Introducing Naomi Moran, General Manager, UK & Europe
It’s great to finally be on board and I’m immensely proud to be joining the team at this dynamic company. The first thing to get straight is that my name is pronounced the Japanese way, “Now-Me”, since I’m Tokyo-born with a Japanese mother. (But if you forget, don’t worry, I’ll answer to pretty much any variation). My father was Scottish, so after moving around a lot as a child, Glasgow became home for a good rainy chunk of my teenage years. The vibrant music scene there was where I developed my love of gig-going and I even had my own extremely embarrassing band for a hot minute.
Music went on the backburner somewhat while I slaved away for a History degree at Oxford University, but I did find time to start DJing, at parties and more often on student radio. After graduating I moved back to Glasgow for a year and worked as an assistant to a local character with fingers in many, many pies, including the successful techno label Soma Records, a music production company called Digital Music Design, and a music/urban culture show on BBC Radio Scotland. It was fun and exciting, but, keen to enter the music industry in London, I jumped at the chance of joining the MCPS Licensing department. There I negotiated all kinds of synch licences on behalf of our publisher members. MCPS and PRS were at the time thrashing out pioneering on-line licences for the emerging digital music market and I remember attending staff tutorials on the distinction between streaming and downloading!
My next gig was as Licensing Manager at Rykomusic Ltd, an independent publishing company. I got my head around the publishing business and started licensing for the Rykodisc label too, where I had the pleasure of working with some brilliant colleagues. Some of them you will definitely have heard of: Colleen Theis, Tricia Arnold, Nic Rizzi anyone?! One of the catalogues we sub-published at Ryko was that of World Circuit, and when Ryko was bought I moved on to work for World Circuit across their label, publishing and film divisions. Starting the Buena Vista Social Club trademark licence business, building World Circuit’s digital reach, negotiating artists and writer deals, and licensing in catalogue are some of the areas I focused on. Eventually I became General Manager and it was whilst in that role that I heard about this opportunity at The Orchard — which brings me right up to date!
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:
Introducing Mark Samuels, Developer
Hello world! Please allow me a few moments to introduce myself. I’ve worked in the web development world for about 10 years. I love music especially Soul, Reggae, Jazz and Salsa. For the greater part of a year I actually took salsa lessons. I’m still considered a beginner unfortunately.
I’m also addicted to Karaoke even though I have absolutely no singing talent.
My favorite sport is basketball and I’ve been a long-suffering Knicks fan, but I love them.
The most interesting thing about me is that I have an identical twin brother.
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:
Introducing Chitra Jagadeesan, Senior Developer
To tell you briefly a bit about myself, I graduated from Anna University in Mechanical Engineering. I’m a Web Programmer who worked recently with Macmillan publishers.
I follow Dr. Daisaku Ikedian’s Philosophy of Life, which states that “a great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.” As far as music, I’m a big fan of A. R. Rahman’s songs. Haven’t heard of him? He’s an Indian composer, singer-songwriter, music producer, musician and multi-instrumentalist.
Just a little introduction. You’ll have to get to know me to find out more.
