Showing posts with label Content Development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Content Development. Show all posts
Saturday, 5 June 2010
A funny thing happened on the way to The National
Mflow’s tagline ‘Discovery is the best thing in music’ may or may not true, but I’ve just made a discovery myself – that the best sort of music discovery can be discovering the music that you already know. That’s a lot of discoveries in one sentence, so let me explain.
I was all set to skip the new National album. I was just going to let it pass, on account of having too much currently stacked up in the ‘recently acquired’ CD pile-up - and the download equivalent (a queue?).
Then I succumbed, having read too many glowing reviews, and put it on order from Amazon, but with self-calibrated expectations. I say this because, though I am a fan of The National (having first discovered them via their wonderful track “About Today” on an Uncut magazine cover-mount) I’ve found them to be a band of great promise if not quite the accomplished article on delivery.
I bought their previous two records “Alligator” and “Boxer” and found them both to contain great moments (notably on Boxer – “Guest Room”, “Fake Empire” and “Mistaken For Strangers”) but overall, patchy (but, aggrieved National fans, read on). I also once bought three tickets to one of the band’s shows at The Astoria on the “Boxer” tour and coaxed two friends along, eulogising about this great new band I’d discovered.
When they opened that gig with “Guest Room” I felt vindicated and all like the great “A&R” man (it sounded absolutely splendid), but the rest of the gig was somewhat marred by singer Matt Berninger’s apparent discomfort on stage. You can actually hear more about his stage-fright issues via a Guardian podcast here (small aside – what do you do when an artist on the cusp of mainstream success and potentially huge live shows – suffers from lack of stage presence? - I can’t see many artists taking much to a suggestion of stagecraft ‘coaching’).
So, I thought I’d skip ‘High Violet’. Thank god I didn’t. I only really got to play it properly because I was travelling (back from the South West) and was in a bit ‘phased out’ (after a disappointing business meeting). For those reasons, I set the album to play on repeat – and just let it run & run (four-five times over maybe) until it kind of got inside my head.
Three weeks later and it’s still there, rattling around. In fact I only really came up for air by re-visiting their previous two albums – both of which now suddenly connect with me much more than they did originally. Alligator especially, is a real treat, as it turns out.
Somehow I now ‘get’ The National. I’ve got beyond the moody baritone ‘miserabilists’ stage and moved on to appreciate the tightly-wound core of fine drumming, bass and guitar, the finely detailed, layered, textured sounds (including wonderfully understated use of piano, strings and brass), the oddly-affecting, existential lyrics and at last, the strained emotional delivery of Matt Berninger’s vocals. And more than that, his superb phrasing.
It all makes sense – and on High Violet manages to exceed the sum of all these wonderful parts – through having better tunes, with better songs – Berninger’s lyrics now more effective in connecting real-life stories with the weird inner-dialogues – effectively making him a fully-paid up member of the Genuine Pop Music Poets Society.
“Someone send a runner for the weather that I’m under for the feeling that I lost today”, for example, from ‘England’ (for me the album’s pinnacle track, and my self-adopted national world cup theme. Was that really ‘England’ playing in background on some recent world cup BBC coverage? I think it was). Or perhaps take this one, from single Bloodbuzz Ohio: “I still owe money, to the money, to the money I owe” – that’s a clever commentary on the recent financial crisis if you want my opinion. My favourite though is from Lemonworld, where that songs protagonist declares he “left my heart to the army, the only sentimental thing I could think of”. It rouses.
But why am I telling you this on Juggernaut, without due consideration for the industry? Well it actually did get me pondering on both the demand side and the supply side of things actually.
On the demand side, as with Mflow for example – we’ve become somewhat absorbed, perhaps even obsessed with, ‘discovering’ new music, with gaining ‘access’ to it, and with the ‘acquisition’ of it. It strikes me these experiences all pale with actually listening, and forming a deeper relationship with the music than you thought might be possible initially. It’s like discovering a new author and then revisiting all his or her other books, with a renewed, re-ignited pleasure. You can find yourself thanking your lucky stars, just for the serendipity of it all. Besides, the album would never have entered my consciousness in the way that it has, without that first bought of repeated listening.
On the supply side, The National’s story amounts to the way it should be for music artists and their development, does it not? ‘High Violet’ is the Band’s fifth album and represents a sure, steady growth creatively and now commercially as well. It’s refreshing, re-assuring even, that we can still witness artists in a steady ascendancy like this. Isn’t this how it used to be? I would wish the same on The Local Natives, or The Temper Trap – or any other type of band with the apparent talent and capability to arrive where The National has.
Has it got something to do with being on an indie label rather than a major labels? Perhaps, except there are plenty of indie bands on majors with what seems like longevity and ascendancy too. Most notably Elbow (though a partial 'rescue' job was done there), Kings of Leon (now so big it's hard to think of them as 'indie' but they are essentially) and others.
But The National's success seems partly down to the fact that the band didn’t get too popular too soon - that they had time to become this good. With ‘High Violet’, The National has indeed been allowed to bloom.
Monday, 24 May 2010
Never Mind The Box Set - Case Studies
In my talk I presented four brief case studies of physical products that had come ‘back from the brink’ to find cult, niche and perhaps even mainstream, success. These were:
• Moleskin
• Lego
• Filofax
• Marvel
I thought it might useful to post these here as part of a series of posts this week to mark the ‘return’ of the JB blog, as it were. These case studies were the brands that came from top of mind in discussion with Music Tank – so they are not precise analogues for music – but I don’t think it matters for providing us with some imagination, innovation – a bit more belief, perhaps.
These are specific businesses rather than industry formats like the CD, but these brands are in many ways, symbolic of the industries in which they operate.
We’ll also see how these businesses have smartly embraced digital innovation but even more smartly, kept the physical product alive and well – protecting where the real, tactile value is. Real products remain at the core of these businesses.
Case Study 1: Moleskin
How did writing make such a comeback from the brink of extinction? What’s more anachronistic to us now, the notebook or that funny gadget with a dodgy pen all the early adopters were brandishing in the mid 90s? Writing recognition, the touch screen keyboard and voice recognition tools still occasionally ‘threaten’ the business of handwriting, yet it’s hardly enough to get the stationary business quaking.
The origin of Moleskin’s recent success might surprise. The rights to the famous designs were acquired by Italian company Modo & Modo as recently as the mid 90s and the big global marketing push didn’t happen until 2002 – now every second person working in the global creative industries seems to use one.
Success Factors for Moleskin
o Design, design, design – it’s just a notebook! But the look & feel means everything to its dedicated users
o Heritage – the ‘story’ – Hemingway, Bruce Chatwin writing beautiful prose in them – these stories are now part of the folklore of the brand
o Variety – size, colour, features – I’m using the ‘Woodstock’ red one just now
o All this comes with Premium – people pay 6-7 $’s more for a Moleskin versus a standard notepad – it’s all in the branding
The Root of Moleskin’s success though – the Insight if you will – is the art of writing – that’s what people really value. Can we work an equivalent for music with the art of listening?
Finally – Moleskin notebooks are addictive! Could you really switch back to using just a notebook? Can digital be addictive in the way a physical collection is? Can CD packaging be improved enough to raise such questions about digital music?
Case Study 2: Lego
Another business brand literally brought back from the corporate equivalent of life support, Lego was dead as a dodo at the turn of the millennium, with losses spiralling to €242m by 2004.
Fast forward to August 2009 and a buoyant Lego announced a robust increase in turnover and pre-tax profits of €124m for the first six months of 2009, up 61% over the same period of 2008.
Much was attributed to Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, a young dynamic CEO, who according to himself “changed everything but the brand”.
But really the success was down to a combination of licensing (Star Wars, Harry Potter etc.) and product innovation (bricks literally come in all shapes, sizes, colours – enabling you to build anything). Those innovations however came hand-in-hand with brave and painful operational changes.
For the last few years Lego has quietly expanded into video and online games. In 2010, it will roll out Lego Universe, a multiplayer online virtual reality game. It is also investing in real bricks too, with 15 new retail stores due to open before Christmas 2010 to add to its existing 47. Moving direct-to-consumer seems to have worked.
Success Factors for Lego
o Innovation in digital and physical – working symbiosis between these
o Heritage – converting parental approval and children’s creative instincts into sales
o Variety – size, colour, features
o Niche strategy – Lego’s sales are said to be concentrated on a relatively small market of loyal household customers (around just 2 million households according to one report)
As with any turnaround story, there’s always an insight that proves key to the revival...in Knudstorp’s own words: "We take the virtues of Lego and the virtues of Star Wars and create something more optimal out of it. A great example is the Lego Star Wars game which has been immensely popular. Here you have a category where many parents perceive it as not really creative and not very good for their children, but when it becomes Lego the parent says 'OK, now I feel comfortable, since it's Lego plus Star Wars.' It has the benefits of both worlds. Two plus two suddenly becomes five."
Case study 3: Filofax
That great symbol of the eighties – one many of us would perhaps rather forget - is back! And if Filofax can forge a comeback, anything can.
With a St Luke’s advertising campaign in 2006 to re-launch the brand – Filofax shifted its marketing to a younger (more colours), more female (more personal) customer base, with modest success. Pre-tax profits almost doubled from £2.8m to £5.5m for the year to January 2009, while sales nudged up to £61.4m from £59.7m a year earlier.
Success Factors for Filofax
o Niche strategy – what had become ‘naff’ is now a mould breaking statement for mavericks
o Heritage – Filofax built on the retro trend – but did so with deeper, practical benefits too
o Innovation: One innovation introduced in the run-up to Christmas 2010 was a service allowing customers to order personalised diaries from the website. Filofax users can now buy a printed calendar that incorporates all the birthdays, anniversaries and important dates they would otherwise have to annotate laboriously every year
Finally, once again here comes the insight – what’s become valuable today versus the 80’s when everything was about making money – is making time. Filofax responded by being less about business diary management and more about general lifestyle management – allowing people to manage all of their available time.
Marvel
I’ve written extensively about Marvel In editorials and blog posts so I will re-cap very briefly.
Once again Marvel is a riches-to-rags-to-riches story. In 1997, Marvel Entertainment escaped bankruptcy by a thread thinner than one of Spiderman’s. The company had failed to diversify its publishing business and flooded the market with comic book lines, effectively commoditizing its core business and leaving the company with a stock value of under $1.
Yet Marvel was transformed to a business with a market value of $4 billion, the price paid by Disney when it acquired the company in 2009.
Again, format wise, Marvel is becoming a seamless world of the digital and the physical. While digital content thrives (motion comics being a superb, natural innovation), physical product is hardly the Cinderella business, with the Graphic Novel industry in rude health, now threatening to break out of its geeky niche status and into the mainstream. See also the post on Marvel on this blog last year.
Recurring themes
In summary, a number of success factors associated with these case studies recur as learning or inspiration for music in a physical form.
1. Heritage - building on original strengths.
2. Branding - generating attractive stories.
3. Variety - product in all shapes & sizes - even personalised.
4. Insight - building on key actionable insights - eureka moments.
5. Innovation – clever interplay of the digital and physical worlds.
All these products could so easily have died, but belief, smart, brave decisions and real demand – allowed them to survive, re-build and thrive in today’s over-stimulated, ultra-competitive, digital world.
Versions of this post may appear on Music Tank and in MusicAlly's fortnightly circular.
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Major Music Labels: Great Power, Great Responsibility
At the start of the summer, Billboard magazine published an opinion piece by me on Marvel Entertainment - that company's remarkable turnaround and the potential lessons for major record labels. You may have seen that in recent days, Disney has also seen the value in Marvel, acquiring the company for $4 billion.
This being a music blog, I won't go into the why's & wherefore's of Disney-Marvel, but it's one to watch as to whether Disney will get its return, without compromising Marvel's brand too much. Anyhow, with kind courtesy of Billboard, my op-ed is published here in full for anyone who missed it. For similar food for thought, you might also want to re-visit my very first blog post on HBO - Music Lessons from a Content Powerhouse. For the true believers then...
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Music is being consumed by more people in more ways than ever before—we just have to figure out how to monetize it.
How many people have said that now? More people in more places than ever before, basically. Yet all is not well with the way the music industry is adapting to the new paradigm. Digital delivery may be changing the game for consumers and artists, but the bit in the middle—the industry—hasn’t yet figured out where the real money is going to come from. Meanwhile core product sales are in structural decline. What’s an industry to do?
Well, back in the late 1990s, another great entertainment business was dying on its back—comic book publishing—and specifically a great American cultural icon, Marvel Comics. In 1997, Marvel Entertainment escaped bankruptcy by a thread thinner than one of Spiderman’s. The company had failed to diversify its publishing business and flooded the market with comic book lines, effectively commoditizing its core business and leaving the company with a stock value of under $1. Yet today, Marvel is transformed with a stock value of $32 and a market capitalization of $2.5 billion. It is currently piling on the growth, riding roughshod over the global recession.
In order to rebuild, Marvel was forced to transform itself from a products business to a licensing business. With its “superstar” characters bringing in consistently lower yields, it needed to find a way to make money from its entire catalog of characters—not just the big names.
Three strategies began to turn Marvel’s fortunes around:
- Licensing. After the success of Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man,” Marvel had hot IP once again. Other studios took a renewed interest in its characters and there was a rush to license other major characters from the portfolio.
- Product development. Nothing impacts on the culture like blockbuster movies, enabling Marvel’s characters to become hugely popular toys, video games, clothing and party accessories.
- Character development. With a library of over 4,000 characters, Marvel went to work on strategies for commercializing the mid-tail brands, including Daredevil, Elektra, X-Men and Ghost Rider.
By 2003 Marvel was rejuvenated, with steadily increasing revenues and profits. One key insight that helped drive this new phase of growth was the Marvel brand itself. Marvel had created a universe where characters not only had their own compelling stories, but where those stories were carefully and complexly interwoven with other characters. That universe is what drew many fans (including me) to Marvel comic books in the first place and still does, to its increasing stable of movies and related products. Now, the Marvel Universe concept is integrated throughout the company’s strategy.
The potential is there for record companies to use their labels in a similar way. Not easy, but it could be essential to long-term success. Island’s 50th Anniversary celebrations couldn’t be achieved without focusing on its identity. Nonesuch has created a wonderfully eclectic but somehow cohesive community of artists—and loyal fans. Indie labels might argue their identity is their lifeblood, even if not directly recognized by every music consumer. The music business needs to organize communities of music lovers and buyers, not just social networks with music tacked on.
Marvel’s turnaround isn’t complete. The company made nice profits from licensing (which involves no capital outlay) but could only take a small cut of overall box office. To really scale revenues it moved directly into distribution—risky for a company so focused on content creation—forming Marvel Studios to produce “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk,” a move that paid off handsomely.
Most music majors now have in-house production companies but not the strategic purpose and budgets to be equivalent to the commitment made by Marvel. But music companies should be making documentary films and session content for their artists—highly attractive to sponsors and licensable to all the digital networks increasingly desperate for quality content. [iTunes LP, announced yesterday, is a step in the right direction for example].
Direct-to-consumer is a key part of Marvel’s digital strategy—in 2007 it launched Digital Comics Unlimited—a subscription-based service with thousands of comic books available in digital format. Like another successful subscription provider in TV, HBO, Marvel realized that to offer a compelling subscription service didn’t mean having to make everything available—few subscribers want that. But they will subscribe to a service if that service contains something they do want that’s exclusive to them as subscribers.
From a successful licensing model, Marvel evolved its strategy into bigger plays: harnessing brand power, building on insight, diversifying its product and making major moves into distribution. Subsequently Marvel Entertainment now controls its destiny, when all looked hopelessly out of control a mere decade ago.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Music's changing product
[This post appeared in last week's Record of the Day as the Insight piece, just here in case you didn't catch it...]A few years back I came up with an idea for a label, to present its pipeline as an online feature, called the 'Creative Curve'. The idea was to show a curve or spectrum with all the key creative points along it as a music project was being created - writing, recording, mixing, releasing, promoting and touring. For each point along the curve there would be a featured artist project at that stage of development.
The idea was meant to build anticipation, provide fans with an insight into the creative process (for example to see how artists work differently and handle those points along the curve with whatever degree of joy or dread) and potentially to offer products or at least promotional clips such as demos, song stems, interviews etc. which could also be widely syndicated to other digital platforms.
The idea didn't fly, since everything the label did needed to be artist-specific, not label specific. Also, there was a concern that opening up the creative process in this way would spoil the mystery and annoy the artists. In the end the will to mix up the product in this way wasn't there at the time, but things have moved on at a pace since then.
Indeed, there has been a constant, breathless innovation to the way music is being released to consumers. In recent weeks we’ve had the first pixel-interactive video, with Empire Of The Sun's new single, a new band More Than Thieves recording and releasing four exclusive sessions for each major streaming service, and another couple of high value box set packages from the likes of Metric and The Smashing Pumpkins. Meanwhile, some long-established artists have really been ripping up the rule book on what the ‘music product’ is, although I almost hesitate to mention the usual suspects since they get referenced everywhere (which is perhaps partly the intention – to capture our collective attention). No, I will not mention Trent Reznor in a piece about digital product. Doh!
To some extent these initiatives could all be categorised as promotion – an expanding array of gimmicks designed to shout the loudest to simply do what the industry has always done – “work the album”. But there's more to it than that. Music, it seems, is constantly in search of a new way to present and package itself now that the album has been de-coupled and the physical product is being slowly but surely eroded.
The business 101 book says that when a core product is being devalued and commoditised the only way forward is to build new products, services and experiences around what was the old cash cow (in our case, albums) and meanwhile milk that cow dry. Other sectors have made successes in doing just this - indeed it’s been the raison d'être of Richard Branson’s Virgin brand for some time – it’s how flying got a makeover for example.
Entertainment industries have had makeovers too. HBO did it for TV and Marvel did it for its catalogue of super-heroes - they transformed their respective industry’s products and allowed them to flourish whatever new distribution channels emerged. The movie business is currently working through product transformation via digital projection and 3D film.
With music, it's been harder to tell how to respond to the impact of technology and the resulting changes in consumer behaviours. Piracy, other entertainment products, digital distribution and now apps, have all shaken up consumption to the point where consumers seem to spend more time searching, writing about or playing with music than actually listening to it. The term the 'Kodak moment' just doesn't do music justice. What Kodak went through was child's play compared with the current challenge of music producers.
Arguably, those producers have placed too much attention on distribution, with little genuine sustainable value created from this. It has taken too long to sw
itch focus to the obvious – music the product.
But with new product innovations now arriving that seems to be changing. We have high-end physical album packages that come with a range of valued extras including even gig tickets, like Metric & Smashing Pumpkins mentioned above. Some debut artists like Laura Marling did it with her ‘Song Box’ release of Alas I Cannot Swim. Radiohead really got that ball rolling. The much talked about release of In Rainbows skewered the two polarising trends in music consumption: digital - get it now, get it cheap, no frills - serving one end of the scale and the £40 box set serving the other. Clinical, simple, genius marketing.
The idea was meant to build anticipation, provide fans with an insight into the creative process (for example to see how artists work differently and handle those points along the curve with whatever degree of joy or dread) and potentially to offer products or at least promotional clips such as demos, song stems, interviews etc. which could also be widely syndicated to other digital platforms.
The idea didn't fly, since everything the label did needed to be artist-specific, not label specific. Also, there was a concern that opening up the creative process in this way would spoil the mystery and annoy the artists. In the end the will to mix up the product in this way wasn't there at the time, but things have moved on at a pace since then.
Indeed, there has been a constant, breathless innovation to the way music is being released to consumers. In recent weeks we’ve had the first pixel-interactive video, with Empire Of The Sun's new single, a new band More Than Thieves recording and releasing four exclusive sessions for each major streaming service, and another couple of high value box set packages from the likes of Metric and The Smashing Pumpkins. Meanwhile, some long-established artists have really been ripping up the rule book on what the ‘music product’ is, although I almost hesitate to mention the usual suspects since they get referenced everywhere (which is perhaps partly the intention – to capture our collective attention). No, I will not mention Trent Reznor in a piece about digital product. Doh!
To some extent these initiatives could all be categorised as promotion – an expanding array of gimmicks designed to shout the loudest to simply do what the industry has always done – “work the album”. But there's more to it than that. Music, it seems, is constantly in search of a new way to present and package itself now that the album has been de-coupled and the physical product is being slowly but surely eroded.
The business 101 book says that when a core product is being devalued and commoditised the only way forward is to build new products, services and experiences around what was the old cash cow (in our case, albums) and meanwhile milk that cow dry. Other sectors have made successes in doing just this - indeed it’s been the raison d'être of Richard Branson’s Virgin brand for some time – it’s how flying got a makeover for example.
Entertainment industries have had makeovers too. HBO did it for TV and Marvel did it for its catalogue of super-heroes - they transformed their respective industry’s products and allowed them to flourish whatever new distribution channels emerged. The movie business is currently working through product transformation via digital projection and 3D film.
With music, it's been harder to tell how to respond to the impact of technology and the resulting changes in consumer behaviours. Piracy, other entertainment products, digital distribution and now apps, have all shaken up consumption to the point where consumers seem to spend more time searching, writing about or playing with music than actually listening to it. The term the 'Kodak moment' just doesn't do music justice. What Kodak went through was child's play compared with the current challenge of music producers.
Arguably, those producers have placed too much attention on distribution, with little genuine sustainable value created from this. It has taken too long to sw
itch focus to the obvious – music the product.But with new product innovations now arriving that seems to be changing. We have high-end physical album packages that come with a range of valued extras including even gig tickets, like Metric & Smashing Pumpkins mentioned above. Some debut artists like Laura Marling did it with her ‘Song Box’ release of Alas I Cannot Swim. Radiohead really got that ball rolling. The much talked about release of In Rainbows skewered the two polarising trends in music consumption: digital - get it now, get it cheap, no frills - serving one end of the scale and the £40 box set serving the other. Clinical, simple, genius marketing.
Audio-visually music has come on leaps & bounds despite the reduction in the volume of expensively made promos. Again, the music video market has widened to cover lo-if or user generated low cost clips for YouTube to high brow art films for theatrical distribution, such as The Arctic Monkeys Live at the Apollo and Wilco’s two great movie projects. Artists at all ends of the spectrum are creating interesting film product, from U2's recent arty collaboration with Anton Corbin to Conor Oberst’s superb recent touring film.
Despite being in the eye of the hurricane, the pop song itself hasn't changed, although the singles format has actually benefited. Meanwhile albums seem to have remained intact, my own theory (statistically unproven) being that albums have both shortened and improved as a ‘natural response’ to current market pressures. With ever more music products growing around the core song & album formats, two things need to happen to affect a notable shift in the commercial fortunes of music:
1. High-end physical product will need to become more standard rather than ‘special edition’. This will extend the physical life-cycle for music across all demographic groups that value physical product, be it CD, vinyl or USB. This would take investment on the industry’s behalf but will pay-off over the long-term. Besides, standard CDs are just not good enough for modern day consumers.
Despite being in the eye of the hurricane, the pop song itself hasn't changed, although the singles format has actually benefited. Meanwhile albums seem to have remained intact, my own theory (statistically unproven) being that albums have both shortened and improved as a ‘natural response’ to current market pressures. With ever more music products growing around the core song & album formats, two things need to happen to affect a notable shift in the commercial fortunes of music:
1. High-end physical product will need to become more standard rather than ‘special edition’. This will extend the physical life-cycle for music across all demographic groups that value physical product, be it CD, vinyl or USB. This would take investment on the industry’s behalf but will pay-off over the long-term. Besides, standard CDs are just not good enough for modern day consumers.
2. More & more peripheral content – film, video, apps etc. should be packaged & offered commercially as product, not purely in the name of promotion – after all, what exactly is being promoted these days except an ever-reducing sales yield for the standard CD?
There has been an ongoing debate in the convergence era as to what is King, content or distribution. To my mind it is clear, content wins, distribution is just access to content. People will always want music content and will pay for the privilege, but music the product has to change and improve with the times. Consumers appreciate that more than anything.
There has been an ongoing debate in the convergence era as to what is King, content or distribution. To my mind it is clear, content wins, distribution is just access to content. People will always want music content and will pay for the privilege, but music the product has to change and improve with the times. Consumers appreciate that more than anything.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Transforming labels - six ways re-evaluated
I was in a meeting the other day at which somebody asked me for a copy of a report I had written over 18 months ago. It wrong footed me a bit - I have mixed feelings about sharing something I've done that long ago.
It was a brochure I wrote and self published, about six ways in which record companies could build new revenue streams during these challenging times. When I got back to my office I skimmed through it with dread. 18 months is a long time and thinking moves miles on in that time frame.
I felt a bit embarrassed reading it, but a tiny bit proud as well – just for giving it a go and getting it done. After all, this brochure helped win me a couple of projects. And there it was on Guy Hand's desk the day he hired me to help Terra Firma understand the record business. The opening line of the brochure was quoted in a widely read leader piece written by Robert Sandall for Prospect Magazine. And, people who read it liked it, so I guess it served its purpose at the time. But on re-reading, I wondered, especially given the dizzying pace of change in the music business, how much of what I'd written 18 months back was in any way still relevant in the here and now.
It seems timely to consider this after a few weeks in which we've had a number of interesting things said by the majors – three of them anyhow. First we saw EMI reveal its new strategy of three new operating divisions: New Music, Catalogue and Music Services, along with the soon to be launched D2C 'learning lab' on emi.com. Meanwhile, Warner claimed that all new artist signings would have some element of multi-rights – partial 360 degree deals. And Universal (currently literally wiping the floor with its major competitors) somewhat audaciously revealed operating results that included a growth in revenues of 4%.
Revenue growth in the record business? Is that still possible these days? Obviously the answer is yes, though the vast majority of this was driven from core album business, thanks to two out of four major artist releases now belonging to the Universal roster. Pure market power works, even in a steadily dwindling market.
But my brochure was about going beyond the traditional and diversifying the core record business into new – and more profitable – revenue streams. My six ways to drive new business were as follows:
1. New retailing.
2. Brand partnerships.
3. Personalisation & recommendation.
4. Commercialising communities and D2C initiatives.
5. Customer loyalty.
6. Product innovation & programming.
Aside from evaluating whether this really is a list of coherence rather than a brain dump, I'll take a very brief look at each one, benchmarked against the success of real efforts made by the labels – or new entrants of course - in each area.
New Retailing
The idea here was to take particular titles or repertoire outside the traditional physical retail space and look for new retail partners. The Spice Girls famously did this with Victoria's Secret for example. And Hot Topic, Nordstrom and Starbucks had all entered the CD retail business in the US, so it seemed like momentum was building and might transfer from the US to other markets.
But it's gone rather quiet. Starbucks has scaled back due partly to the tough economy, but also due to a now badly exposed lack of real commitment to music. One-off successes like The Spice Girls have proved harder for the labels to scale across the piece. Meanwhile no new dedicated entertainment retail brand has emerged (I've been approached twice in the past two years by new physical ventures, so there is interest, but no execution). In the UK have we seen Virgin's enthusiastic re-branding as Zavvi, but that's not new. Giving a school grade verdict on new physical retail for music then, over the last 18 months? Has to be a D, for disappointing.
Brand Partnerships
This has been a potential industry panacea for a while now. No question, brands have been a shot in the arm for music in several key ways. One-off licensing deals have secured vital bottom-line income for labels. Some artists (notably Groove Armada) have successfully gone outside the mainstream label system directly through brand partnerships. And the synch business itself has grown impressively, as has public performance of music in general.
The innovation and creativity around individual campaigns (ads, festival sponsorships, TV soundtracks) has been a genuinely great development for the music industry. Listen around you – wherever you go or whatever you see on TV or in film, the music has become intriguing and of consistently high quality. No more jingles and less library music and a lot more money being generated. However, labels have so far failed to truly scale this across the piece, with initiatives like Universal's BrandAmp and Warner's Brand Asset Group fairly quiet after fanfare launches two years or so ago. Labels have not become creative agencies for their artists. For the industry this has to be a B+, but for the music labels, a C+.
Personalisation & Recommendation
By this I meant prioritising licensing to technologies focused around this. Back in December 2005, Gartner Research and Harvard predicted that, by 2008 25% of online music purchases would be driven from recommendation technologies. That just hasn't happened. It's taken iTunes ages to come up with Genius. As ever with Apple, it’s doubtful they'll share data on the impact on sales directly from that feature. Meanwhile, despite a flurry of activity, no real breakthrough has occurred. Pandora has struggled (partly due to licensing prices but also due to the hit & miss nature of the way it works). Recently launched Mufin has attracted rotten user reviews.
Besides, where a service is actually built around recommendation itself, there is and always will be a monetisation problem. Consumers won't pay directly for recommendation. The other issue is the illogical nature of music recommendation and discovery. It can't really be efficiently coded can it? Real music fans are so far underwhelmed by recommendation technologies – either collaborative, music-genome based or otherwise.
Personalisation is another thing entirely. The BBC & Google have both understood the power of allowing users to very easily personalise their home page and web navigation experiences. But when you login to the iTunes Music Store, where exactly is your personalised home page? Spotify is better at this and allows you to personalise the user interface in nice, subtle ways.
So things are developing. But overall the technology, services and licensing in this area has not driven anything like the impact predicted by Garner & Harvard. Combined industry efforts hear get a C- could and should, do better.
Label, Artist D2C
It's funny, 18 months ago I wrote passionately about artists creating communities for themselves (via artist websites primarily) rather than letting others do it for them. I tipped Radiohead to be the first to succeed with the approach – an obvious choice that turned out as expected with the In Rainbows digital release. Right now there is a lot of talk about capturing the artist-to-fan relationship better, and understanding fans individual and collective needs better.
Even if a lot of the talk is hyperbole right now, there probably is something in this. However, no artist has been really successful to date except Radiohead and Trent Reznor (although the definition of ‘success’ might lead to a different conclusion). In my previous post on this subject, I tip Topspin Media to make the most impact for artists going direct to consumer. Anyone interested in why should check out Ian Roger's recent keynote at the Grammy music conference in the US. Ian posted his slides online – recommended reading.
As for label D2C – we have a couple of imminent releases – so I will reserve any judgement until then. But the timing is iffy. With a slew of new digital services recently launched but yet to bed down, and even more coming, I don't think this is great timing for launching a D2C service. The impact could get lost in the crowd. So as I write this, commercialising artist communities gets a C, with label D2C specifically a D, notwithstanding new launches next month.
Customer Loyalty
The point I make in the brochure is that many fans would spend more on their favourite artists if given the opportunity, conveniently. Pre-orders, special-edition versions and fan loyalty schemes could be used to extract more value from fans. This has been done successfully, though again Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails seem to have capitalised more than most on the idea. I have hopes that Amazon, with its deep retailing expertise and scale, can achieve a lot in this area for a wider array of artists. Also, I think subscription services – yet to really come of age – can drive the elusive ARPU that everybody talked about when these first arrived a few years back. I think this is an area with a lot of commercial promise, but I don't think a huge leap forward has been made in the past 18 months really. Grade C.
Product Innovation & Programming
For me this is the single biggest area of impact. With the core music formats – albums, songs and videos being gradually commoditised from the combined impact of file-sharing, unbundling and music ubiquity, classic management theory would suggest that what this industry needs most is a re-invented core product.
But what would that be exactly? Digital brings all kinds of possibilities, such as multi-media bundles and of course, the all-you-can-eat music subscription. I'm surprised that we haven't had more EP type formats in the digital space, though there have been a few examples. I like iTunes Complete My Album as it is a dynamic price model – the more you buy the better the value (though isn't an all-you-can subscription 'complete my catalogue' by default?).
I still believe that long-form video and greater innovation with audio-visual content using digital channels, can improve music as both a product and experience. What did I mean by programming from a label viewpoint? Firstly, every label - the majors especially - needs a production business (most majors do and in Sony’s case of course, SiCo is a major contributor to the bottom line).
Rather than simply making multi-media programmes around artists, new albums or even non-music ventures, this function needs to do much more for the labels strategically. In order to achieve maximum impact for artists, there is a need to make the right content, get it through the right channels and platforms, at the right time and using the right brands as sponsors – all to reach the right audience. This is new in music marketing and is a subtle, strategic discipline that can be offered as a true holistic service to artists. No longer can labels simply spread content around in the hope that some of it will stick and trigger off demand for an album. The game is changing. Look back to my very first post on this blog on HBO – Music lessons from a content powerhouse – for more thoughts on this subject.
It was a brochure I wrote and self published, about six ways in which record companies could build new revenue streams during these challenging times. When I got back to my office I skimmed through it with dread. 18 months is a long time and thinking moves miles on in that time frame.
I felt a bit embarrassed reading it, but a tiny bit proud as well – just for giving it a go and getting it done. After all, this brochure helped win me a couple of projects. And there it was on Guy Hand's desk the day he hired me to help Terra Firma understand the record business. The opening line of the brochure was quoted in a widely read leader piece written by Robert Sandall for Prospect Magazine. And, people who read it liked it, so I guess it served its purpose at the time. But on re-reading, I wondered, especially given the dizzying pace of change in the music business, how much of what I'd written 18 months back was in any way still relevant in the here and now.
It seems timely to consider this after a few weeks in which we've had a number of interesting things said by the majors – three of them anyhow. First we saw EMI reveal its new strategy of three new operating divisions: New Music, Catalogue and Music Services, along with the soon to be launched D2C 'learning lab' on emi.com. Meanwhile, Warner claimed that all new artist signings would have some element of multi-rights – partial 360 degree deals. And Universal (currently literally wiping the floor with its major competitors) somewhat audaciously revealed operating results that included a growth in revenues of 4%.
Revenue growth in the record business? Is that still possible these days? Obviously the answer is yes, though the vast majority of this was driven from core album business, thanks to two out of four major artist releases now belonging to the Universal roster. Pure market power works, even in a steadily dwindling market.
But my brochure was about going beyond the traditional and diversifying the core record business into new – and more profitable – revenue streams. My six ways to drive new business were as follows:
1. New retailing.
2. Brand partnerships.
3. Personalisation & recommendation.
4. Commercialising communities and D2C initiatives.
5. Customer loyalty.
6. Product innovation & programming.
Aside from evaluating whether this really is a list of coherence rather than a brain dump, I'll take a very brief look at each one, benchmarked against the success of real efforts made by the labels – or new entrants of course - in each area.
New Retailing
The idea here was to take particular titles or repertoire outside the traditional physical retail space and look for new retail partners. The Spice Girls famously did this with Victoria's Secret for example. And Hot Topic, Nordstrom and Starbucks had all entered the CD retail business in the US, so it seemed like momentum was building and might transfer from the US to other markets.
But it's gone rather quiet. Starbucks has scaled back due partly to the tough economy, but also due to a now badly exposed lack of real commitment to music. One-off successes like The Spice Girls have proved harder for the labels to scale across the piece. Meanwhile no new dedicated entertainment retail brand has emerged (I've been approached twice in the past two years by new physical ventures, so there is interest, but no execution). In the UK have we seen Virgin's enthusiastic re-branding as Zavvi, but that's not new. Giving a school grade verdict on new physical retail for music then, over the last 18 months? Has to be a D, for disappointing.
Brand Partnerships
This has been a potential industry panacea for a while now. No question, brands have been a shot in the arm for music in several key ways. One-off licensing deals have secured vital bottom-line income for labels. Some artists (notably Groove Armada) have successfully gone outside the mainstream label system directly through brand partnerships. And the synch business itself has grown impressively, as has public performance of music in general.
The innovation and creativity around individual campaigns (ads, festival sponsorships, TV soundtracks) has been a genuinely great development for the music industry. Listen around you – wherever you go or whatever you see on TV or in film, the music has become intriguing and of consistently high quality. No more jingles and less library music and a lot more money being generated. However, labels have so far failed to truly scale this across the piece, with initiatives like Universal's BrandAmp and Warner's Brand Asset Group fairly quiet after fanfare launches two years or so ago. Labels have not become creative agencies for their artists. For the industry this has to be a B+, but for the music labels, a C+.
Personalisation & Recommendation
By this I meant prioritising licensing to technologies focused around this. Back in December 2005, Gartner Research and Harvard predicted that, by 2008 25% of online music purchases would be driven from recommendation technologies. That just hasn't happened. It's taken iTunes ages to come up with Genius. As ever with Apple, it’s doubtful they'll share data on the impact on sales directly from that feature. Meanwhile, despite a flurry of activity, no real breakthrough has occurred. Pandora has struggled (partly due to licensing prices but also due to the hit & miss nature of the way it works). Recently launched Mufin has attracted rotten user reviews.
Besides, where a service is actually built around recommendation itself, there is and always will be a monetisation problem. Consumers won't pay directly for recommendation. The other issue is the illogical nature of music recommendation and discovery. It can't really be efficiently coded can it? Real music fans are so far underwhelmed by recommendation technologies – either collaborative, music-genome based or otherwise.
Personalisation is another thing entirely. The BBC & Google have both understood the power of allowing users to very easily personalise their home page and web navigation experiences. But when you login to the iTunes Music Store, where exactly is your personalised home page? Spotify is better at this and allows you to personalise the user interface in nice, subtle ways.
So things are developing. But overall the technology, services and licensing in this area has not driven anything like the impact predicted by Garner & Harvard. Combined industry efforts hear get a C- could and should, do better.
Label, Artist D2C
It's funny, 18 months ago I wrote passionately about artists creating communities for themselves (via artist websites primarily) rather than letting others do it for them. I tipped Radiohead to be the first to succeed with the approach – an obvious choice that turned out as expected with the In Rainbows digital release. Right now there is a lot of talk about capturing the artist-to-fan relationship better, and understanding fans individual and collective needs better.
Even if a lot of the talk is hyperbole right now, there probably is something in this. However, no artist has been really successful to date except Radiohead and Trent Reznor (although the definition of ‘success’ might lead to a different conclusion). In my previous post on this subject, I tip Topspin Media to make the most impact for artists going direct to consumer. Anyone interested in why should check out Ian Roger's recent keynote at the Grammy music conference in the US. Ian posted his slides online – recommended reading.
As for label D2C – we have a couple of imminent releases – so I will reserve any judgement until then. But the timing is iffy. With a slew of new digital services recently launched but yet to bed down, and even more coming, I don't think this is great timing for launching a D2C service. The impact could get lost in the crowd. So as I write this, commercialising artist communities gets a C, with label D2C specifically a D, notwithstanding new launches next month.
Customer Loyalty
The point I make in the brochure is that many fans would spend more on their favourite artists if given the opportunity, conveniently. Pre-orders, special-edition versions and fan loyalty schemes could be used to extract more value from fans. This has been done successfully, though again Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails seem to have capitalised more than most on the idea. I have hopes that Amazon, with its deep retailing expertise and scale, can achieve a lot in this area for a wider array of artists. Also, I think subscription services – yet to really come of age – can drive the elusive ARPU that everybody talked about when these first arrived a few years back. I think this is an area with a lot of commercial promise, but I don't think a huge leap forward has been made in the past 18 months really. Grade C.
Product Innovation & Programming
For me this is the single biggest area of impact. With the core music formats – albums, songs and videos being gradually commoditised from the combined impact of file-sharing, unbundling and music ubiquity, classic management theory would suggest that what this industry needs most is a re-invented core product.
But what would that be exactly? Digital brings all kinds of possibilities, such as multi-media bundles and of course, the all-you-can-eat music subscription. I'm surprised that we haven't had more EP type formats in the digital space, though there have been a few examples. I like iTunes Complete My Album as it is a dynamic price model – the more you buy the better the value (though isn't an all-you-can subscription 'complete my catalogue' by default?).
I still believe that long-form video and greater innovation with audio-visual content using digital channels, can improve music as both a product and experience. What did I mean by programming from a label viewpoint? Firstly, every label - the majors especially - needs a production business (most majors do and in Sony’s case of course, SiCo is a major contributor to the bottom line).
Rather than simply making multi-media programmes around artists, new albums or even non-music ventures, this function needs to do much more for the labels strategically. In order to achieve maximum impact for artists, there is a need to make the right content, get it through the right channels and platforms, at the right time and using the right brands as sponsors – all to reach the right audience. This is new in music marketing and is a subtle, strategic discipline that can be offered as a true holistic service to artists. No longer can labels simply spread content around in the hope that some of it will stick and trigger off demand for an album. The game is changing. Look back to my very first post on this blog on HBO – Music lessons from a content powerhouse – for more thoughts on this subject.
Friday, 12 September 2008
Knowing your Elbow from your arse – a small lesson in artist development
Heartfelt congratulations to Elbow on taking the Mercury prize last week. I predicted it (i really did, ask my wife or hairdresser!) and was rooting for them (my very first choice would have been Merz, but he wasn’t nominated so never mind).
I say heartfelt ‘cos i really mean it. I love Elbow. Absolutely adore them. And i’m delighted to see a band reach a new career high (and maybe, just maybe, a breakthrough into the mainstream for a while) after 18 years on the slow burner.
I have a history with this band. I bought their first album Asleep In The Back when it came out in 2001, on the back of good reviews. It didn’t work for me so, i passed it on to a friend and forgot about Elbow. What brought me back to them four years on, was a strong recommendation from Eamonn Forde (friend, music writer & general man of impeccable music tastes) to try Leaders Of The Free World. I duly did, and liked it a lot – enough to buy tickets to see the band play at The Astoria. And that was that - hooked for life. From the moment the singer ambled on to the stage with nothing less than a Styrofoam cup (tea, coffee?) in hand, you could tell something was different about them. They played an absolute stormer that night. I remember saying to my friend afterward that they really should be playing stadiums along with Coldplay (if it wasn’t for the way they looked perhaps, as well as having a more complex, edgier repertoire). After that it was back to the second album Cast Of Thousands – very good (with the track “Switching Off” literally one of the most breathtaking pop ballads i’ve ever heard).
It was after that show, shortly after the release of “Leaders”, i was curious as to Elbow’s commercial curve and pulled their album sales from the UK Chart. Not a good picture at all. Steadily downward from album one in fact, despite a clear artistic improvement and consistently high critical response (see the chart courtesy of the UK Chart Co. and http://www.metacritic.com/).
The band were in that classic space so many bands have been before – getting better and better but selling less and less – in the hole basically. And when in the hole, it’s hard for band, manager or label (if the label still cares) to see a way out. Any cold hard (and blind) analysis by a label accountant would suggest one solution: DROP. Beyond such a myopic view, one can only look forward and hope something breaks for a band in that position. Whether it be getting a song in an ad or TV show, an endorsement from a DJ – whatever – but something.
That something for Elbow seems to me to be their new label. And here is where the business of the labels is so much maligned and under-appreciated – artist development. I know from speaking with the people involved that Fiction worked hard to get Elbow out of its deal with V2 and on to Fiction, for almost a year. Ironically in the end, Universal, which owns Fiction, bought V2 wholly and so could have signed the band by default. That deal does now mean of course that Universal now has Elbow’s catalogue, which suddenly looks like a very shrewd move.
So what happened differently for Elbow under Fiction?
It wasn’t the music. The band worked on the Seldom Seen Kid album (2 years in the making) entirely on their own – both recording and producing. However, from the moment the band signed with Fiction, what they now had was the unwavering support of that label’s founder Jim Chancellor, who believed in the band fully and dedicated the label efforts to getting Elbow’s music to the wider audience it deserved.
The other major difference for Elbow this time around was marketing power (maybe promotional clout is more accurate). Seeing giant posters all over London and full page newspaper ads for the Seldom Seen Kid was a surprise if a delightful one.
The band has worked hard as well. Elbow effectively toured the album continuously with a UK tour on release and appearances on the festival circuit throughout the summer (including one very special night during Massive Attack’s Meltdown, an unusual one off show at Delamere Forest and most significantly, a show-stealing sundown set at Glastonbury). Another round of shows starts with 3 nights at The Roundhouse next month.
But the critical thing is how varied and sustained the campaign around the album has been. In Jim Chancellor’s words the campaign was designed not just to promote the album but to “grow the record over six to 12 months”. A campaign of well chosen media placements (anyone interested in the inspiring music behind the BBC Olympics coverage would have discovered the song “One Day Like This” an SSK highlight) has culminated in the shot-in-the-arm Mercury nomination – with the band doing the rest.
All of which adds up to two insights of value to the business and those who observe and commentate upon it. First, the band would not have achieved this on its own. No way. We sadly don’t live in a world where good music rises miraculously to the top on its own merits - it needs the work.
Second, artist development drives how the business works. Belief in the best artist projects is often – as in this case - contrary to hard metrics or measures. However, a belief-driven campaign for an album like this one also works at its best when there exists a creative and cultural context (the alternative being blind belief which is plain foolhardy).
In Elbow’s case the context was all there: a very good and improving songwriting band; a brilliant (but grounded) frontman - a true auteur indeed; a very good song catalogue; a loyal if small, core following and a consistently brilliant live repertoire.
Most of all, perhaps, a band making sophisticated, emotive music with a very strong potential to connect. A band craving a wider audience if ever there was one. In the opening track on The Seldom Seen Kid, the wonderful “Starlings”, Guy Garvey sings the line:
“I guess this means i’m asking you to back a horse that’s good for glue, if nothing else”.
In backing Elbow it suddenly looks like this horse will be good for much more than glue. Glance back at the chart to see the effect post 1 week on from the Mercury's, with unit sales of 20k taking SSK to sales of 153k - now easily the bands best-selling record and back in the album charts at number 7 this week (from 61 last week). On the way to Platinum? Just maybe.
Footnote: If Guy Garvey writes a more entertaining line than “Charging around with a juggernaut brow”* I might have to change the title of this blog.
I say heartfelt ‘cos i really mean it. I love Elbow. Absolutely adore them. And i’m delighted to see a band reach a new career high (and maybe, just maybe, a breakthrough into the mainstream for a while) after 18 years on the slow burner.
I have a history with this band. I bought their first album Asleep In The Back when it came out in 2001, on the back of good reviews. It didn’t work for me so, i passed it on to a friend and forgot about Elbow. What brought me back to them four years on, was a strong recommendation from Eamonn Forde (friend, music writer & general man of impeccable music tastes) to try Leaders Of The Free World. I duly did, and liked it a lot – enough to buy tickets to see the band play at The Astoria. And that was that - hooked for life. From the moment the singer ambled on to the stage with nothing less than a Styrofoam cup (tea, coffee?) in hand, you could tell something was different about them. They played an absolute stormer that night. I remember saying to my friend afterward that they really should be playing stadiums along with Coldplay (if it wasn’t for the way they looked perhaps, as well as having a more complex, edgier repertoire). After that it was back to the second album Cast Of Thousands – very good (with the track “Switching Off” literally one of the most breathtaking pop ballads i’ve ever heard).
It was after that show, shortly after the release of “Leaders”, i was curious as to Elbow’s commercial curve and pulled their album sales from the UK Chart. Not a good picture at all. Steadily downward from album one in fact, despite a clear artistic improvement and consistently high critical response (see the chart courtesy of the UK Chart Co. and http://www.metacritic.com/).
The band were in that classic space so many bands have been before – getting better and better but selling less and less – in the hole basically. And when in the hole, it’s hard for band, manager or label (if the label still cares) to see a way out. Any cold hard (and blind) analysis by a label accountant would suggest one solution: DROP. Beyond such a myopic view, one can only look forward and hope something breaks for a band in that position. Whether it be getting a song in an ad or TV show, an endorsement from a DJ – whatever – but something.That something for Elbow seems to me to be their new label. And here is where the business of the labels is so much maligned and under-appreciated – artist development. I know from speaking with the people involved that Fiction worked hard to get Elbow out of its deal with V2 and on to Fiction, for almost a year. Ironically in the end, Universal, which owns Fiction, bought V2 wholly and so could have signed the band by default. That deal does now mean of course that Universal now has Elbow’s catalogue, which suddenly looks like a very shrewd move.
So what happened differently for Elbow under Fiction?
It wasn’t the music. The band worked on the Seldom Seen Kid album (2 years in the making) entirely on their own – both recording and producing. However, from the moment the band signed with Fiction, what they now had was the unwavering support of that label’s founder Jim Chancellor, who believed in the band fully and dedicated the label efforts to getting Elbow’s music to the wider audience it deserved.
The other major difference for Elbow this time around was marketing power (maybe promotional clout is more accurate). Seeing giant posters all over London and full page newspaper ads for the Seldom Seen Kid was a surprise if a delightful one.
The band has worked hard as well. Elbow effectively toured the album continuously with a UK tour on release and appearances on the festival circuit throughout the summer (including one very special night during Massive Attack’s Meltdown, an unusual one off show at Delamere Forest and most significantly, a show-stealing sundown set at Glastonbury). Another round of shows starts with 3 nights at The Roundhouse next month.
But the critical thing is how varied and sustained the campaign around the album has been. In Jim Chancellor’s words the campaign was designed not just to promote the album but to “grow the record over six to 12 months”. A campaign of well chosen media placements (anyone interested in the inspiring music behind the BBC Olympics coverage would have discovered the song “One Day Like This” an SSK highlight) has culminated in the shot-in-the-arm Mercury nomination – with the band doing the rest.
All of which adds up to two insights of value to the business and those who observe and commentate upon it. First, the band would not have achieved this on its own. No way. We sadly don’t live in a world where good music rises miraculously to the top on its own merits - it needs the work.
Second, artist development drives how the business works. Belief in the best artist projects is often – as in this case - contrary to hard metrics or measures. However, a belief-driven campaign for an album like this one also works at its best when there exists a creative and cultural context (the alternative being blind belief which is plain foolhardy).
In Elbow’s case the context was all there: a very good and improving songwriting band; a brilliant (but grounded) frontman - a true auteur indeed; a very good song catalogue; a loyal if small, core following and a consistently brilliant live repertoire.
Most of all, perhaps, a band making sophisticated, emotive music with a very strong potential to connect. A band craving a wider audience if ever there was one. In the opening track on The Seldom Seen Kid, the wonderful “Starlings”, Guy Garvey sings the line:
“I guess this means i’m asking you to back a horse that’s good for glue, if nothing else”.
In backing Elbow it suddenly looks like this horse will be good for much more than glue. Glance back at the chart to see the effect post 1 week on from the Mercury's, with unit sales of 20k taking SSK to sales of 153k - now easily the bands best-selling record and back in the album charts at number 7 this week (from 61 last week). On the way to Platinum? Just maybe.
Footnote: If Guy Garvey writes a more entertaining line than “Charging around with a juggernaut brow”* I might have to change the title of this blog.
*The line is from the track “The Bones of You” from The seldom Seen Kid and is a song about looking five years back from a stressed life “cramming commitments like cats in a sack” to a more carefree time when one could oversleep to the point only when the head of your sleeping partner starts to deaden the feeling in your arm. As poetry in song it’s simply divine – there is no better lyricist in pop right now than Garvey.
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
Surviving Majors: How to Keep the Dream Factory a Dream Factory
“I got a job washing cars…across from the high rise building where PolyGram Records was. I would stand there with the hose in my hand and look up at the building with reverence, like it was a monument”.
Mark Oliver Everett (Eels) “Things The Grandchildren Should Know”, Little, Brown publishing, 2008.
This quote encompasses everything about the romance of the record companies as they were until very recently - dream factories, star making machines – institutions with a glam factor matched only by the movie studios or the plushest ad agencies. These days they are barely recognisable as such and are gradually becoming monuments of a bygone era. The irony is that Majors are the ones with the resources to affect a real shift in landscape and achieve market tipping points in their favour, yet they are so encumbered by existing systems, contracts, relationships and skills, it’s questionable whether or not they can transform successfully.
I can hardly write an opus here on a blog to suggest how every aspect of a major label can be transformed and it would be pointless anyhow, since writing is so much easier than doing. But based on my study of the majors while at IFPI and more direct experience of working within a transforming EMI, i can at least make a shortlist of areas in which i think, music companies can focus to achieve successful transformation.
I suggest three focal points as a way to begin to turn things around, but essentially, the name of the game is Content Development. There’s a lot more besides of course, but it has to start and end there. It’s also about Creating Culture – much more significant than ‘creating communities’, since communities follow culture. It’s certainly not about being a ‘record company’ – that model can only exist in the medium term for the most A&R savvy, cost conscious indies. The majors must very quickly, really shift (i.e. not just claim to be shifting) to being artist-centred, production and marketing companies.
My three points on which to focus the transformation are:
1. Shift from a products business to an artist business. Walking around the HQ of a major it can be a shock to see that the CD is still the core business – CDs (in some cases CD singles!) stacked everywhere in exec offices and staffers desks tell a graphic story – a travesty of wasted plastic. A visionary artist would be concerned about this. A visionary business leader would now simply ban CDs in the office (physical products of course still exist, but those are for fans, increasingly made-to-order, too valuable for freebies). Basically, the artist is now the brand and everything they create is part of the product portfolio for wide exploitation and revenue sharing. To think of the products as simply the recordings is limited and a ticket to continued slow decline. It’s the Marvel moment – when the iconic comic book company recognised that its core product wasn’t comics but the characters themselves.
2. Shift from an album producing business to a production company built around artist projects. Artists should no longer be stuck on a two-year album-to-album treadmill. Through working with a visionary company, they will create projects periodically whenever it makes sense, depending on profile and preference. Every tour would then be an opportunity to showcase new material and work better synergies between recording and live performance. Artist projects can be wider than just music. If Robbie Williams wants to make a documentary about UFOs or retro gaming, there is a market for that and EMI could be producing this content rather than letting others. The mandate here is to turn the promotional model on its head - to commercialise content based on live, pre-release and exclusives - and to widen and deepen audience relationships through improving content and making it bespoke for platforms and brands.
3. Shift from a promotions business to a marketing business focused on high value audiences. Radio plugging, advertising, securing a TV slot, tour support...the list of promotional activity around ‘working an album’ is a long hard slog. And arguably none of it can really be called marketing. Do these cyclical tasks really deepen the relationship between the artist and their fanbase, or broaden that fanbase significantly? Few of these activities collect any customer information or sense changes in consumer habits. Many artists are already cynical about the promotional treadmill already and will only become more so as all this activity promotes nothing much more than ever-decaying album sales. A visionary content company now needs to be brave enough to take all this activity and stop doing (some, not all of) it in the name of album promotion. Meanwhile, with production values at the core, music companies need to increase the quality of artist sessions, interviews, documentary footage and all else – and package this material for sale, license, or at the very least, direct marketing to the fan base or genre base for the artist. A move to bespoke marketing plans (increasingly digitally-led), for each artist rather than a throw it all at the wall and see what sticks model must prevail.
These would be my three main areas of focus. I deliberately don’t choose a focus on shifting from production to distribution - why take that risk when the distribution business is so fast-moving and over-crowded? I deliberately don’t choose a move away from content to technology – why fumble about in areas outside your core expertise? And i don’t think the model of advances needs such a radical rethink either (though advances do need to come down). The way the relationship is funded should make no real difference to overall revenue and profit outcomes really.
Obviously these shifts do mean that label-artist contracts must change to the sharing of the full portfolio of IP rights, there is no way around the need for this. There is also no way around the need for better creative decisions in A&R, since this model requires smarter investments in a smaller portfolio of artists (with digital, the tricks & tools for reducing A&R risk are now springing up everywhere and can be used far more systematically).
Organisationally there are obvious shifts required in culture, ethos and skill. In all content companies, ‘suits’ and ‘creatives’ sit alongside each other in a fragile juxtapose. Investments in skills should focus around filling this ‘white space’. It takes creativity – both commercial and artistic creativity – to do this. And a new relationship with artists based on transparency, trust, understanding and a shared vision. Artists would come to a new label for this, knowing that this is the environment in which they can achieve their best work and find the widest audience that deserves to see & hear it. That is the new dream factory model – to do great work and be rewarded for it with the widest most loyal audience your music company can find for you both.
Mark Oliver Everett (Eels) “Things The Grandchildren Should Know”, Little, Brown publishing, 2008.
This quote encompasses everything about the romance of the record companies as they were until very recently - dream factories, star making machines – institutions with a glam factor matched only by the movie studios or the plushest ad agencies. These days they are barely recognisable as such and are gradually becoming monuments of a bygone era. The irony is that Majors are the ones with the resources to affect a real shift in landscape and achieve market tipping points in their favour, yet they are so encumbered by existing systems, contracts, relationships and skills, it’s questionable whether or not they can transform successfully.
I can hardly write an opus here on a blog to suggest how every aspect of a major label can be transformed and it would be pointless anyhow, since writing is so much easier than doing. But based on my study of the majors while at IFPI and more direct experience of working within a transforming EMI, i can at least make a shortlist of areas in which i think, music companies can focus to achieve successful transformation.
I suggest three focal points as a way to begin to turn things around, but essentially, the name of the game is Content Development. There’s a lot more besides of course, but it has to start and end there. It’s also about Creating Culture – much more significant than ‘creating communities’, since communities follow culture. It’s certainly not about being a ‘record company’ – that model can only exist in the medium term for the most A&R savvy, cost conscious indies. The majors must very quickly, really shift (i.e. not just claim to be shifting) to being artist-centred, production and marketing companies.
My three points on which to focus the transformation are:
1. Shift from a products business to an artist business. Walking around the HQ of a major it can be a shock to see that the CD is still the core business – CDs (in some cases CD singles!) stacked everywhere in exec offices and staffers desks tell a graphic story – a travesty of wasted plastic. A visionary artist would be concerned about this. A visionary business leader would now simply ban CDs in the office (physical products of course still exist, but those are for fans, increasingly made-to-order, too valuable for freebies). Basically, the artist is now the brand and everything they create is part of the product portfolio for wide exploitation and revenue sharing. To think of the products as simply the recordings is limited and a ticket to continued slow decline. It’s the Marvel moment – when the iconic comic book company recognised that its core product wasn’t comics but the characters themselves.
2. Shift from an album producing business to a production company built around artist projects. Artists should no longer be stuck on a two-year album-to-album treadmill. Through working with a visionary company, they will create projects periodically whenever it makes sense, depending on profile and preference. Every tour would then be an opportunity to showcase new material and work better synergies between recording and live performance. Artist projects can be wider than just music. If Robbie Williams wants to make a documentary about UFOs or retro gaming, there is a market for that and EMI could be producing this content rather than letting others. The mandate here is to turn the promotional model on its head - to commercialise content based on live, pre-release and exclusives - and to widen and deepen audience relationships through improving content and making it bespoke for platforms and brands.
3. Shift from a promotions business to a marketing business focused on high value audiences. Radio plugging, advertising, securing a TV slot, tour support...the list of promotional activity around ‘working an album’ is a long hard slog. And arguably none of it can really be called marketing. Do these cyclical tasks really deepen the relationship between the artist and their fanbase, or broaden that fanbase significantly? Few of these activities collect any customer information or sense changes in consumer habits. Many artists are already cynical about the promotional treadmill already and will only become more so as all this activity promotes nothing much more than ever-decaying album sales. A visionary content company now needs to be brave enough to take all this activity and stop doing (some, not all of) it in the name of album promotion. Meanwhile, with production values at the core, music companies need to increase the quality of artist sessions, interviews, documentary footage and all else – and package this material for sale, license, or at the very least, direct marketing to the fan base or genre base for the artist. A move to bespoke marketing plans (increasingly digitally-led), for each artist rather than a throw it all at the wall and see what sticks model must prevail.
These would be my three main areas of focus. I deliberately don’t choose a focus on shifting from production to distribution - why take that risk when the distribution business is so fast-moving and over-crowded? I deliberately don’t choose a move away from content to technology – why fumble about in areas outside your core expertise? And i don’t think the model of advances needs such a radical rethink either (though advances do need to come down). The way the relationship is funded should make no real difference to overall revenue and profit outcomes really.
Obviously these shifts do mean that label-artist contracts must change to the sharing of the full portfolio of IP rights, there is no way around the need for this. There is also no way around the need for better creative decisions in A&R, since this model requires smarter investments in a smaller portfolio of artists (with digital, the tricks & tools for reducing A&R risk are now springing up everywhere and can be used far more systematically).
Organisationally there are obvious shifts required in culture, ethos and skill. In all content companies, ‘suits’ and ‘creatives’ sit alongside each other in a fragile juxtapose. Investments in skills should focus around filling this ‘white space’. It takes creativity – both commercial and artistic creativity – to do this. And a new relationship with artists based on transparency, trust, understanding and a shared vision. Artists would come to a new label for this, knowing that this is the environment in which they can achieve their best work and find the widest audience that deserves to see & hear it. That is the new dream factory model – to do great work and be rewarded for it with the widest most loyal audience your music company can find for you both.
Monday, 4 August 2008
The Concept Album is back - not before time
Here’s my favourite music industry stat – the number of albums released in the UK (2007): 32,459. Unbelievable. What other consumer business puts over 30,000 separate branded products on the shelves in a single year in the hope of making a return on each one? As industry sales decline, the number of commercial release has actually increased over the past five years by 30%.
This is commercially released albums only. If we add the one zillion unsigned bands on MySpace who also have song collections on CD-R & websites, it’s easy to conclude that there is currently far too much music for us listeners to get our ears around. And so all labels and artists face the same conundrum with each release – how to get ‘cut through’.
Many releases these days strive for cut through with increasingly elaborate publicity stunts around distribution – honesty box payments, 49 pence albums, cut & paste your own album from these 30+ average songs, free songs or albums and most boring of all ‘mix your own songs from ‘stems’’ (god help us all). Here’s my advice – get cut through with the music itself. Make music about your obsessions, passions or interests (a Robbie remake of War of the Worlds perhaps? – i’d be interested). Here are a few excellent examples of the genre...
I never thought i would ever bother with a Mick Hucknall record, but having heard about it (and seeing a show-stealing performance by Hucknall on Later With Jools Holland) i was intrigued to hear his latest – ‘Tribute to Bobby’. It’s what it says on the cover – a tribute album, to Bobby Bland. I’d never heard of BB and don’t particularly like American Blues, but the story behind the project, along with Mick’s performance of ‘Farther Up The Road’ had me intrigued. It’s really not bad at all. It’s introduced me to a new genre for which i’m always grateful. And its touching that on the sleevenotes (wonderful these records lend themselves to this old fashioned but great concept), Hucknall himself concludes “I’m taking a big step and going to disband Simply Red...after recording these songs, I don’t see going back to that style...This is the beginning for me”. Side benefits to society have come from this project as well.
Other recent music projects of note include the Mercury Nominated “Stainless Style” by Neon Neon. It’s a concept album about John DeLorean - the man and the car. It’s a cracker 80s retro pop album that has everything except decent sleevenotes explaining the concept.
But the master of the genre has to be Ry Cooder. He has recently released the third album in his trilogy of lost American folklore (how’s that for a theme). This began six years back with Chavez Ravine (my favourite album of 2005), which focused on the demise of a Mexican suburb of LA in the 50s. It continued with 2007’s “My Name Is Buddy” about a travelling cat (the pet kind)called Buddy in the heavily political backdrop of 30s Depression Era mid-west America. Both excellent, fascinating records.
The third final instalment is I, Flathead, subtitled ‘The Songs of Kash Buk and the Klowns’, a fictional (only it’s so authentic it seems real) blues band with a penchant for salt flats speed racing. The album special edition comes with a 100 page Novella telling the story of same (£13, absolute bargain). It’s wonderful stuff. All albums in the trilogy are released on Nonesuch, my favourite record label – of which more detailed posts later.
Personally i have an ongoing problem getting through my ‘music pending’ pile, which just gets bigger & bigger each week and ends up with albums being pruned from the pile before i’ve had a chance to actually hear them. There are certain records though, that stay there until i’m damn well ready to give them a proper listen – and these often share a characteristic - they have a story i’m interested in.
Themed records often go way beyond mere concept albums in that they have a whole backstory to them, which lends itself to great cover art, ‘label copy’ and even a whole range of supporting products (books, documentary films etc.). These records can be musical odysseys’, essentially, and much more entertaining for it.
This is commercially released albums only. If we add the one zillion unsigned bands on MySpace who also have song collections on CD-R & websites, it’s easy to conclude that there is currently far too much music for us listeners to get our ears around. And so all labels and artists face the same conundrum with each release – how to get ‘cut through’.
Many releases these days strive for cut through with increasingly elaborate publicity stunts around distribution – honesty box payments, 49 pence albums, cut & paste your own album from these 30+ average songs, free songs or albums and most boring of all ‘mix your own songs from ‘stems’’ (god help us all). Here’s my advice – get cut through with the music itself. Make music about your obsessions, passions or interests (a Robbie remake of War of the Worlds perhaps? – i’d be interested). Here are a few excellent examples of the genre...
I never thought i would ever bother with a Mick Hucknall record, but having heard about it (and seeing a show-stealing performance by Hucknall on Later With Jools Holland) i was intrigued to hear his latest – ‘Tribute to Bobby’. It’s what it says on the cover – a tribute album, to Bobby Bland. I’d never heard of BB and don’t particularly like American Blues, but the story behind the project, along with Mick’s performance of ‘Farther Up The Road’ had me intrigued. It’s really not bad at all. It’s introduced me to a new genre for which i’m always grateful. And its touching that on the sleevenotes (wonderful these records lend themselves to this old fashioned but great concept), Hucknall himself concludes “I’m taking a big step and going to disband Simply Red...after recording these songs, I don’t see going back to that style...This is the beginning for me”. Side benefits to society have come from this project as well.
Other recent music projects of note include the Mercury Nominated “Stainless Style” by Neon Neon. It’s a concept album about John DeLorean - the man and the car. It’s a cracker 80s retro pop album that has everything except decent sleevenotes explaining the concept.
But the master of the genre has to be Ry Cooder. He has recently released the third album in his trilogy of lost American folklore (how’s that for a theme). This began six years back with Chavez Ravine (my favourite album of 2005), which focused on the demise of a Mexican suburb of LA in the 50s. It continued with 2007’s “My Name Is Buddy” about a travelling cat (the pet kind)called Buddy in the heavily political backdrop of 30s Depression Era mid-west America. Both excellent, fascinating records.
The third final instalment is I, Flathead, subtitled ‘The Songs of Kash Buk and the Klowns’, a fictional (only it’s so authentic it seems real) blues band with a penchant for salt flats speed racing. The album special edition comes with a 100 page Novella telling the story of same (£13, absolute bargain). It’s wonderful stuff. All albums in the trilogy are released on Nonesuch, my favourite record label – of which more detailed posts later.
Personally i have an ongoing problem getting through my ‘music pending’ pile, which just gets bigger & bigger each week and ends up with albums being pruned from the pile before i’ve had a chance to actually hear them. There are certain records though, that stay there until i’m damn well ready to give them a proper listen – and these often share a characteristic - they have a story i’m interested in.
Themed records often go way beyond mere concept albums in that they have a whole backstory to them, which lends itself to great cover art, ‘label copy’ and even a whole range of supporting products (books, documentary films etc.). These records can be musical odysseys’, essentially, and much more entertaining for it.
Friday, 4 July 2008
Music lessons from HBO: the USA's content powerhouse
Having done a stint at a record company recently, a term i've grown to appreciate and use a lot, is Content Development. I mean this to be the essential thing the music business needs right now - new product. I mean better packaged CDs as standard not just 'special editions'. I mean high quality documentary video for digital channels, not just backstage DVD extra filler. And ultimately just better music projects. This i think is the real challenge posed by digital distribution, p2p & free and CD sales atrophy - a challenge to artists making music everywhere (whether or not in the 'label system') and the producers who get their product to market. I'll write much more about this in future posts.
My shining beacon in all this is not a music company at all but a TV company - America's HBO. It makes risky, edgy drama (and documentary, sport and comedy) that no other network or producer could make (some do now, but only because they have followed HBO's lead) and turns a strong proportion of them into massive, global hits. HBO depends on its hits, like all media companies do and always will. But by placing so much emphasis on content development (there it is, that key phrase) - it gets the hits other networks just can't - The Soprano's, Sex in the City, Six Feet Under (no other networks could dream up hits with subject matter so violent, overtly sexual or just down right morbid). When it doesn't get the blockbusters, what HBO achieves instead is something else - culturally relevant, critically acclaimed, auteur-attracting productions that speak volumes about HBOs committment to what it does (Deadwood, The Wire, Carnivale). Often the latter turn into slow-burn medium DVD hits anyway.
Suggestion to all media company leaders and execs - get yourself a copy of the excellent, recently published 'The Essential HBO Reader', edited by Gary Edgerton and Jeffrey Jones (Kentucky publishing).
The introduction and conclusion 'HBO's Ongoing Legacy' make insightful and inspiring reading. Here is a very short synopsis with some takeways for music companies:
My shining beacon in all this is not a music company at all but a TV company - America's HBO. It makes risky, edgy drama (and documentary, sport and comedy) that no other network or producer could make (some do now, but only because they have followed HBO's lead) and turns a strong proportion of them into massive, global hits. HBO depends on its hits, like all media companies do and always will. But by placing so much emphasis on content development (there it is, that key phrase) - it gets the hits other networks just can't - The Soprano's, Sex in the City, Six Feet Under (no other networks could dream up hits with subject matter so violent, overtly sexual or just down right morbid). When it doesn't get the blockbusters, what HBO achieves instead is something else - culturally relevant, critically acclaimed, auteur-attracting productions that speak volumes about HBOs committment to what it does (Deadwood, The Wire, Carnivale). Often the latter turn into slow-burn medium DVD hits anyway.
Suggestion to all media company leaders and execs - get yourself a copy of the excellent, recently published 'The Essential HBO Reader', edited by Gary Edgerton and Jeffrey Jones (Kentucky publishing).
The introduction and conclusion 'HBO's Ongoing Legacy' make insightful and inspiring reading. Here is a very short synopsis with some takeways for music companies:
- HBO's generations of managers have always understood that the average American viewer doesn't care whether they saw their shows in theatres, broadcast, by cable or on demand - they use all these mediums but essentially just want great entertainment at an affordable price (music co's - don't get too hung up on distribution, focus on the content)
- It pursued an often atypical strategy for television - of investing more money in programme development (more than doubling the industry benchmark) and the marketing of those programmes and the HBO brand (invest in A&R, be selective, back fewer artists but back them big)
- HBO followed a patronage model with its creators. Seinfeld's creator Larry David (page 13 of the book); "the network's tendency to permit creative freedom made it a magnet for experienced producers, directors and writers looking for outlets for projects to which they were deeply committed" (put the artists vision at the centre of things, promote the 'auteurs' of the project - the artist, producers - and their personal stories and journey in getting these amazing programmes made)
- HBO spread its creative and executive force across four key programme categories - comedy, drama, sports & documentary - in each instance becoming the premier home for creative talent (pick your genres and become unrivalled experts in sourcing talent, marketing and understanding genre audiences, using the label portfolio as the vehicle for this)
- HBO's dramatic series was always first to the genre - provoking an after effect (if an artist comes along that is genuinely new or genre defining, work the project carefully & prioritise it in your portfolio)
- HBO is more than a network, it is a global brand (this is harder for record companies with historically low brand equity, but brand building isn't just with consumers - for music it is with artists, managers, licensing and distribution partners. Label branding is a way forward for building future brand equity with consumers - see future posts on this)
In achieving the above concoction HBO has changed viewing expectations of a large swathe of the TV (and DVD) watching audience. The company has used technology to re-invent itself. It has partnered carefully and sometimes agressively in terms of its negotiation and protection of its content. It has diversified (backward integration from a network to a producer). And it has - most importantly of all, built a global brand. Central in all of this, is its focus on Content Development. It has become a content powerhouse, attracting the best creators to do the best work of their careers. Watch any of The Wire, Deadwood etc. and see it come together in all its fabulous glory.
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