#35: Spotify success: from 0 to 300k plays π | How my headphones saved my life π§ | Spotify & Soundcloud? π | EDM in Asia π
Hey everybody!
Two questions for you this week:
Does anyone know about platforms that allow you to release books in a subscription format, ie. a chapter a month?
Very interested in talking to startups that used crowdfunding to get started. Or people who have used it to fund ongoing projects (as opposed to a single album release, video, etc.). Who should I check out?
You can answer either by sending me a tweet or replying to this email.
This week I have something really special for you. I came across a post by a 20-year old talent from The Netherlands called Pip Blom. In the post, she explains how she started making and releasing music and how Spotify helped her go from zero to three hundred thousand plays in half a year.
Delighted to be able to feature her and give her a spotlight. Do check it out. Enjoy the rest of the reading & links!
Love,
Bas
Two words to further your digital strategy
Read this article on Medium or MxTxF.
Repeating the same question over and over to cut through the nonsense and set the right priorities.
I regularly discuss digital strategy with bloggers, DIY musicians, managers or people running their own record label. My intention is to help people think more like startups, set clear goals, collect data and know how to act on data. There are useful frameworks for this, like the AARRR framework, but they take a while to get acquainted with.
Even in quick conversations, I want to give people something useful, uncomplicated. Youβre not going to be able to go through an entire framework with sets of metrics. When constructing narratives for brands, it helps to ask the question why? over and over. In digital strategy, this question is:
And then?
These two words wonβt help you determine what to do, but they will help you validate your actions and uncover tasks that might need to be completed before acting. An example:
A Buddhist rapper, letβs call him Jimi Zendrix, desires to sell more merchandise. He knows that to do that, he needs to build a bond with his fans. He has the perfect solution: a newsletter.
And then?
Jimi: then Iβm going to share what Iβm doing with my fans.
And then?
Jimi: then theyβre going to feel more engaged.
And then?
Jimi: then Iβll develop merch and link to it from my newsletter.
And then?
Jimi: then people are going to go there and buy the merch.
Each one of these answers reveals a set of tasks and extra questions.
How are you going to share what youβre doing with fans? Do you have time to prepare that every week? Are there easy ways to aggregate your social feeds like Instagram? Or do you need to use a different newsletter service for that?
How do you know that people feel more engaged? This means you have to make assumptions, before launching your newsletter, about open rates and click rates of fans. If theyβre really more engaged, you should also see it in the data in other places, so you need to have a way to track that.
How will you develop this merch? Can you use the data from your newsletter and other sources to develop better products? Whatβs the best way to display merch in mailinglists?
Can you track sales from when someone opens the email, clicks the link, looks around the site, to purchase? Are you using a merch shop that allows you to understand this and lets you optimize? For example, you may find that newsletter readers are more likely to buy hats. You may want to show hats first to people who click through from your newsletter, but not to normal visitors.
Loads of stuff to consider before launching your newsletter. Donβt overwhelm yourself: the lesson is whatβs most important. Pick something you want to do, make an assumption, then test it. Repeat.
And then thereβs fallaciesβ¦
βAnd then?β doubles for βso what?β We often obsess with numbers called βvanity metricsβ, which are kind of pointless to focus on.
Try to imagine an answer for these:
I want 5,000 likes on Facebook. And then?
I want to have 1,000 visitors on my homepage. And then?
I want my tweets to be retweeted more. And then?
Your answers likely contain a hypothesis. You may think that getting more retweets leads to more followers leads to more fans leads to more sales. Now you have something to measure.
Do retweets lead to more followers? You may want to exclude spam accounts, or accounts that follow tens of thousands of users.
Do followers lead to more fans? How will you be able to tell?
Do those people who stumble upon your tweets eventually convert to paying customers?
Each of these have conversion ratios. So you go from a number to a much smaller number at the end. You may determine, before even getting started, that itβs not worth your time to research hashtags and write tweets that arenβt even directly related to your music, just to get retweets.
βAnd then?β helps you cut through the bullshit and get your priorities straight. Donβt spend too much time on things you canβt measure or that are not part of a funnel.
Each step in your digital strategy needs to lead somewhere.
Donβt stop asking βand then?β
Aaaand theeeen?
More MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE
How Spotify helped me as an artist
This is my story about finding an audience, finding fans and building up relations in a digital age.
medium.com β’ Share
My headphones may have saved my life
Some conference swag that came to surprisingly good use when shit hit the fan.
medium.com β’ Share
Digital Music Space
Spotify may be buying Soundcloud, but who wins?
The big news in the past week is that Spotifyβs in βadvanced talksβ to acquire Soundcloud. Music industry analyst Mark Mulligan breaks it down.
My personal take goes live on the Synchtank blog later today. Keep an eye on my tweets.
musicindustryblog.wordpress.com β’ Share
More about iHeartβs mid-tier strategy.
You're in the band: virtual reality's orchestral future
The Philharmoniaβs principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen wants you to join his virtual symphony orchestra. He talks VR and the future of concertgoing
Teen-focused app Musical.ly is the music industry's new secret weapon
Approximately 50 million people under the age of 21βor roughly half of the teens and preteens in Americaβare on musical.ly.
www.vice.com β’ Share
Rdio's bankruptcy: inside a failing music streaming service
A story about what went on in Rdio and how Pandora came to buy it.
How record companies use the data Spotify/Apple send them
Brittney Bean outlines how DSPs (like Spotify and Apple Music) provide consumption data to record companies and how they use it to retail more music.
www.youtube.com β’ Share
Inside Apple Music's second act
A year into its battle for users β and the trust of record labels β the most talked-about company in music sheds a light on whatβs working,β¦
What music are you really into? β Spotify interactive
Forget what you think you know about your music tastes and lift the lid on the surprising genres that make your musical footprint unique. From the familiar to the obscure, the tried-and-tested to the wildcards β take a closer look and find new music to love.
Live Music Space
EDM's big Asia play: promoters look to break new market with festivals, conferences
Curious to hear more from my newsletter subscribers about this. If youβre doing something in (live) dance music in Asian markets, get in touch.
Β―\_(γ)_/Β―
In the age of the algorithm, the human gatekeeper is back
A look at the state of curation in various domains, incl. music.
Boot camp aims to help musicians amp up careers
Music manager Jake Udell has set up a Y Combinator-like program to help musicians. Interesting to see people looking at the startup space and looking to help artists as entrepreneurs. (above link should circumvent the paywall - hereβs the original link).
www.google.nl β’ Share
Artificial intelligence and the future of design
How algorithms will optimize everything and how design will become a discovery process, just like music will become more of a curation process.
www.oreilly.com β’ Share
Hear the first computer-generated music, made by Alan Turing
Researchers restore of the first recorded computer-generated music which was made by Alan Turing and composed by Christopher Strachey.
www.factmag.com β’ Share
Defiance on the dancefloor: clubbing in the birthplace of Boko Haram
A spirit of hedonism is sweeping through Maiduguri as party-loving young people try to forget war and rebuild their lives.
Amsterdam Dance Event
My panel has been announced! Millennials Under the Microscope: Part 1 Marketing to Millennials. Happy to join this amazing line-up, also consisting of David Ireland (Magnetic Mag), Amy Jayne (Hospital Records), Siofra McComb (The Other Hand), Luke Hood (AEI Media / UKF).
If anyoneβs still looking for accommodation: letβs team up and split an Airbnb. (I want to see some music at night, instead of commuting)
Thatβs all for this week.
β€οΈ: twitter - linkedin - facebook - musicxtechxfuture.com
π°: click here for last weekβs edition about monetizing remix culture
Regular insights about the future of music, media & tech. Written & composed by @basgras.
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