Last week a client related an anecdote that made me laugh and shake my head in disbelief. It went along these lines: traveling with a group of vastly-wealthy business folks, she listened as they spoke about taking advantage of YouTube’s popularity to make money. Lacking a creative bone in their bodies, these folks spoke about YouTube as if it were a stock market. It was all about buying and trading assets seemingly predicated on what they’d heard about the success of PSY.
It would be a disservice to say that what happened with PSY was easy. It involved a lot of planning, thought, and effort to see success. Certainly no one involved in the project knew they’d have the most popular video ever once they were done. I’d wager that wasn’t even the goal! Still, creating one fantastic and successful Pop music video isn’t terribly difficult on YouTube. The top 30 videos of all time are all Pop music videos. The VEVO service built over YouTube is also built over the mass-market musical machine. Making these videos successful is easy in the sense that how to do it is widely known and accounted for in the music industry. This is not helpful to the vast majority of artists, labels, and music business being done out there that isn’t Pop music.
While the basic fundamentals of YouTube are easy to understand, being a continuing YouTube success story is work. Work that’s largely unknown in the existing music system. It’s the execution of those fundamentals where you get bitten in the ass if you’re not careful. Days of video and miles of type have been created to explain video SEO (search engine optimization) and channel optimization. Advice on creating and executing ideas is centuries old. Being part of a scene, well, that should be in the DNA of any artist or record label, so what I’m about to walk you through should only be foreign in detail, not concept.
The scene aspect is where the music industry often falls short on YouTube, much like our millionaires above looking to make a buck on the latest thing will fail. One industry acquaintance of mine dismissively referred to “those YouTube people” during a discussion we were having about the service recently. While I didn’t have time in that particular discussion to make this point, I certainly can here. Those YouTube people are the future. They are the future of how the platform is used and ultimately how music will be successful there. It’s time to pay attention.
A good and relevant first stop for exploration is musician Jake Coco:
It will always be a matter for debate as to exactly when the demise of mass consumption of Compact Discs as the dominant musical sales model became definitively irreversible — but with the recent downfall of both HMV UK and Virgin France, I would think January 2013 has a lot of arguments in its favour.
We can of course go back in time and see that the “writing was already on the wall” as far back as 2007 – by a strange coincidence the year I joined the ranks of The Orchard (no suggestion of any direct link here ;-)) — when top retail chains who already had their own high-profile public brands, faithful client bases subscribing massively to their data bases, decided that “digital” sales were an enemy to their core “physical” business and as a result they intentionally or not sabotaged their own digital services with low investments and the refusal to cross-reference their two user bases. There have been other blog posts about this — I recommend reading Mark Mulligan’s piece – and doubtless many more to come given the fallout from the nearly simultaneous filing of bankruptcy of both HMV in the UK and Virgin stores in France.
My piece here is meant to concentrate on the future as it might be accelerated by this phenomena and offer some hints as to the means and methods that we at The Orchard — in association with our labels — can use to help “le développement durable” or “sustainable growth” of the production space in which we exist and to which we are all personally attached.
Diversification of revenue sources for all to share is key in my opinion here — and luckily it is more and more the reality of our “digital” world. When I started marketing to retail here in France in 2006, there were only four really operational digital stores (iTunes, Fnac, Virgin Mega and Starzik) — all offering à la carte downloads at very much the same prices in a very similar consumer environment alongside an already declining mobile sector with telephone companies offering ringtones from Top 50 artists.
Now we are dealing with more than thirty local businesses — and a wide variety of business models that include streaming services of many different types, an incredibly large choice of ways of possessing or gaining access to music (and video) with practically every combination currently imaginable — although I am sure more will come (and when this happens we will be amongst the first to be contacted given the variety and strength of our labels catalogues). This diversity of revenue is culturally driven too — models that work in France do not necessarily do so in the Benelux, and within the Benelux some do better in Holland than in Belgium. Very often we notice that the different models feed off each other and encourage the growth of other services providing a different type of customer with a different sort of access to the music they want. We have for example noticed that the arrival of a very strong streaming service in The Netherlands was actually accompanied by a higher increase in download sales in that territory compared to its neighbours… which would tend to show that the “cannibalisation” of one method of access by another is not currently true.
There is a temptation to view modern celebrities as experts, as if we were gazing up at trapeze artists, assured of their capability on the line.
A turn or twist to surprise us, a wobble to goad. Even the occasional tumble seems overacted, milked somehow, and certainly choreographed. Those fallen stars maintain both our suspense and our attention for the remaining performers.
Middle America’s lovechild Justin Bieber, gushing and idolised, has been photographed smoking pot.
This is circus-theatre; we have paid our money and will laud, condemn and finally cast our judgement on the characters. For somebody in Bieber’s position this photograph constitutes a crisis. The predictable squirming and backpedalling by all involved has resulted in a series of heartfelt tweets, presumably with careful wording from his management agency.
This script is well written and not without precedent. An apology here is not enough. Bieber, acting as his own character reference, must denounce his actions as being inauthentic to his self.
This elucidates the condition under which celebrities such as Bieber are allowed their fame — provided that all private actions are subordinate to a public identity. Which, due to the ubiquity of phone-cameras, is a 24-hour job. He is a slave to his beliebers.
Videos are by far the most engaging form of social content. This isn’t exactly a new discovery, but there’s a lot of missed potential by bands that claim to have a YouTube presence. The common misconception is that your music videos go up on YouTube and you’re done. Although MTV style music videos can create a big draw, they don’t keep viewers on your channel for very long (hopefully these are actually on your channel).
Luckily for musicians on YouTube, there are some relatively quick fixes. The main thing most bands miss is the opportunity to actively engage with their fans. Viewers want to see those extra details; the behind-the-scenes, authentic interactions with the band that they can only get on YouTube. Bands should make a point to announce news and updates with their fans directly through a quick video. This helps in two ways: 1. Fans get the info right from the source, and 2. Video updates build buzz and traffic around your channel for when one of those big official music videos comes up.
Bands should program their channel in a way that fans can expect regular updates. Videos don’t need to be any longer than 30 seconds and can be taken anywhere with your phone. Get creative and consistent. No matter what type of content you decide to use, keep your videos original, exciting and genuine. Fans will feel closer to the music and you’ll have some authentic feedback from the people that matter most. Here are some quick ideas to get you started:
Firstly, I would like to “publish” a short essay that recently struck a chord with me. It was written by my brother Emmanuel Rizzi, a contributor to Cornell University’s The Diplomacist blog.
Here goes:
Why the Music-Artist envies the Literature-Artist
What luck has the Literature-Artist to have an individual spectatorship! The form of literature precludes reading en masse – it is an isolating form that requires the undistracted focus of its reader. It thus takes for granted the reader’s attention and is delivered to the reader’s most vulnerable state. Though the average reader may certainly not be attuned to the author’s subtleties of artistry, he is nonetheless reached at his most vulnerable, his most open — the medium gets the best out of each reader.
What difference with music! The free-flowing, amorphous and drifting form of the medium means that it may — and usually is (prior to 20th century advent of recording, must) — be heard and experienced en masse; the form imposes no barrier: it will reach the enlightened listener as readily as the benighted one. In fact, it has a tendency to often reach the unwilling listener! Music requires no singular focus of the listener, who is free to attend to any and all mental or physical activities while hearing the music. It is the rare listener who makes himself vulnerable — for this reason the medium seldom gets the best out of each listener.
It is serious music’s curse (but the blessing of popular music).
In my mind, Emmanuel’s words ring oh so true. It would be hard, even foolish, to argue otherwise. The appreciation of music has always depended on a reliable attention span, one that is being challenged more than ever in today’s musical landscape.
As of late, I seem to have hit a crisis… I am listening to less and less music, sometimes none at all for weeks at a time. I am inspired by less and less music, and when a song does get my attention, it is rarely for its whole duration. How can this be? I have always had a voracious appetite for music discovery, a boundless open mind for all sounds regardless of genre, and an enthusiasm for active listening rarely matched by my peers. Could this be the “old” me?
Music is now more readily available, more accessible, more plentiful, and on top of that, cheaper than it has ever been. Recording and self-releasing music have greatly profited from the advent of modern technology making it easier than ever to get one’s music “out there.” So why is it I am struggling so much to feel enthusiastic about music today? Could it be that my precious attention span has been eroded by an over-saturation of music? Am I suffering from option anxiety? Perhaps.
Music is everywhere. It’s stored on my phone. It’s on Spotify on my phone. It’s on YouTube on my phone. It’s on Shazam on my phone. It’s on Deezer on my phone. Between all of them I can listen to pretty much every single piece of music I ever want to, and at any given time. And I can connect this to various sound systems wherever I may be, at home, in the office, in my studio… but the sad thing is, I don’t. And I blame the mass availability of music for the sad state of affairs that my music appreciation has become.
I am not going to go on about how the rise of digital has killed off the culture behind owning a physical piece of music and the pleasures associated with it. Too much has already been said on the topic, and in fact I am not one to dwell on the past. The decline of physical as the leading format has always just been a matter of time. The future is now here, technology and hence the music business continue to evolve, and I am happy to be an active part of these changes, both as an artist and as a professional within the industry. But going back to Emmanuel’s essay — there are very few filters left. We get bombarded by an onslaught of music left and right on a daily basis and picking and choosing (i.e. focusing) has become increasingly difficult. Not to mention the competition created by our daily lives’ distractions. Our attention spans have spun out of control. Too much information, too little time.
As is rather clear, this has taken its toll on me personally. I haven’t dealt with it as well as some. But I remain optimistic. The music world is in a constant state of flux and I am sure that my listening habits of old will come back, somehow some way, either through further changes in our industry or perhaps through some further adaptation on my part. Either way, I am excited to find out.
