how the OurStage platform can help musicians find opportunities to grow their careers. She also provided some advice to bands that want to get their music heard and build a loyal fan base.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, Kristin. How did you get into the music business?
KB:
I actually got into the music industry through photography. I was a photography major at the Massachusetts College of Art, and I started to take band photos for people I knew in bands to help get their promo shots together. In doing this, I inevitably became friends with some of the bands. And being a Bostonian, we have a really large, eclectic music scene. So, I had a bunch of friends who were either musicians or artist managers. Initially I was trying to connect the bands that I had photographed with different managers I was friends with. The bands were all baby bands, so my friends that were artist managers said, “Until we can start making money from a band, it’s really premature for them to start working with people of our caliber.” But one of them said, “If you’re interested in working for this one particular band, I’d be happy to coach you on what you need to do to be an artist manager.”
That’s essentially how it started. I went from photographing a band, to managing a band called Hero Pattern that was based in New Jersey. My friend Ami Bennitt, who was the manager of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, gave me tips on what to do. Then, I started networking. I took an approach where I sat down with every member of the band and had them give me a list of every band and every industry contact that they had. Then I started trying to figure out how I could get in front of people who could positively influence their career. At the same time, in my own community in Boston, a friend of mine was taking over the NEMO Music Festival and the Boston Music Awards, so he asked if I would help out with that. Then I eventually became the Director of that music festival and of the Boston Music Awards.
Initially, I was trying to just make as many inroads in the music industry as possible. And having worked in art – and I’d also worked in film for a while – I was really surprised by how effortlessly I could start to network. It seemed like the music industry – even more than the film and art industries – was really propelled by personal relationships. People at all different levels in the ecosystem were really willing to talk and be helpful as long as I respected their time, presented myself and my clients in a professional manner and there was genuine talent and drive behind any artist I tried to position.
From there, my personal career evolved. I stopped managing bands. And I sought out different jobs opportunities that allowed me to work with many more independent artists, because I’m interested in working with artists as they’re making their way out in their careers. I enjoy working with people that are hungry, passionate and creative. And I think as an artist gets more and more successful in their career, particularly in the traditional model of the music industry, a lot of times there is a lot of other people that are kind of informing their image and their music. And it becomes less and less about what the artist wants. So, I’ve always really enjoyed working with an artist in the beginning and helping them make some decisions, but also trying to find that balance between being a smart business person and still being an artist.
I’ve worked with a handful of people at labels throughout the years. And they had worked with many multi-platinum artists. A few of them in particular would only hang up the Gold record for each artist, and I would ask them why. They would say, “That was the most meaningful one – that first stretch to Gold.”
KB:
Yes. It’s funny, because I think a lot of people working in the industry all have different motivations. I think because I was a visual artist, I’ve always really enjoyed working with artists as they are emerging.
That’s why the NEMO Music Festival and the Boston Music Awards were great for me to be a part of, because they were really helping to illuminate the emerging artist. Those two events were part of a company called TRP Sports and Entertainment. So, I essentially ran their music division. And we would do a lot of other music-centric promotion with brands. In doing this, I was introduced to OurStage because another friend in the music industry was hired to work for the company and basically help make introductions to people and companies within the music industry that had access to a talent pool of emerging artists. At launch, OurStage needed to help seed the site with emerging talent. So, I went to my database of a few thousand artists and told them about it.
I eventually became an official consultant for OurStage. I’ve been working with the company in some capacity since they launched in 2007. In 2011, I was promoted to Vice President of Community & Artist Relations. It’s nice to be still working within the music industry, still working with independent artists and to have a job and a career that continues to grow. I know it’s been really hard for a lot of my peers over the last few years as the industry has changed. I’m very appreciative of my job.
I think if you work in the music industry, you have to be very flexible and get creative. So, finding an angle that’s technology based is a good example of that flexibility and creativity. We actually work with a lot of music industry majors at Northeastern. When I’m interviewing the next round of prospective co-ops, I always tell them that working for a company like OurStage will actually give them an advantage, because they will need to learn a lot about technology and social media. And a lot of different elements of the music industry will be touched upon, because within OurStage, we do music licensing, produce large events to give artists opportunities, etc.
I was at OurStage kind of early on and was actually in conversations with someone about Musak. I remembered going to the site and thinking, “Is this a battle of the bands? Is this a community? Is this social media?” I remember feeling very overwhelmed by it. I have clients that use it, but I haven’t been back in a while. Clearly, you have a lot of traffic and a lot of registered participants. Tell me a little bit about the direction and the benefit this site provides to artists.
KB:
Everything that you said is totally valid. Because the company is very much a startup, part of what we struggled to do is provide a lot of different value for a lot of different silos within the industry. And sometimes we do that with grace, and sometimes we are aware that our offering needs to be advanced. Part of what we’re doing for 2012 is to really make all our offerings very clear to all the different types of users that come to the site, whether they are music lovers, music industry people or independent artists.
What OurStage is best known for is being a competition platform. Every single month we offer unique opportunities to emerging artists. The intention is to create opportunities that can really be a catalyst in an artist’s career – something to get them on the radar of a larger pool of people in the industry that can influence their career and a larger audience of fans. We do things like run “opening act” competition for artists giving them the opportunity to open for people like Bon Jovi, John Mayer, Kid Rock and other artists. We’ll also do collaborations where an artist will be asked to collaborate with some sample tracks from artists like T-Pain or John Legend. We’ve also done competitions that award the artist recording and studio time with influential producers like Mike Flynn, who does A&R at EPIC and is a producer who has worked with The Fray and Sara Bareilles.
It’s basically about creating unique opportunities that bands can’t get elsewhere. We don’t charge any money to artists that are awarded these opportunities. Essentially, artists are asked to create a profile on the site. And we encourage them to really fill out their profiles and their EPKs, then enter their best original songs into our monthly music competition.
The types of industry-related opportunities we offer vary every month. And it’s not available for all genres of music. Generally speaking, they’re divided up between pop, rock, country and urban opportunities. Even if we don’t have an industry-centric opportunity, we give away $5,000 each month to an emerging artist. It’s really intended to give them an amount of money that can fund recording, a tour, a van or will provide the artist with whatever it is they need.
The paranoid artist within me – because that’s how I got into this business – would say, “That’s great that you don’t charge, but how does OurStage make money?”
KB:
We make money a few different ways. We make money through ad sales. We also make money through our sponsored competitions, because it’s really an interactive branding play for some of these artists and companies.
Well, and I would imagine if, for example, you’re giving away Shure microphones, that would be great PR for them.
KB:
Exactly. We also have a couple partners who have invested in the company, one of which is MTV Networks.
We are also looking to build out a suite of tools that will be something we would charge artists and industry people for. But of course, there would be a value to utilizing those tools. That’s something that we’re working on in 2012. When we get to the point where there is some kind of subscription service, we will of course keep in mind that there has to be real value to the artist, and that our price point needs to be reasonable.
Having managed bands, I am always very skeptical of any type of business that wants money from an artist. I’m also sensitive to the fact that a lot of artists are working crappy day jobs so they are available to go on tour and record. As a result, they don’t have an endless supply of funds. So, if they are going to spend any money, they need to spend it very wisely. We also have to understand what their individual economics are, because they have to take care of their recording costs, merchandise, gas for touring, etc.
That’s part of what my role is within the company. I act as the artist advocate. OurStage wants to be artist friendly. Whenever we make any decision, the artist is paramount to any choices that we make.
Other than the contest platform, you mentioned licensing and some other parts of the company. What are some of OurStage’s other elements?
KB:
It all ties into the competition. Essentially, when an artist enters a competition, what ends up happening is that a community of music lovers starts to sort all the songs that are competing in what we call a “channel.” At the end of it, an artist can win a prize, whether it’s cash or an opportunity.
What then happens, which a lot of artists aren’t aware of, is that we then generate a music chart. We display the top 100 artists that are ranked within every music channel. And that top 100 artists list then becomes a way for my team to start sorting the gems. We might identify an artist we want to feature in our online magazine. We often do features on our emerging artists, because want to be one of the first voices writing about them. We know that a lot of times our artists are just getting out there, so it’s very important for them to have a well-written, concise bit of press they can add to their EPK and press clippings.
Another thing we do is source music for music licensing opportunities. And that’s one of the reasons Dave Bason at the MGMT Company is working with OurStage. He and a small team of people that we’re building right now are setting up a licensing division. And OurStage is editorially vetting artists from these top 100 charts that a larger community of fans have vetted. Then, we’re approaching select artists and seeing if we can represent their catalog and position licensing opportunities for them. The idea is that OurStage would act as their publishing administrator. Dave and his team would position the song. If licenses are secured, then OurStage would get a percentage off the top of the master and sync fee licenses, although our percentages are largely below the industry standard. Because, again, we want to always be perceived as being artist friendly first and foremost. That division is just getting underway right now. And we have an entertainment lawyer who is working within that division as well.
Another thing I’m doing right now is that some of the program directors over at the X Games are looking for opening acts to perform for their headline acts, who are performing at Belly Up as part of the X Game week of events. Because of the collective relationships that people at OurStage have, people will come to us and say, “I need an artist for this opportunity.” If we have enough lead time, we’ll run a promotion around it. If we don’t we’re still going to present the opportunity to our artists.
With X Games, everything is very time sensitive, so I’ve gone through and made recommendations to the people that are programming the music, suggesting openers for several of their nights. And that happens a lot. And promoting some of these opportunities for artists is something OurStage isn’t necessarily as strong at doing. And this is because we’ve been operating without a marketing director for a while. Again, this is another thing we’re changing in 2012. (Editor’s Note: The X Games/OurStage event did not end up coming to fruition this year.)
All these things that happen behind the scenes will start to bubble up, so artists better understand what the company can offer them. And the hope is that the industry and fans will better understand the role we hope to play in emerging music.
While I realize success has a thousand fathers, is there a success story you can point to where OurStage made a huge difference in a particular artist’s or band’s career?
KB:
That’s a question we get asked a lot. The reality is, when we work with artists, it’s in the very early days of them having a career. Having been an artist, I’m sure you know that any type of success doesn’t happen overnight. The way I like to look at how we positively impact careers is in terms of getting an artist to the next step.
Which artists have had their careers impacted because they were associated with OurStage? Our biggest success story is an electronica act called Plushgun. Plushgun was discovered on our site and signed by Tommy Silverman. So, that’s an example of a band that got a record contract.
But the things we do in general are small steps that get an artist closer to whatever their overall goal is.
You guys have clearly positively impacted dozens, if not hundreds of careers. Unfortunately, people usually ask people whether or not you were responsible for “making” a famous band.
KB:
I personally feel like the future of the music industry is the evolution of a very robust middle class. And it’s a middle class of artists whose career and success is defined by being able to quit their day jobs. So, they’re able to support themselves by virtue of their music, whether they do that through sales, touring or music licensing opportunities; they are artists who are able to make money off their music. Those are the types of artists we help bring to success and get closer to their goals every single day.
There’s an artist who in 2011 had a lot of success as a result of OurStage. His name is Austin Renfroe, and he’s based in Nashville. He has an indie pop sound, and he’s been a big hit in the college/NACA market. I spoke to him actually when he was showcasing at NACA, and he had already booked over 60 dates. He tours about 250 dates per year. In 2011, he was featured in The OurStage Panel, a web series we’ve created. The basic concept is, 16 artists from OurStage get their music positioned in front of 4-5 panelists who are heavy hitters in the music industry. The panel discusses each single and gives some career advice. Then, the artists advance to another round, and there’s a live showcase. One artist won a series of mentoring opportunities and a video EPK to be produced by Mitchell Stuart. Austin was one of the finalists. He got some attention based on this web series. He also won a competition we did with Intel. And he’s actually at NAMM right now with Intel doing some acoustic showcases. And he won $10,000 in cash and a whole suite of tools and gear from Intel, Cakewalk and Gibson.
That’s definitely a success story. Contributing to artists making a living is really important.
You have a pretty unique viewpoint given your particular music industry background and career trajectory. Do you have any parting words of advice for artists trying to make it in the current climate?
KB:
I understand that a lot of artists start to fatigue when it comes to the internet and all the different social media platforms or any web-based platforms or communities. My advice to them is to really understand that you have no control over how or where somebody discovers music. So, if you have the energy, I absolutely recommend having a presence across as many different platforms and within as many different communities as you can. I understand it takes a lot of work. But you just never know who the people are who are loyal to a particular community. And you don’t want to be eliminated from another community.
One example I often see is, a band will have their free social media home and will spend most of their time there. It will have all their updates, their calendar and their music. But a lot of times, when I’m looking for music myself, I might not first go to the website they consider their home. So, then I have to do this scavenger hunt across the internet to try to learn more about the artist. A lot of people don’t have the time or inclination to really search, especially when it comes to new music and new artists. I recommend that wherever you have an online presence, always keep it updated, and include as much information as possible. You should have a concise, well-written bio. And you should have any industry achievements – because that’s always a great way for someone like myself to start to filter out a band or get a sense of how professional they are.
I also recommend having some type of live performance footage, because a lot of times people are starting to vet artists from what they see on the web. Then, make sure that your calendars are always updated. Musicians might not have the funds and the opportunity to be recording music on a yearly basis. But it’s really important to those that will be invested in a new artist’s career to see that the artist is active. The way the average person makes an assessment on how active the artist is, is through their releases or the amount of shows that are in their calendar. If you haven’t released anything for three years and you don’t have any gigs listed in your calendar, that tells me maybe you’re not really serious, your band is inactive, or you broke up. And I’ll just move on to the next artist.
To learn more about Kristin Bredimus and the work she does, visit the official OurStage website. You can also check out the company on Twitter and Facebook.
Todd Tate is a consultant who manages web and social media strategy for musicians ranging from emerging artists to Grammy®-award winners. He is also a musician himself. Todd got his start in the music playing in garage bands as a teenager and went on to study jazz composition, performance and audio production at San Jose State University. After college, he went onto open San Francisco’s Blue Room Studios, where he was an audio engineer for countless CDs, including the 1997 Grammy®-nominated jazz release by Carlos “Patato” Valdez. Todd also served as co-founder and CEO for AngryCoffee.com, a company that launched the first publicly-available web-based interface to Napster and Napster-like networks at the dawn of digital music. He is also the Community Architect for the SF MusicTech Summit, a conference that brings together visionaries in the music/technology space, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce.
Todd recently talked to me about how he got involved in music and technology and shared some advice for artists who want to gain more visibility online, grow their fan bases and establish solid careers as professional musicians.
How did you first get involved in the music industry, and what brought you to where you are today?
TT:
First and foremost, I’m a long-time musician. I started playing guitar when I was 13 in heavy metal garage bands. And I quickly realized I wanted to go to college and major in music. So, I went to San Jose State University fresh out of high school at 19-years old and majored in jazz performance. I quickly changed that concentration to jazz composition and arranging with a minor in audio production. I got the keys to the recording studio and was the studio manager for a couple years.
I worked my way through college recording heavy metal bands in the recording studio there. I was also the supervisor for the student union’s Community sound system, which was a really professional set up. I learned to work that pretty quickly and would mix bands that came through touring at San Jose State. I supervised and trained other students also. I worked with Firehose and some other really well-known acts during the ‘80s at the amphitheater there.
I actually mixed a popular funk rock band that came through the San Jose State studio called Colorwild, and they encouraged me to join their band. So, I started commuting to Santa Cruz a few times a week and rehearsing. We got really serious as we watched some of our friends get record deals. We packed up our bags and all moved to the same apartment building in San Francisco. That band included Randy Emata – who is now a popular L.A. producer – on keyboards. We played the local club circuit around here in San Francisco.
I also started a production studio here in San Francisco that operated in the Mission District from ’94-‘97 called the Blue Room Studios, named because the recording room was blue. We did a little research as to what would be the most mellow or inspiring color to paint a studio, and it was a light baby blue. I had a lot of experience with Latin jazz in college, and a local producer really liked the Room and really liked my experience with Latin music, so he brought a lot of his business over to the Room and threw me a lot of business that couldn’t afford him at the time. I ended up working on Carlos “Patato” Valdez’s 1997 Grammy®-nominated release, which was a really big honor for me. Tito Puente ended up beating us out.
We had some other luminaries come through the Room. We did all the tracks for Train’s first record. I was the guy who attracted the band into the room and was responsible for sales, marketing and I also participated in a lot of hands-on audio engineering.
During that time, I continued to play in bands. And I ended up playing in a band with the guys who were working at Webmonkey at the time, which was the subsidiary of Wired magazine. Webmonkey was an internet tutorial site. So, they’d have tutorials on how to write HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc. I said to my friends, “Wow! This internet thing is getting pretty big.” And a buddy of mine was working for WebMD making really good money writing code. So, they thought since I was an audio engineer and a musician, I should learn HTML and write free tutorials on how to manipulate Internet audio. So, I locked myself in my apartment for thirty days, learned HTML and wrote four tutorials, which included step-by-step instructions, plus screen shots. And the tutorials I made were “How to Make an MP3,” “How to Get Audio into a Flash Movie,” “How to Get Audio into a QuickTime movie” and demo’ed all those things. Then I also did a demo on “How to Manipulate Beatnik Internet Audio,” which was Thomas Dolby’s Web 1.0 play. It was how to sonify the Web so you could scroll over a menu bar and program it to play different scales with a variety of sounds. So, it had a better sound and audio engine than the standard MIDI stuff that first came out on the Web when it first emerged.
I showed the demos to my friend after I finished them, and he thought that the Website should be a company instead of my resume. So, AngryCoffee was born. We found an angel investor that gave us some money and an office South of Market with some desks. We had three full-time people and an extended team of 13. We started offering Web tutorial content to syndicate to e-Learning companies.
Before we knew it, it was May or June of 2000, and everything was crashing down and the whole bubble was exploding. We knew we had to do something spectacular. So, we decided to pull a publicity stunt – hack into Napster. We launched the first publicly-available, Web-based interface to Napster and called it “Percolator”, and the tagline was “Percolating Independent Artists to the Top.” It was just a simple search box on the front door of our website. I know this will sound ridiculous now, but at the time we were trying to get bands to pay us $10 to have their own page on our site. It would include a photo, two legal MP3s, a short bio and a link to their website. What we were doing was taking the Napster search returns and pointing people to our independent artists.
That’s pretty impressive.
TT:
It really took off. We had over 80 major media mentions over three months. I was a panelist on Gavin 2000. Gavin was a radio reporting agency that no longer exists now. I was introduced to the panel by Ted Cohen as “the panel’s pirate” at the time. He had just passed up the gig for CEO of Napster and became the VP of New Media for EMI. And he said to me, “What you are doing is really cool. It would be a real bummer to see you guys go.” So, I told him we’d like to experiment with this thing. But of course, we didn’t want to get sued, and we wanted to do the right thing, because we were all musicians ourselves.
Ted set us up with some interesting meetings and experiments. We got to help promote Radiohead’s Kid A, so at one point we were streaming the entire Kid A record from our website a month before it was released. After it appeared #1 on Billboard, we took the search engine down. Time moved on, and we had some meetings with some people very interested in acquiring the company.. By the end of 2000, we received a $20 million letter of intent from an Italian publicly-traded company. They really liked the brand and the team. It all resulted in a $5 million due diligence process the following April and the result was a pretty good term sheet on moving forward. They went back to Italy and simply couldn’t secure the licensing to make the product legal. So, the acquisition didn’t go through. And shortly thereafter, the Italian stock market crashed.
But I’ve always played music and have kept my eye on technology. Over the years, any time I’ve been in a band, I’ve used technology to share my music online and have helped my friends use technology to share their music online.
And your current gig is focused on digital marketing and consulting. And you also do work with the SF MusicTech Summit as well.
TT:
I’m the Community Architect for the SF MusicTech Summit. Since the inaugural event in 2008, I’ve helped cultivate sponsors, attendees and panelists. I’m retained a couple months before every event, and I reach out to the entire ecosystem of Web music technology, whatever that may be. I vet dozens of companies around every event and then throw them to the executive producer, and he takes it from there and arranges all the panels and closes the sponsorship deals. And then I act as a co-host the day of the event and handle special projects and some of the more popular panelists. As an example, a year ago, I spent half the day handling Ben Folds.
So, tell me a little bit about your consulting business.
TT:
At the core, I’m a musician and a technologist. I’m a web and social media strategy consultant that specializes in production. I’m not one of those guys that just tells people what they should do. I actually build things online for the artist and then try to empower them to operate the entire system by themselves. I’ll build them a website. I usually use some integration of WordPress and will take a really nice paid-for theme and will hack it up so it becomes different from what it was originally. Then, I’ll teach the artist how to log in, blog, change things. Then I use the available social media music tools to integrate with their website and Facebook page, whether that be from RootMusic, SoundCloud, Official.fm, etc. I try to use the tools that are free, because most musicians only have so much money to deal with everything.
And there are a million people with their hands out now.
TT:
Yeah. Lately I’ve been picking up some clients that have a bit of a budget, so I’ve been diving into Topspin a little more, which is great. I’m looking forward to working with that platform a little bit more. Another is Cash Music.
As a guy who is the community architect for the MusicTech Summit, a guy who is a performing musician and a guy who has been Web savvy for this long and has been helping people to make sure their digital strategies are intact, can you give me a list of some of the most common things you see artists doing wrong when they come to you for help?
TT:
If you’re an artist, there’s so much noise out there and so many bands that I believe very strongly you really have to be performing live to get things rolling. You have to start with a locality. A lot of people say that the Internet has leveled out the playing field. But it’s actually made the noise level come up. So, as a band, you can’t just put up a website, give away free music and expect for it to go ballistic. It happens sometimes. But you really have to base things around at least a few short stints of shows. You need the live shows to collect email addresses and get an email list going and get Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc.
One thing I’ve been amazed by in the past is that people don’t know how affordable running Facebook ads can be, especially within just your own locality. That’s definitely one thing I would start with.
As far as concepts for bands go with an online strategy, I’ve got a short mantra or motto: *Find*Listen*Share*Buy*Fan*Go* I describe it in a blog post I wrote for my own site last year. But for bands, I really suggest putting together a good-looking website. I personally have been encouraging websites that don’t have too much going on. If you are currently performing live and you have a video and music, having a front page that just has a couple calls to action that make users do something is great. You should have a front door with a really large, great-looking, high-resolution photo on it. And if you have a video, embed it on the front too. Then, have some sort of a free giveaway in exchange for an email address. From what I’ve seen lately, this is very successful.
And it’s great to have all these social media channels, but it’s also good for the band to operate the social media channels themselves. So, I would narrow that part down to what’s really hot today, which is Twitter and Facebook. Try to build the followers there and engage with those people every day.
You mentioned calls to action. A really good statistic came up not too long ago that you’re twice as likely to get a click-through to follow if you have the simple word “Follow” in front of your Twitter badge instead of just the Twitter badge itself. It’s amazing how gullible we all are as Web travelers that a simple “do this” makes us respond.
TT:
The blog post I wrote that I referred to earlier is really relevant to what we’re talking about and really valuable to bands. It’s basically “search engine optimization” and what I call “social media optimization.” There are so many free services – new or already existing Web music technology companies that are building tools for musicians. They make them free because they want to aggregate all this content. One of the best things to do is sign up for more than a few of these services – especially because they’re free, and most musicians don’t have much of a budget – and try to claim a username. That goes back to having a band name that is actually searchable.
Here’s a great example: I’m doing some work for Gift of Gab right now, who is the non-self-titled world’s greatest freestyle rapper. He’s the rapper for Blackalicious, the classic positive hip hop group. His name is also a saying, so for search engine optimization, it’s a little difficult. If you just search “Gift of Gab” … you’ll get Wikipedia articles, the reference from literature, etc. And then when you use analytic tools to measure sentiment online about his brand, it’s quite polluted with people saying things like, “I’ve got the gift of gab, don’t you wish you had it?” on Twitter, etc.
So, continuing on this subject, I’m working with my own band that’s not performing right now and it’s called “Life Love Misery.” It’s kind of a unique keyword string for a band name. It presents its own search term challenges. Whenever I see a new service, I claim that username immediately. So, I’ve got SoundCloud.com/lifelovemisery, Facebook.com/lifelovemisery, Official.fm/lifelovemisery, etc. I’ve claimed that on every service imaginable. I’ve got another act in which I play the dobro called Sayla Dobro. So, every new startup that comes along, I claim that username. If you search for those names, I have basically flooded the Web with places to find those two acts: Life Love Misery and Sayla Dobro.
The vanity URL is very valuable. It’s a huge bummer when I start working with the band, and either they’ve picked the band name and have already signed up for a bunch of social media sites/Web music tech tool sites, and they’ve chosen their band’s name with “music” at the end. It just doesn’t look as slick.
That’s my take on search engine optimization or social media optimization. Doing this, you can flood the first page of search returns with your brand or band name. It’s pretty rare that someone will search for your music and then go three-pages deep on Google.
Actually, according to statistics, 90% of people never leave the top 3 of the first page.
TT:
There you go. If you look at your search returns as an artist, you really want your website to be the first return at the very top. If you find that’s not working, the thing to do is to start corralling your fans through your social media channels to your website as opposed to always saying, “Find us on Facebook” or “Find us on Twitter.” For me, my new Google+ page comes out on top, then some images come out second, then my website’s coming out as a third return. Then iTunes is coming up fourth, Facebook is coming up fifth … and I can’t seem to get rid of Myspace. It’s coming up sixth.
Then, we’ve got another service called Onesheet, which was designed and launched by the same gentleman who coded ArtistData, which is another great tool for musicians.
One last thing I’d like to say to encourage entrepreneurs and developers that want to get into this space is that there is just an incredible amount of APIs and open platforms available right now for people to get their hands dirty. There are also the Music Hack Day tours put on by the Echonest that provide great opportunities to go out and meet other like-minded developers. They go on in all the major urban areas: San Francisco; Boston; New York; London; etc. Great tools for musicians and consumers alike are coming out of those events.
To learn more about Todd Tate and the work he does within the music space, visit his official website. Also, check out his blog entry about search engine optimization and social media optimization for musicians trying to get more visibility for their music here. Todd is available to assist SF Bay Area high-growth digital music or media companies in a business / community development role as well as vetting web based music tech companies for forward thinking VC firms.
Take a look at the SF MusicTech Summit, held this year on Monday, February 13 and register at the following link: http://sfmts10.eventbrite.com/. Tickets are currentley around $200, but you can get a discount by typing in the code (promotoddtate).
Chris Woods is the Executive Vice President and COO of TuneSat, a technology-based service that offers a solution to the problems of inaccurate performance reporting, lost royalty payments and copyright infringement within the music space. A graduate of Berklee School of Music and a proficient musician, composer, engineer and producer with over 15 years of industry experience, Chris has created music branding packages for many television networks, including Fox Sports, Versus, Comcast, Fuel and Big Ten. He co-founded TuneSat in 2007 along with Scott Schreer and has helped build the company’s technology offering, including surveying, acquisition and development of audio fingerprinting algorithms. Chris is also a regular speaker at industry events, including CMJ, the Billboard Film & TV Music Conference, the NARM Convention and the CISAC Copyright Summit.
I recently spoke to Chris about his experience in music and technology, how TuneSat works for artists and some sound advice he has for musicians that want to get their music placed in film, television and on the Internet.
Thanks so much for speaking with me, Chris. How did you get involved in the music industry, and how did the idea for TuneSat come about?
CW:
Like a lot of people who are in the music industry as performers, musicians or artists, I got started at an early age. I played guitar and piano growing up and played in rock bands. After a couple semesters in college I decided I wanted to work in music, but I didn’t want that career to be traveling around in a band with a bunch of smelly dudes working for $50 a day. I decided I’d like to get a better understanding of the music industry and get involved in a way that wasn’t just trying to be a rock star – and ended up at Berklee in the late 90’s. Outside of music, I have a real passion for technology, so I studied a lot of the music technology programs and majored in music synthesis. I learned a lot about creating things like reverb algorithms and effects. Berklee is a great place to develop a large understanding for the tech side of music and audio.
When I graduated, I came to New York and got a job as an engineer and producer at a jingle company. While I was there I met and worked with Scott Schreer, who has a rich past in the music business. He had a vision to automate how music on TV is reported to PROs and used Watermark technology to learn how much music was reported correctly with the current manual process. Using a production music catalog that he owned, we tracked the performances on TV for a couple of years and found that of half a million detected performances, less than 20% made it to a cue sheet. So, we really had a lot of information by using that catalog that showed a huge discrepancy in how music is used vs. how much is actually reported to PRO’s.
So, your product really brings to task not so much the PROs but the people who report to the PROs.
CW:
Exactly. It just highlights a broken link in the chain. It’s not really the PROs that are at fault here. It’s the mechanism of reporting. It’s a manual process and the same process that it was when they started almost a century ago. It’s still a paper business, which seems kind of crazy in this day and age, when you have all this technology that can do it for you.
We wanted to move away from watermarking in 2004, because we knew it wasn’t the end-all-be-all. The problem with watermarking is that it’s a “going forward” technology, and only recordings that have the watermark embedded in them will be detected. So, let’s say I watermark the White album today, only versions with that watermark will be detected. Everything that’s been in distribution will never be detected. Fingerprinting solves this issue.
Sure. It’s dependent on an additive. And because of the Internet, things are spread everywhere. So there’s no guarantee you’ll get even a percentage of the marketplace.
CW:
Yes. Fingerprinting has been around for a while. But before, it was cost prohibitive, because it’s very memory and CPU intensive. Around 2004, the cost started going down on hardware, and it became a viable solution.
We scoured the universe testing with every major and minor fingerprint technology out there at the time. The benchmark for the technology we needed was that it would have to find the music in a highly dirty audio environment and calculate the amount of time it played, because for the most part music performances on TV play by duration. In sports broadcasting, half the time you can’t even tell music is playing because there’s so much extra noise and it’s so low in the mix.
After months of testing with various technologies, we found a guy in France who had developed the holy grail of audio fingerprinting algorithms – Sylvain Demongeot. His particular fingerprint algorithm was by far the most robust we’d ever tested, and had the ability to detect music in as few as three seconds, even in a dirty audio environment such as crowd noise, voiceovers, or sound effects. We brought him into the fold and started developing what would ultimately become TuneSat.
And how does the business work?
CW:
It’s a subscription-based company. Anyone can join: small, medium, or large. We charge a monthly subscription fee based on the number of songs you put into the system and the territories you want to track. We expanded in the fall of 2009, built another data center outside of Paris, and started monitoring broadcasting in France, UK, Germany and Italy.
A little more than a month ago, we added eight new countries to our monitoring lineup: Spain; The Netherlands; Austria; Switzerland; Sweden; Denmark; Norway; Finland. It was a pretty large expansion for us.
We also developed a platform on our website where anybody can go and sign up anytime and anywhere, by picking which territories to monitor, the number of songs they want to put into their account, upload their files and push a button to fingerprint it. Clients can then get access to their TuneSat account and near-real-time detection data. The detections typically come in within an hour after the broadcast. We provide the date, time, channel, show, episode, number of plays, and more.
Is this a product geared more towards people who have larger libraries and a significant income from sync? Or is your average guy in a band going to benefit from this?
CW:
The size of the catalog really doesn’t matter. We have clients with 10 tracks in the system and clients with 250,000 tracks. Our clients represent a really wide range. You can see a good sampling of them on our website at www.tunesat.com/clients
So what would be the benefit of opening a TuneSat account for people that fit into the category of what you mentioned before – “a bunch of smelly dudes” just scraping by, touring in a van?
CW:
That’s part of the expanded services. We used to have larger tiers as a minimum in our system – starting at 50 tracks. Now our entry tier is “up to 10 tracks,” which starts at $10 per month. For that amount, you can upload and track 10 songs on television all across the U.S. The value in the data is to know exactly when and where your music is being used and using that information to make sure you’re being properly paid.
We are in the midst of launching an Internet monitoring service, which will expand our client base. What about all the people that don’t have music on TV, but they’re YouTube stars, or they just want to know who’s using their music and where it is. We’ll be monitoring millions of websites for the use of our clients’ music and we’ll provide them with the URLs and contact information when an identification is made.
Musician Coaching:
I would imagine you’re also drilling down on places where people do get paid.
CW:
Absolutely. I’ve been on a number of panels recently where the hot topic is the future of music and the Internet. It’s funny, because a lot of the societies still refer to it as “new media.” And it’s a 20-year old platform. The societies are still struggling to find ways to collect the licensing fees and make the distributions to the right people. It’s a real problem and a real challenge and the only way to solve it is through technology. That’s why we’re getting into the Internet monitoring space – to provide valuable information to the people who either own or administer audio content on the internet specific to music.
It’s just a gut feeling – and I don’t know if you would know this – but I can’t imagine there isn’t a fair amount of fear at PROs surrounding the idea that if they suddenly became accountable for everything that was being played in perfect clarity, there would be no more float; they wouldn’t be able to afford the payments. Is this true?
CW:
I couldn’t have said it better myself. This is a highly disruptive technology, and there is a lot of fear.
And I’m not looking to stir the pot too much. But it is a question that begs answering: How has the technology been received, and how are you guys dealing with that?
CW:
I think the problem is, as you said earlier, that there’s fear: “What about the current system? What happens to that, and how do we transition?” They don’t know. They’ve been trying to figure this out for probably 10-15 years now.
We’ve continued to bring this technology to societies not just domestically, but also internationally. We’ve said, “Here’s a better way to do it.” It’s more transparent, more accountable, and almost instantaneously delivers the detection results. This is a better way to track music usage, and not just for television. As we move into the future, and TV and radio license fees start to drop because licensing fees are being moved over to the internet, they’re going to have to find a way to license websites for the use of music in a very effective way. Otherwise, the whole system will break.
Again, there’s a lot of fear. It’s a disruptive technology, and it certainly challenges the existing business. It’s pretty much the same issue with the PROs in every country.
Musician Coaching:
Are people gaining any traction by having these reports in their hands when they approach PROs to collect royalties?
CW:
Absolutely. We don’t tell people to use TuneSat as a weapon; they should use it as a tool. We have applications that compare digital royalty statements to TuneSat detections. These delta reports show everything that was detected that was not a part of their royalty distribution, which TuneSat clients can use to go file claims with their local society. Right now we’re doing this for four different societies – ASCAP, BMI, PRS and GEMA. We’ll soon add the other societies for the countries we monitor. Our clients have been very successful in using the data to fix the problem, which is the lack of reporting, under reporting and false reporting. The challenges in manual cue sheet reporting are vast.
That’s fantastic. I had no idea how it was being received, or if people were seeing it as voodoo.
CW:
It’s been received well, and we’re not only supplying time-stamped information. We also supply recordings of every captured detection as proof-positive of the use. It’s irrefutable proof. If I capture my song playing on a commercial, I have a recording as proof.
Wow. I didn’t realize that. That’s great.
CW:
Being able to supply recordings of it is a key part of the business. Not only do our clients use it to check their royalty statements and for the business intelligence, but they also monitor for copyright infringement. It’s a much larger problem than we ever thought it would be on television. Obviously, it’s rampant on the Internet. But you’d think broadcasters, production companies and ad agencies would protect themselves more. They really don’t.
The typical TuneSat user finds unlicensed uses within the first couple weeks of service. Then they have the data to go out and take action.
Which of course puts you in an advantageous position.
CW:
Our mission is to empower the rights owners. That’s really what it’s all about.
As somebody who gets his music placed and is also an expert at making sure it gets found, aside from using TuneSat, are there lessons you’ve learned the hard way that you would impart to musicians looking to get their music placed?
CW:
Yes. I’d say for musicians looking to get their content placed or who are just starting out in the music space and looking to get music placed on TV, the most important things are:
To learn more about Chris Woods and his company, visit the TuneSat website.
Scott Ambrose Reilly is the head of U.S. expansion at X5 Music Group, a Stockholm-based non-traditional music label that licenses the catalogs of approximately 50 other companies and repackages the recordings into compilations designed for the digital space. Scott got his start in the industry as a fan and spent years following his favorite artists, particularly Mojo Nixon, as they went on tour. In the late ‘80s, he was hired as Nixon’s road manager, eventually moving onto manage him and many other artists throughout the ‘90s. Through his management duties of jam band God Street Wine, he became an early adopter of the online music movement and was responsible for one of the first band websites as well as one of the first online ticketing systems in the mid ‘90s. His work in the digital space eventually led Amazon to hire him to oversee the launch of its MP3 service. Under his leadership, the company was the first to launch all four major labels in MP3 format, leading to the end of DRM. While at Amazon, he oversaw content acquisition, label relations and global operations for Amazon MP3 worldwide, building a catalog of more than 15 million tracks.
Scott recently spoke to me about the evolution of digital music, the experience of building an all-digital music label. He also delivered some advice for artists that want to successfully market themselves digitally.
Thanks so much for taking some time to talk to me, Scott. How did you get started in the music industry?
SAR:
I started in the business – as many people do – as a fan. If you’re in the music industry, either there was a particular artist that drew you in or you were a musician. I think it would be hard to fall into this business any other way.
In the late ‘80s, I found myself following around Mojo Nixon wherever he played. Then all of a sudden he needed someone to go on the road with him as his career started to take off. Since I was already at all his dates, and even the ones out of town, driving and helping load up the truck just because I wanted to be there, he figured he could con me into the position of going out as road manager and splitting a share of the proceeds at the end of each tour. And that’s what we did for a number of years. I remember the first tour was six-weeks long, and I came home with $400 for the six weeks; I thought it was the greatest thing ever.
From there, I became his manager and started managing other artists. I spent ten years managing artists through the ‘90s. The fortunate thing there is, to this day I still manage Mojo. Because he touches so many different things – radio, television, acting – it gave me great experience there. Then, I was lucky enough to manage a band called God Street Wine in the ‘90s. It was very much on the cutting edge of internet promotion and technology, mainly because of their age and where they went to school. But also, they had a fan who was a college student and was at the cutting edge of a lot of different technologies. He spent all his free time helping the band. So, we were doing internet promotions before the World Wide Web, selling tickets online and doing IRC chats backstage. We launched a website in 1994, which may have been the first band website. Without even realizing how big all this was going to be, I got to see a lot of different parts of the process that was coming up.
When I realized after ten years of full-time management that it wasn’t the right path for me, luckily I had lots of experience to translate to the digital music space.
That’s why I knew your name. I remember doing research at Lava/Atlantic under Jason Flom and trying to find out who this God Street Wine was and what they were doing with the internet.
SAR:
Yes. And I had met Jason a couple times. His wife went to college with the drummer, I think. And Dan Pifer, the bass player ended up going onto become the COO of Orchard and then the COO of Rightsflow.
One of the things I wanted to do in moving from a large, stable company like Amazon to a smaller innovative company like X5 is build the strongest possible team, because I know how important that is. So, I brought Dan Pifer on board. And Griff Morris from Amazon is our chief content officer. I felt that if I was going to do this and do it right, I needed to have the two smartest, hardest-working guys in the field alongside me. Dan came on shortly after I did. And the three of us are the U.S. office of X5 Music.
How did your other experiences lead you to XM, and what is the function of the U.S. office?
SAR:
Amazon was a great experience. There, we basically launched a DRM-free service with all the content and finally putting an end to the inoperability of digital music.
I almost feel like saying, “Thank you” for that.
SAR:
Yeah. It was part of the fun and part of the challenge. And it’s amazing how emotional that decision was for a lot of people in the music business. It seems like a pretty minor blip now in hindsight. It was great to launch that in the U.S. and in the UK, Germany, France and Japan.
X5 was one of our best vendors – this little label out of Stockholm that we hadn’t heard of, as quick, smart and flexible as any we’d seen. When we did a promotion with them, and it worked, they said, “How can we do more of these?” And they would create products within weeks for the store. I started to realize that this idea of a digital-only label that’s creating products specifically for the digital market and specifically to have mainstream appeal in the digital market had a lot of power. What the three founders in Stockholm built is very exciting. And their vision for the future is very exciting. It’s been a lot of fun, and it’s been a smart choice for me to make that jump. And the main business is licensing entire, complete catalogs from labels with rights to make compilations from those catalogs. And there’s a lot of research, science and technical stuff that goes into creating the compilations, to make them products that we can get surfaced in digital music stores – surfaced by responding well to search, by different marketing techniques we can do, by a concept that will appeal to editors of that particular store. Then, once its surfaced, we hope we’ve created an album cover and a name that’s very compelling and lets people know what it is and compels them to click on it. If you can surface it through marketing and winning the search, then you can with the click. And if you can win the click, you can have albums that stay on the Billboard Top 10 classical chart for ten years, which we’ve done.
I was just explaining to somebody the other day that I feel like this has been such an open playing field. I just don’t feel that there have always been enough products rising to the top, due to conventional SEO techniques or because they represent music for a dedicated purpose. I have been of the belief that you can create customized products that will be tailor-made to being in the stream of search. On the most macro level, that means going into the Google keyword tool and saying, “How many people are searching for music for yoga, music for meditation, or music in a certain style?” At a certain point, when you would go and see the search results for the top-ten keywords, there wasn’t necessarily a strong batch of competitors. And you still find a bunch of people squatting on domain names that have been there for a while.
SAR:
Yes. And people do spend time, money and effort studying how Google and SEO work. But I don’t know of a single company outside of X5 who looks at how that works in the iTunes Store and in the Amazon Store.
And how does that work?
SAR:
The only way to optimize for search in those stores is to create products that optimize for the search in those stores. That’s a pretty radical idea and approach. We’re creating products so that if someone types in a certain phrase, they will be the top products that pop up.
Sadly, it’s very radical in the music space. The music space is just finally growing up. Because a company like Crest might spend a million dollars determining whether or not you and I want white or off-white on our toothpaste box. Meanwhile, the music business has spent a million dollars on a video without even knowing whether there’s a market for it. So, it seems like you guys just finally got smart about it.
SAR:
Yeah. It’s easier when you don’t have a physical product and a legacy business. And it’s easier when you’re dealing with mainly catalog and not new release. So, if you’re a digital-only company focused on catalog, there’s not something else out there like that. When labels try to do this themselves, first of all, there’s a lot of marketing dollars and creative energy to spend on the back catalog, which isn’t necessarily where labels should spend their creative and financial energy. And if they’re successful, they’ll become known as a back-catalog label. Labels should spend their money and creative energy on new releases. But once those new releases are a few years old, it’s hard to find a way to market them through digital services. What we do is find a way to rise tracks, artists and concepts up to the surface in a way that it is fulfilling a customer need for people that aren’t very familiar with a particular genre.
For example, if you met a girl at a party last night, and she said she was really into World Music, so you want to get some World Music downloaded onto your computer for a playlist, and you type in “world music” at one of the music stores, it’s not going to help you. It’s going to give you Italian drinking songs, Justin Bieber albums, Glee albums, etc. And if you look at the charts, it doesn’t get much better, because you’ll find Canadian folk singers on the World Music charts.
Your vantage point is unique, as someone that has had experience growing this company, has witnessed the digital music revolution firsthand and has of course worked at Amazon. Do you have any tips on techniques for artists to make their artwork, marketing, meta data creation, etc. successful?
SAR:
It’s an easier thing to describe when it’s catalog based. Obviously if you were going to create an album of 20 great Italian love songs today – specifically for the digital market – you’d be foolish to call it Amore as opposed to 20 Great Italian Love Songs. As much as you wish you could call it Amore, people aren’t going to find it. And even if they find it, they’re not going to know what it is. But if it’s 20 Great Italian Love Songs, they’ll at least know what it is from the title. And hopefully, your cover says, “quality” to them.
We’ve tried this approach two times now with new releases. We commissioned the London Philharmonic Orchestra to record the 50 greatest classical music pieces of all time. We did a lot of research on which were the most popular classical music pieces from history based on rankings and streaming and download, etc. And it’s called The 50 Greatest Classical Music Pieces in History. And it has a cover that says, “London,” “classical” and catches your eye. It’s done incredibly well for us. It’s been a top seller at both iTunes and Amazon for two years now.
And we’re doing a second one that comes out in two weeks that’s the London Philharmonic again, and it’s titled The Greatest Video Game Music. It’s really catching fire, because it’s the concept, tied with the cover, tied with quality – because the London Philharmonic is one of the greatest orchestras in the world.
Because you had to do so much research on products like that, you must’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work for artwork, and that really applies to new artists. What have you found about artwork?
SAR:
How it looks as the 12” collector vinyl is irrelevant. Whether you wish it were the case or not, the artwork is going to be a thumbnail and has to be compelling in that format. What’s amazing is that we’ve discovered that things that are compelling as a thumbnail are also compelling as a 12” collector vinyl cover or a poster. The other way around doesn’t work.
The real message you learn when you work at Amazon – because you can’t have a meeting where this doesn’t come up – is “How does this affect the customer?” What’s the customer point of view and what’s the customer experience? And this is important in digital music.
Also, the recording process is phenomenal. It’s probably my favorite thing in the whole music business – being around when a record is being made. I was fortunate enough before I worked at X5 to be in London when the London Philharmonic was recording the 50 Greatest. It was just fun to be there for a couple hours. But listening to it in the speakers and getting excited about the big artwork is not where the customers are nowadays. As an artist, you have to think about where these customers are listening to their music, purchasing their music and experiencing their music. And you have to think about what that interface looks like and sounds like.
I remember when we first started doing online MP3s in the mid-‘90s with God Street Wine. Nobody was happy with the quality. They would say, “This doesn’t sound as good as a CD.” And I really thought that was going to impeded the growth of the digital download. I thought the quality was going to have to get better. But that turned out not to be the case; people wanted convenience more, which was a big eye opener. In the digital space, convenience is a huge quality component for people.
There are a lot of people who wish the world were still vinyl: The artwork was phenomenal and the sound was different.
Well, and it’s really hard to roll a joint on an MP3.
SAR:
Yes. It is. But I think we gave up that whole fight with the CD. I don’t get any tactile pleasure from a CD. Just accept the reality that this is how people are listening to music. If you wish people were sitting and looking at the liner notes while they listen to the music instead of streaming it as they’re walking down the street, you have to remember that you don’t get to make that choice for your fans. You’re not going to convince somebody to go buy a CD if that person gets all music digitally as downloads. You’re not going to convince people to download your album if they do all their listening through Spotify. You’re not going to change that customer behavior.
So, what can artists do to make themselves successful other than put themselves in the customer mindset?
SAR:
I don’t think the path is any different. I think the definition of “success” has evolved. The path is, to just do as much hard work as you can possibly do. I recently came across the ledger book from 1987 on the road with Mojo Nixon. The number of $50 gigs that were being played was amazing. Looking at this book 20 years later, you’d say, “That’s insane. How could that possibly ever amount to anything?” There would be a $50 dates in Bloomington Indiana. And then you’d see an $800 gig shortly after that and think, “Wow, something’s going on here.” Mojo Nixon worked hard for no money, because he had no choice. Music was what he was going to do.
And that’s all you can do as an artist. You can’t catch your lucky breaks by never taking any chances or by being so concerned about protecting all your rights. You can catch your lucky breaks by saying, “This is what I’m going to do, and I don’t care. I’m going to buck all the trends.” Your chances are less, but you can. And you better be genius. You have to be a world-shaking genius of the Elvis/Beatles variety, and you have to be at the right place at the right time – because you can take any brilliant artist in a time period three or four years earlier or later, and it doesn’t happen for them.
If you’re world-shaking genius, just do your own thing. Don’t worry about the album cover. There were a small number of bands that were very successful during the MTV years without making videos. There are always those that buck the trend. But there’s also the belief that you can grow slowly, build your career just a little bit at a time and be smart and try to make a living doing it.
So, what’s happening next at X5?
SAR:
The main thing that ties back into the concepts we’ve been talking about is this new release of The Greatest Video Game Music. The record was finished September 23. Within weeks, we realized we had something special. It came from us taking the science that X5 has done so brilliantly in Sweden with concept, design, naming and packaging, the A&R concept of getting the right song and finding the right artist to make it. We took that science and laid it on this product that people have a lot of passion for. And there’s a certain science to the packaging in digital. But there better be real art and passion that sits underneath it if you want to hold people’s attention.
We feel this project is so special that we are going to put it out physically, having never put out a physical release as a digital-only label. It’s not easy to put out your first physical title. And it’s certainly not easy to put it out during the fourth quarter when you’ve missed every possible deadline for the Christmas holidays.
Oh, I empathize.
SAR:
It shows all signs of doing something special when it comes out in a couple weeks. But it’s taking a lot of hard work to take this potential and turn it into something real. And of course, we have no way of knowing if it’s going to be as special as we think it is going to be. And we think it’s going to sell. It’s already getting a lot of press, attention and pre-orders.
When you create that product that has that potential, you better start working really hard. I don’t know that I’ve worked harder on a release even when I managed bands than I have on this one in the last five weeks. And it wouldn’t have had a chance of seeing the light of day if all of us in the U.S. and in Sweden weren’t working this hard on it.
So, it’s still true in the Digital Age that a “hit” just feels different.
SAR:
Yeah. People are drawn to it.
Doors that weren’t there suddenly open, and it feels fundamentally different. I was lucky enough to be standing at least close enough to a hit to appreciate that.
SAR:
The snowball starts to roll. This wouldn’t be a “hit” by the definition of what a “hit” would’ve been when you were working at Lava. But it’s different for every artist. For example, with Mojo Nixon, you knew “Elvis is Everywhere” was changing his life. That alone wouldn’t have done it. The hard work he laid on top of it was why it succeeded.
A hit opens doors to the next level. But you better work really hard to get through those doors. And then you better earn your keep once you’re there.
To learn more about Scott Ambrose Reilly and to get details about the release of The Greatest Video Game Music, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, visit the X5 website. You can also pre-order the compilation on Amazon.
Matthew Sutton is the co-founder of SheetMusic, LLC and co-creator of iSheetMusic, the world’s first dynamic mobile sheet music app, which launched for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad on July 22, 2011. Matthew has spent almost 40 years working on technology in various industries and started his first company – a guitar amp repair business – when he was 17. Through that company, he became the primary audio tech for recording, broadcast and live facilities in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s and 1980s. He built and maintained studios for artists including Steve Miller, Heart and Paul Allen and for companies such as Microsoft. When he left the music business in the 1980s, he transitioned to the world of computer technology and has built many IT, internet service and software companies.
I recently got to talk to Matthew about his work in the music industry, how iSheetMusic came to be and how the app works.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, Matthew. How did you get into the music industry?
MS:
I was very fortunate as a teenager to meet and work with a number of different musicians in a technical capacity; I’m a real tech guy, not a music guy. I started my first business when I was 17 fixing guitar amps for people. That business grew, and I became the top audio tech in Seattle for all the recording studios during the 70s and 80s. When Paul Allen wanted a studio in his house, I got the call and went over and built a studio in his house. I worked with Steve Miller for many years. I built many studios for Steve and toured with him. And it was great, because I met a lot of people, had a lot of great experiences. But as I got older, it became less fun. So, I kind of got out of the music business back in 1990 and got into computers, software and the internet.
Then a couple years ago, a good friend of mine who plays music, Matt Mostad, came to see me and said, “Why can’t I carry my sheet music around on my iPhone like I do the rest of my music?” And I said, “That’s a great idea.” So, we started a business together and began working on building the app and working on licensing issues. I was fortunate I did have experience in the music business, working with everyone from street musicians to the guys that could fill stadiums. And I had an appreciation for the licensing aspects of dealing with sheet music. So, when I approached Hal Leonard about licensing the catalogue, the discussion was a good one, because I understood that they’re in the business of making money and paying royalties, and I wanted to support that. We spent some time and developed a rapport and put together a deal where we had access to their catalogue. And this is great, because they’ve spent the last 15 years digitizing their catalogue, so they have tens of thousands of pieces of sheet music in a format very similar to what we need for our app. It makes it very easy for us to use that catalogue.
That sounds fantastic. I know a lot of sheet music haven’t gone through that digitization process, and it’s really difficult to get that moved around. I tried to get stuff moved around for a tablature company a few different times and discovered that a lot of people just haven’t taken that digital step.
MS:
And another licensor that we’re dealing with is Alfred Music. We’re also talking to others. But Alfred doesn’t have their content in digital format, so we’ve been transcribing music. I have a staff that’s in here doing that right now so we’ll have that to use as well. And it’s a certain amount of work, but it’s a good investment for our business model.
Is there much of a market for the sheet music of smaller musicians? I know you’re still a new company, but looking into the marketplace, how much sheet music comes from extraordinarily well-known people and how much comes from people who are just developing, or independent artists?
MS:
I don’t know the specifics of the numbers. I just know the big numbers. Sheet music is a half-a-billion-dollar-per-year industry. It’s a big business. A big driver for sheet music is hit songs. For example, Glee sells a lot of sheet music. A hit song can sell 50,000-100,000 pieces of music. It’s amazing.
I think for the less well-known artists, there are two limitations with sheet music. One is publishing and distribution. That’s one combo that makes it difficult for a less well-known artist. The other is just getting their music into a proper form so it can be published as sheet music. One of the things we’re doing – not on launch, but it’s in our near-term window – that we’ve actually developed the infrastructure to support is the ability to let people self publish. An artist will be able to submit a data file to us. And if they just have it written down, or they just have it recorded, we’ll transcribe it for a fee. But then we’ll publish their sheet music online and we’ll work on our website to promote it. We really see our ability to very fluidly get music from any artist out to a large audience to be a big part of what we can do. We really intend to make that into a big deal.
When is your launch?
MS:
Launch is Friday, July 22. We’ve already been approved by Apple, we’ve been through that entire process, and we’re ready to go. I’m very excited about that.
Wow. You can certainly provide some advice on what it takes to get an app published with Apple. I’m told that’s a very difficult task.
MS:
It’s interesting. They have a very strict set of standards they want to adhere to. Some of it was challenging because there were aspects of it that didn’t really make sense. But, as with anything else, when you take a closer look at it, you say, “Okay. I see what you’re trying to do. This is what’s important to Apple. Here are the things that are important to me.” We did push back and forth with Apple on a couple different things just to allow us to grow our catalogue very quickly. They have some manual processes they wanted us to go through. We negotiated with them, and they realized we were making a valid point. So, we were able to get to market. And we’ll be able to add literally tens of thousands of songs in a day, which is great.
Wow. And I’m guessing it’s readable on all Apple devices – iPads, iPhones, iPods? And is it going to be on other platforms as well?
MS:
At launch, we’ll be on the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad. We’re developing the Android platform right now for portable devices and tablets. One of the really unique things about iSheetMusic is that we just started. We designed it for the iPhone originally before the iPad even came out. So when Matt came to me and said, “Gee, wouldn’t it be really great to build this?”the first thing that came to mind for me was, “We need to license the music.” The second thing I thought was that we need to design it so it is readable on a tiny screen. We can’t just make it so you can zoom in on the world’s tiniest PDF file of a piece of sheet music. It just wouldn’t work. What we did was free the sheet music from the page. To do that, we’re using digital data files. So, every note, every line, every sharp, every flat – we’re drawing those from the data. We look at music as a set of measures. For instance, on the iPhone, in the portrait mode you can have four, five or six lines of music. If you to the landscape, you can have two or three lines of music. Then to make it really functional, we added a metronome. So, when you hit the “play” button, it will count you in. And then as you’re playing, it keeps the beat. So, it knows about where you are in the song, and it moves forward in the music for you. On the iPhone, for instance, if you have two lines of music showing, it will count through the first two lines and then will move the music up, so what was the bottom line becomes the top line, and then it adds two new lines below that. As a musician, you’re always looking ahead in the music: “I know where I am, but I have to change to an e minor chord.” We give you that capability automatically, so you can just play the music.
And I have one more question. As a guy that had a guitar amp repair company, what is the most common way people break their amps, and what should they do to avoid that?
MS:
It’s been a long time since I worked on a guitar amp. Honestly, I haven’t been inside an amp in probably 20 years. But on tube amps, let them cool down. Don’t pick them up and move them around while they’re still hot. That’s the one thing you can do that’s probably hardest on them. And the tubes are what wear out. Treat them gingerly in that regard. Since I got out of that business, the technology has gotten a lot more stable. The designers have a lot better idea of how to make amps so they’re not so fragile, and you don’t see sparks shooting out of the back of things as often as you used to. I’m sure somebody has a story, but I’m not aware of it happening as much as it used to.
That’s a good tip, because tube amps are still desirable, and there are a lot of people who still have them.
MS:
Yes. They sound great.
To learn more about Matthew’s app, visit the iSheetMusic website, or download the app directly from the iTunes store. To see how iSheetMusic works, check out the demo video below.
