#Spotify

Oh shit, here it comes. Pay-for-play. Spotify calls it Marquee.

Works like a digital ad. The user clicks the ad and the label has to pay 55 cents. Spotify advises to spend at least 5k $ on a campaign which "should bring in more than 9,000 potential listeners over a seven-day period. "

Obviously, not for indies.

Forget about any revenue from Spotify. Use the platform as a promotion tool like bandcamp. Update your Spotify about section, add links to your website and social media pages, submit your tour schedule via songkick while it's still possible. And start building your email list.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/spotify-marquee-ad-cost-5000-915990/

#MusicVideo

One of my favs modern music video directors: Valentin Petit

https://vimeo.com/320031607

#documentary

I have to watch the new documentaries from Taylor and Biebs. Not that I want to, but it’s a part of a job. Need to know the modern pop documentary style and to know what’s the big deal.

Also want to compare to the rock genre, so I watched Metallica: Some Kind of Monster from 2004. It’s okish, really a product of that time. I had flashbacks to Pimp My Ride, The Osbournes and Punk’d.

A standard formula: heroes, struggles, challenges, old team, rehabs, new team, egos, disaster, victory, happy end + early 2000s aesthetics.

Main takeaways from the film:
- an understanding why St. Anger sucks
- a confirmation that Metallica was a true Metallica only when Cliff Burton was alive
- the documentary was the Q Prime’s idea, cos everything was falling apart and they thought they could capitalise on this by using the reality TV format

Some Kind of Monster is a good example of how bands can have a weekly video blog while they are making an album.

This is Spital Tap kinda ruined music documentaries for me. I kept expecting some comedy to happen.

What other rock music documentaries should I watch?

⁠#facebook

Here's a screenshot from my FB showing my latest post stats.

To have a proper look at your FB, you need to switch on Reach: Fans/Non-Fans and Engagement Rate how I did it.

Notice that most of the posts reach on average something like 120 out of 1040 page fans. That's the same with all of my posts. That's the FB algorithm work. An artificial cap. If you have 10000 fans, you gonna reach around 1100 fans. Sometimes there are spikes that depend on how you write the post and how FB decides.

Ads, baby, ads.

Tell me how it's like on your FB page. What's your average fan reach without ads? Ask your colleagues to check their stats.

#MusicVideo

Another great music video director I dig is Paco Raterta.

Dope Shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slpWEl7nTwk

#movie #notmusic

List of Oscar moments I remember:

197? - Marlon Brando declines his award and sends in a cute native american girl. The Godfather.
199? - James Cameron’s awkward speech. Titanic.
200? - Halle Berry cries when accepting the award. I’ve seen only the sex scene from that movie (like we all did). Monster’s Ball.
200? - When the Lord of the Rings dominated.
201? - When they fucked it up with the winners. La la Land

That’s it.

I will forget this year's tomorrow.

#movie #notmusic

Some afterthoughts on Oscars.

Netflix had 24 Oscar nominations: “the streaming giant has spent $70 mn on awards-oriented marketing campaigns.”
Netflix won only 2 awards.
I would call this a FAIL.

Parasites is a nice middle-ground for everybody.

#stats #onlineService

I think you kinda under-appreciate chartmetric.com

Not only it gives you detailed stats on you, it also gives stats on other bands, cities, genres etc.

How you can use it as a band?
You can find bands that are similar with you in location, genre and listeners/followers and tour together.
Or using the stats on that band to find out which cities you can target, cos you know that people there like such music genre.
Or know which social media channels work with your genre.

It's dope shit.

Flipping a coin and realizing how much you dislike the outcome is more useful for decision making than the actual result of the flip

Music #thePath

The more I dive into the music industry the more cynical I become. Music is just another business, just like everybody says. And I agree.

I understand why musicians are opposing this idea. They think "I don't want to leave one day job to end up in another day job."

But it's not really like that. Yes, you have to do a lot of boring and business-related shit, but in the end you manage to earn a living doing the work that you love.

#Spotify

Don't forget that you can add a one-click "follow" button to your website.

https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/widgets/generate/follow-button/

#YouTube

I asked one band recently about youtube content id,
whether they get any royalties, cos one of the main music channels published their album and it's around 100k views.

They said no, just promotion.

Not sure that's a right way. I checked the "video". There are ads. Which means that they are basically paying for the promotion by not accepting the royalties with content id.

It would be useful to calculate:
1. how much money they would get?
2. Would that money be useful for doing their own targeted ads?
3. How much did their fan stats change since the album went on that music channel? Was it useful?

They should ask the channel to give them stats on who's listening to their album on youtube, cos it's a valuable info. 100k is good, but maybe most of the listeners are in portugal and the band is touring in sweden with half empty shows and they don't even know what's wrong.

If you don't know what Content ID is, go here

Black Sabbath

This is some cool shit to learn from the great Black Sabbath.

A must-read (link below)!

Here are some quotes if you're too lazy (and my comments):

"When they became Black Sabbath, they had homed in on their identity more." - identity, man, branding and shit!

"They often started rehearsing at nine a.m." - hard work, man!

"I was reading ‘Beyond the Wall of Sleep,’ and actually fell asleep and dreamed all the lyrics" - find inspiration in all mediums.

“Any kind of sexuality took away from the more foreboding mood.” - the vision, man, the vision!

#theGreats

Black Sabbath’s Debut: 5 Things We Learned About Its Creation and Cover Art
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/black-sabbath-debut-album-things-we-learned-950937/

#mastering #production

Streaming services automatically normalise volume.

How to make it loud in the modern age?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiRMYoqU3ys

⁠#YouTube

I wrote there are ad money floating around on YouTube.

If you want to know how many, you can use socialblade

Here's a screenshot from one of the popular YouTube channels.

At the very bottom of the list is the video (album) I was talking about.

So the band is missing out on some of that money that could be used for the promotion of their music. It might be far less, but still, even with 40$ you could order stickers or smth.

#album release date #planning

When? Full article (link below).

It's mainly for the US, but the patterns are the same for everybody. Later I will try to find an album release stats in Europe to make a proper calculation.

Here's what we can use (quotes):

- If you can better predict your competition on release week and optimize your campaign to suit audience listening patterns, you’re in a much better position to steal more hours (heck, even minutes) of streaming.
- ...simply waiting two weeks after Coachella can reduce your competition by 50%... The same pattern happens after public holidays.
- Cultural events and public holidays are one thing, however, the absolute sure fire way to clear a release date is with a mega pop-star’s release day.
- ...November releases shouldn’t be scary. Artists and teams that plan well in advance could reap the rewards of less competition. People listen to more music in Q4, artists release less.
- ...consumers listen to more intense music when the days are longer...“Intense” music tends to sound loud, vocal, cheerful and eurphoric and defined on Spotify by its audio categorization system ... between May and August.

https://medium.com/@AmberHorsburgh/what-2019-album-releases-can-teach-us-about-2020-planning-1092554c019a

#Spotify #Playlist

I just saw an article "Here are 6 Marketing Strategies to Get You Featured on Playlists"

But first FOLLOW MY PLAYLIST !

If you read my blog, you should already know all this:
- Engage with fans and other artists
- Promote your content.
- Reach out to blogs and publications
- Get Verified / Spotify
- Get more followers / Spotify
- Make your own playlists / Spotify

But I can tell you how I choose songs for my playlist and it's brütal.
1. I look for a specific kind of tempo, energy and sound. Retro Rock, Hard Rock and Rock'n'Roll.
2. "the journey":
four ways to explore on spotify to find a new artist:
a. fans also like - most often
b. other playlists - second often
c. radio based on an playlist - sometimes
d. radio based on an artist - sometimes
3. So I pick an artist and start the journey

4.
a. I need the first 1-5 sec to decide if the song fits, cos tempo, energy and sound are already there.
b. long intro, guitar bzz, drum count - skip
c. "one two three four" - skip
d. high pitched guitar sound - skip unless smth is different. my ears are too sensitive to high pitch sound
e. boring sound - skip
f. song longer than 5:30 - skip. not even listen to it
g. if i feel that a band in general is good, i give a better listen to all the songs and all above is ignored.

Usually i need 40 sec - 1 min to go through all the songs of an artist.

4. I listen to all the tracks until i find either a perfect song or a couple of candidates. Just need one song, cos one song per artist.
5. the songs go to a hidden playlist
6. in the hidden playlist i listen to them one more time
7. add them to FIRE DEATH CULT
8. listen to it, cos i actually make the playlist for myself
9. if after a while, i feel the song doesn't fit the atmosphere i delete it.
10. when the song quantity of the playlist reaches 100, i will be adding new artists and removing "famous" artists and putting them in another playlist called ETERNAL COSMIC WARRIORS TEMPLE