Spotify Wants To Make You Weep (For Music)

We all know Spotify. Some of us have used it since launch in 2008, while others in Australia and Germany are still in their first year of streamin’ it up; or perhaps you know it for its long-standing residency in the Long Tail of Music discussion.

Whatever your knowledge of Spotify, it’s not because you’ve seen an informative or emotional TV commercial. This is because Spotify has dedicated its younger years to developing its product and identifying markets to which expansion is essential.

…until now.

In a strategic turn on March 25th, Spotify for the first time ever launched an ad campaign beginning with this (rather intense) commercial:

This video, which aired on NBC’s The Voice last week, is part of a $10 million campaign and will soon be followed by more commercials, like this emotional spot that reminds us of how a single song can often sum up memorable moments in our lives. There is also this spot that makes us remember our youth, cringe at its awkwardness and smirk at its honesty.

Go ahead, watch them all.

Admittedly, I didn’t expect the opening spot to be so heavy — especially coming from the brand whose fonts have included sketch and who has released cute little animated shorts for digital campaigns. I think their print ads capture more of what I see as “the Spotify spirit” and their mantra during this campaign: #formusic.

“For Music” is the answer to the questions that I immediately think of when I see these pictures (see one below). For example, why would anyone voluntarily strip down and expose dance moves like these? It’s all for the music. I get it.

Lest we forget, as this rebrand and “remarket” rolls out, the recent logo redesign that Spotify announced last week is important, too. What is the goal here? Is Spotify trying to reposition itself as a more serious and mature company? Given the emotive ads, corporate logo rebranding and the price tag on this ad campaign, seems like that’s exactly it. More power to you, Spotify.

Freeloader Friday: The Black Angels, Charles Bradley, Cheech & Chong, Young Man, Odonis Odonis, Dirtyphonics and Thee Oh Sees

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Friday, everyone! To celebrate the end of the week and everything in between, here is some great free music.

Let’s start with the largest spoils: two full album streams of the irresistibly psychedelic Black Angels and the soulful Charles Bradley. They’re both rocking new releases next week, and we just. can’t. wait.

Also giving us a full stream of their album is Dirtyphonics, who released their latest EDM masterpiece last week.

Then, to lighten up your weekend, Cheech & Chong have got a “high”-ly recommended track for you from their animated movie soundtrack. Also sharing new tracks are Young Man and Odonis Odonis, and closing out this Freeloader Friday are Thee Oh Sees with the mythical music video to “Minotaur,” starring… you guessed it… a minotaur.

Happy listening!

The Black Angels: Full album stream via Pitchfork Advance
Indigo Meadow out April 2 on Blue Horizon

Charles Bradley: Full album stream via Rolling Stone
Victim of Love out April 2 on Daptone Records

Cheech & Chong: “Medical Marijuana” via A.V. Club
Cheech and Chong’s Animated Movie! Musical Soundtrack Album out April 9 on Ode Sounds & Visuals

Young Man: “Unfair” premiere via Stereogum
Beyond Was All Around Me out April 9 on Frenchkiss Records

Odonis Odonis: “Intelligence” premiere via Stereogum
Better out April 16 on Buzz Records

Dirtyphonics: Full album stream via Vibe
Irreverence out now on Dim Mak Records

Thee Oh Sees: “Minotaur” music video via Spin
Floating Coffin out April 16 on Castle Face Records

Ant & Dec Rhumble Up The Charts

Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, better known as British television personalities Ant & Dec, definitely have reason to feel psyched. The dynamic duo performed their 90s hit song “Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble” on their TV variety show Saturday Night Takeaway last weekend, and the track skyrocketed to the top of the UK Midweek charts almost overnight. If you’re feeling a bit of déjà vu with this news, don’t worry, it’s not you. The former MCs’ rap track has made the rounds on the charts before… but not since 1994.

That’s right. After a 19 year gap between chart presence, the 90s hit single that reached #9 in its release year, has topped not only the UK Midweek charts, but reached #1 in the Amazon UK singles chart and has seen a 1,100% increase in Spotify streams.

The double act initially released this Rap track under the moniker PJ & Duncan, which they took from their character names on the children’s television show Byker Grove; and or the recent performance, they wholly jumped back into these 90s characters — donning oversized jerseys, baggy pants, and old school sneakers. The duo is no stranger to Pop music success though, as they released three studio albums during their music career, even reaching No. 5 on the UK charts for their album Psyche.

But clearly, people are still in love with the 90s. And it makes sense, Ant & Dec‘s performance of the chart-topping hit featured some of the most crisp 90s dance moves this side of the millenium has ever seen, each rapper topping it off with a bouncy Hip Hop flow and feel-good lyricism that would put The Sugarhill Gang to shame. It’s enough to make you want to break out your old Zubaz pants and bust a move.

Besides their success in music, Ant & Dec are well known for their work on TV, presenting for acclaimed shows ranging from Pop Idol to Britain’s Got Talent as well as I’m A Celebrity and everything in between. Putting their popular influence to good use, the multi-talented men have announced that all the proceeds coming from the single will be donated to Childline, a hotline service for children in need. What’s more, they even got Prince Charles’s endorsement at the Prince’s Trust event in London earlier this week: “They seem to have discovered the secret of eternal youth. I suspect it must be all that rhumbling they do. Anyway, I hope they keep rhumbling on.”

So if you are hankering for the sounds of the 90s, when plaid shirts ruled the land and Will Smith was simply known as a Fresh Prince, then hop over to Amazon to snag a copy of “Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble.”  You may just find yourself searching for your long lost yo-yo and Skip-It after one listen.

Welcome, Ben M.!

Introducing Ben Markowitz, Video Channel Producer, The Orchard Video Network

I’m very excited to be joining The Orchard team as a Video Channel Producer. Previously, I was the Marketing Manager at FanBridge and before that I toured in a band and worked at a booking agency. Outside of work, I’m an aspiring home cook, vinyl enthusiast, snowboarder and dog lover. And I love me some bourbon. I live in Williamsburg with my wife and our dog. I’m halfway through the second season of Twin Peaks (I know, it’s taken me forever to get around to watch it), so please don’t spoil anything.

It’s The Views That Count, Right?

We’re always focused on huge numbers. Whether you jump back  to the era of worldwide multi-platinum hits, stop to ponder all that time you invested getting friends on MySpace, how holy the Like was a couple of years ago, or the current rush to get followers on Instagram, there’s always a huge focus on numbers.

However, akin to how a Facebook Like is a deceptive measure of one’s popularity, it’s important which number you focus on. On Facebook, the more important number is essentially how many people are talking about your page. Similarly, on YouTube, the views aren’t the most important number either; that honour goes to stats such as Average Percentage Viewed and Average View Duration. These stats embody that often-amorphous term “engagement.”

Viewer engagement is the key area which affects recommendations on YouTube and has a significant impact on your search ranking. How can you take advantage of this? One of the best ways is to “program the session.” This set of tactics helps you reach the strategic goal of gaining more engaged viewers and thence to growing your overall audience.

The first tactic in this group is to never link to a video watch page when promoting a video if you can help it. Always link to that video in a playlist. This keeps your primary goal intact — watch my important video — while helping along your greater goal of more viewer engagement. Playlists can be based on anything. If you’re a label, you might naturally playlist other videos from that artist. Or you may choose to playlist videos from similar artists (even those not your own). Really the goal here is to think about who will be watching the initial video and think about what they might wish to watch next. Even programming videos that don’t belong to you helps your engagement metrics.

Of course viewers are not always coming to videos at your direction. In fact, most videos on YouTube are still found via search, sharing, and recommendations. How do you program those sessions? Again, think about how people might be getting to your video. One way you can figure this out is to look in your video’s analytics and see where your viewers are coming from. If you find out a lot of them came from a link from a popular blog, for instance, on which you had another video featured, you could add an annotation linking to that other video. It’s likely viewers coming from there have seen or will be interested in it too. Of course, after they’ve watched that, you need to figure out what they might be interested in watching next!

Apart from these broad tactics, it’s also possible to use the new Welcome Video feature on YouTube’s One Channel to program the session. These videos are prime real estate to introduce viewers to your channel. Be it a mission statement, a list of artists, or more of a commercial spot, this video should show potential viewers what you’re about and what they can expect to find on your channel. This is also a great opportunity to drive them to that other content. Point out key playlists, artists, or videos and link through to them with annotations. Of course, don’t forget that the key goal of the Welcome Video is to get users to subscribe!

Another feature of the One Channel Welcome Video section is that once subscribed, a viewer will get personalized recommendations of what to watch next on your channel. You have some, though not a lot, of control over this experience and part of that control is an effort to… program the session! YouTube has engineered this section to take advantage of video metadata combined with the viewer’s habits watching your channel. For instance, this works great with episodic content. If a video is obviously part four of a series and a viewer watches it, the next time they come to your channel they will likely be suggested part five of that series. One way to translate this to music videos is to number them in chronological order in some area of the metadata (most likely the tags). If Artist X has 12 videos and you’ve tagged those as “video 1, video 2″ and so on, it’s likely that if they watch one in the series, the next will be recommended.

There are heaps more tactics and ways to think about increasing a viewer’s watch time, of which programming the session is merely one. My hope is that this broad overview with a specific example will help you discover your own effective tactics. If you have any to share, please do so in comments!