Almost every week, Spotify adds a Moby track to my Discover Weekly or Release Radar playlists – probably the playlists I listen to the most. The problem is: I don’t like Moby, and he’s not going away.
I’ve figured out exactly why Spotify keeps recommending me Moby. I’ve also figured out what types of user behaviour can discourage a recommendation system from continuing to recommend certain music. On Spotify, skips are weighted heavily. That is to say, if you skip a track, Spotify interprets it as you not liking a song or artist. I quite consistently skip the Moby tracks in my recommended playlists, but a week goes by and there he is again.
The Moby problem is not actually about Moby. It’s about the way recommendation algorithms work, and about the way we feed music data to them. The reason why Spotify keeps recommending me Moby is because I have a few Moby works in some of my playlists. I actually like his early rave stuff from the 90s, but I don’t care much for his chill out and trip hoppy stuff. Moby is perhaps also one of the most remixed electronic artists. Occasionally (and rarely), a really great remix sneaks into my playlists.
Hypothesis: playlists are weighted more heavily than skips
Three factors around playlists seem to be playing a role in Spotify’s assumption that I love Moby:
Moby’s inclusion in my playlists (passive)
Moby being played from my own playlist (active)
Moby being added to my playlists (active)
The weight in the algorithm should probably get heavier towards the bottom of this list, since it signals stronger intention and commitment. There may be many other factors at play too.
The fact that I like a couple of songs from an artist, some of which from over 20 years ago, does not mean I’d like to be kept up to date on his newest music though. Most of the Moby tracks that appear in my Release Radar are actually inter-genre remixes, so that really doesn’t make much sense either (e.g. if I like drum & bass, why would I like a techno remix of a drum & bass song?).
The remix problem
Then there’s another issue with remixes. One of my most-played playlists, called If Red Bull was Music, includes an EDM remix of a Moby track. It’s the only Moby track I listen to regularly, besides perhaps the Moby stuff in my Discover Weekly and Release Radar, when I forget to skip.
The problem is: it’s not a Moby track anymore. Sure, Moby is the original artist, but it doesn’t sound like a Moby track at all. It’s almost like categorizing a hiphop beat that samples Mozart as a piece of classical music.
It seems like Spotify is barely taking this into account when two artists can be lumped into the same category (electronic), even when that category is too broad to mean anything.
The solution
Let me banish artists! Give me a big fat ban button.
But hey, I’m a product person: I know the Moby problem is a symptom and you shouldn’t develop features to address symptoms — that’s how you kill a good product.
Personally, I think it’s important for them to look at how users interact with the music in their recommended mix playlists, and then weigh that much heavier. No engagement with a certain artist (or actually: skips), then that artist slowly becomes invisible, like in the Facebook news feed.
So to whomever is succeeding Matt Ogle, one of the creators of Discover Weekly, who just departed Spotify for Instagram, please solve my Moby problem. Let me escape this filter bubble.
(Just in case: hey Moby, I love your music, but most of it just doesn’t fit my taste so well. Keep doing what you’re doing!)
The emphasis of playlist strategy is usually placed on how artists can get their music on popular curated playlists. Let’s discuss the long-term value of artists stepping into the curator role themselves.
In the context of this article, when referring to playlist strategy, I mean playlists that you create.
For most of the readers of this article, the two most important places for developing a cohesive playlist strategy are YouTube and Spotify (and maybe Soundcloud). They’re the places with the highest amount of traffic and search queries.
Objectives
You’re going to be using your playlists to achieve 3 things:
To get discovered by (potential) new fans;
To establish a habit for fans that keeps them connected to you;
To create regular engaging content for your socials to help you stay top of mind for fans.
Discovery. Habit. Top of mind.
Building your playlists
Let’s address objective 1 first: getting your music discovered. This is the main concern for most artists. Before anything, your music has to be good. If people are not sharing your music, it’s probably not that great. This needs to be your #1 concern and priority. If people are not sharing your music, go work on your sound instead of marketing something that people don’t care about.
Keep reading if you’re actually at a level where your music gets traffic through friend recommendations.
You’re ready to get your music discovered.
Variety
Take a couple of your best tracks. For each of these tracks, create a playlist. Add tracks from similar artists, artists that inspire you, anything that is somehow logically related to your music.
Understand that a lot of users will start playing your playlist and then switch to background listening. The logical relation has to be there, even when people are focusing on a different tab in their browser, or have moved on to another activity away from the computer.
For the music you select, the most important criterium is that it has to be music that people actually search for.
People will type search queries, and you need to create the best chance that they will land on your playlist. Think carefully the first few times you make these playlists. Over time, you’ll find the best way to do it and the amount of effort required will decrease.
Do not place your track at the top. People need somewhat familiar content to get into a playlist. Place it somewhere in the middle.
Remember the listener’s perspective: this is not about your music — this is about their experience. If you provide them with a good experience, they’ll listen to your music. If you don’t, they won’t. Simple.
Consistency & regularity
You’re going to pick a day of the week and every week you’re going to update your playlist on that day. If your playlists delight your listeners, they’ll check back every week on that day (that’s why Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature is so important to them).
This means you let people create a habit around your playlists. And while all other content of the playlists might change every week, you’ll have at least one of your tracks in there. So, the habit implies that returning listeners will listen to you every week.
It’s an elegant way to make sure fans don’t miss out on new music through their cluttered Facebook and Twitter feeds and inboxes.
Bi-weekly is also ok. Monthly is a maybe. Anything irregular is a big no. Either you execute this strategy, or you don’t. This particular strategy only works when applied consistently and with fixed regularity.
YouTube vs Spotify
YouTube and Spotify require their own approaches. They’re very different services, that drive very different types of music listening behaviours, bookmarking, etc.
For YouTube, I’d focus on making an ever-growing set of playlists from your main channel where you also post your music videos. It might net you subscribers, too.
This means every YouTube playlist becomes a finished product. Keep them short: roughly 10 tracks. Every week, you’ll create a new playlist with new content, and one of your tracks in there. Share it on your socials: some nice new content for fans.
For Spotify, you’re going to do something different. They’ve actually demoted user-generated playlists in search results, so it’s a bit harder to get found now. So, instead, you’re going to turn it into a tool to connect with your fans and familiarize them with your music taste.
Your Spotify playlists should be longer. 30 tracks or more. Think of them more as radio stations that are refreshed every week. Your followers check in, tune into the new content and also reconnect to your music (like the Diplo & Friends playlist).
User stories
I want to explain a concept from product management called ‘user stories’ — they’re used to describe certain things people expect from or want to be able to do with a product or service. They’re a useful way to not lose sight of what’s important to the people you’re making something for. What’s important to you, is not always what’s important to your target audience.
For your fans
Let’s think from the perspective of fans. And let’s define fan as someone who has shared your music with someone else. Facebook likes don’t count. We’re talking about the people who care enough about your music to share it with others.Â
Let’s think of some of the reasons why they might be interested in your playlist:
“I want to learn more about the music that inspires this artist.”
“I’ve already heard everything by this artist, but I want more!”Â
“I wonder what other music this DJ / producer plays besides his own tracks.”
As people get more familiar with your playlists, they may start to develop some more specific expectations, such as “I want to know about the freshest new releases this artist curates” or “I just need some great party music” and they associate your playlists with that.
Focus on the bullet pointed user stories first. You need to get people in, and then get them to form a habit. There are a lot of people creating good playlists for more specific purposes, but the advantage of the bullet pointed items is that they’re all focused on you — and nobody does you like you.
For people who don’t know you
This gets more tricky, because there are so many reasons why someone might land on your playlist. Think about what kind of music you’re curating. What are people trying to achieve when they’re searching for that type of music? A lot of them are going to land on your playlist by looking for an artist other than you, Four Tet for example.
“I want to listen to Four Tet.”
Yup – some people will just click the first playlist they see if it includes Four Tet and they spot the cover art.
“I want to listen to music like Four Tet.”
“I just want to put on some chill out music and not think about it.”
“I want to listen to a playlist that includes music like Four Tet.”
“I’m curious about discovering more music like Four Tet.”
Although similar, these are different motivations that correspond with different behaviour types. It also means people will judge the quality of your playlist differently (quality is defined as to whether it scratches the person’s itch).
Long term effects
If you do well, your music might actually become associated with the other acts you include in your playlists. This means algorithms will add it to the ‘play next’ queue on YouTube, to ‘similar artists’ on Spotify, or even have you appear in the Discover Weekly of people who listen to a lot of music like that.
Your playlist may become a brand on its own: something artists try to get their music featured in. This means you’re able to shine a light on great artists you feel are not getting enough recognition. Then there will be the people who follow you on playlists, but not on other socials. These may be actual fans (people who share your music) or just people who are into the music you curate.
Playlists are a social medium in their own right. Treat them like that.
An emerging void signals new opportunity for innovation in digital music.
The benefit of writing thoughts down is that you get to revisit them. Six years ago, I penned a piece for Hypebot called The Next MySpace. At that time, people in the music business were desperate to for another MySpace to emerge: the site had been a ray of hope, but as it collapsed, online music was scattered across an immature ecosystem of rapidly growing startups like Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook, Spotify, and many others that were eventually acquired or perished and forgotten. I argued:
The closest we will ever get to a “next MySpace” will be either a music network or a social network that manages to gather, organise and integrate the fragments in spectacular fashion.
Defining the MySpace moment
What I call a MySpace moment is not when everything was going well for MySpace: it’s when decline set in. People started replacing MySpace’s music players, which sucked, with Soundcloud’s beautiful waveform players. People started moving much of their social lives to Facebook (for friends) and Twitter (to connect to strangers). Up until then, the dominant social network had been music-driven — people, especially teenagers, expressed their identities by making long lists of bands they liked.
From the ashes of MySpace, which never managed to recover, rose a new ecosystem of music startups. They’ve managed to make it easy for artists to connect to fans, get paid for online playback, let fans know about new shows, and be able to very specifically target people with ads.
That moment, that void, was a massive opportunity and many companies benefited from it.
That moment is here once again.
The new MySpace moment
There are two main factors contributing to a new emerging void for entrepreneurs to leap in. One has to do with product adoption life cycles, which I’ll explain below. The other has to do with the important position Soundcloud claimed in the online music ecosystem.
Soundcloud came closer to being the ‘next MySpace’ than any startup has. And let’s be blunt: the company is not doing well. After years of legal pressure to tackle the problem of works being uploaded to the service without rights holders’ permission, they were forced to adopt a service model that does not make sense for Soundcloud. The typical $10 a month subscription doesn’t make sense. People are on Soundcloud for the fresh content, the mixtapes, remixes, unreleased stuff: the things that will not be on Spotify for weeks or months (or ever!). Why inject the catalogue with music of long deceased people?
There have been reports that Soundcloud would consider any bids higher than the total amount of money invested into the company to date. That’s not a good sign. The road they’ve been forced into is a dead-end street, and the only end game is a quick acquisition.
I don’t think Soundcloud will die, but it is hard for the company to focus on what they’ve always been good at. Now that they’ve been forced into the Spotify model, those are the types of metrics that are going to matter. Subscriber numbers, conversion, retention. So it may struggle to do as good a job serving the audience they’ve traditionally serviced so well. (small note: I love Soundcloud, and the people there: prove me wrong!)
This leaves a vacuum.
Adding to that vacuum, is the fact that Spotify (and other streaming services) are looking beyond early adopters. To understand the phenomenon, have a look at the below graph:
The top part of the graph details the product life cycle. The bottom part explains the type of audience you address during the steps of that life cycle. As we’ve all noticed from the jubilant press reports on streaming’s expansion, we’re in the growth part of the cycle. This means services like Spotify and Apple Music have to get really good at targeting Early Majority and Late Majority type consumers.
If you’re reading this, you’re in the Innovator or Early Adopter segment. Startups typically start off by targeting those segments. So when Spotify moves on from Early Adopters (their de-emphasizing of user generated playlists is a big hint!), it leaves room for new startups to target and better serve those types of users.
Filling the new void
What happens then? Well, we’re going to get to the next phase of the digital music ecosystem – which is mobile-driven, and flirting with augmented reality, VR, and artificial intelligence. Early adopters are likely to keep paying for their Spotify subscriptions – it’s too big a convenience to give up… So entrepreneurs will have to figure out ways to monetize new behaviours.
Now is a great time to look at very specific problems in music. Don’t try to build the next Spotify or the next Soundcloud. For a while, everyone was trying to build the next MySpace — all those startups are dead now. Instead, take a specific problem, research it, build a solution for someone, test it, try it again for a broader group, and if it works: double down and scale up.
Today Iâm excited to announce that Iâm joining IDAGIO, a streaming service for classical music lovers, as Director of Product. Iâm already in the process of relocating to Berlin, where Iâll be joining the team later this month.
In this post, I want to explain why I so strongly believe in this niche focused music service and IDAGIOâs mission. I also want to shed light on the future of MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE as a newsletter, a type of media, and an agency. (tl;dr: the newsletter lives on!)
Two months ago, a friend whom I had worked with in Moscow, at music streaming service Zvooq, forwarded me a vacancy as a Twitter DM. By then, I had developed a kind of mental auto-ignore, because friends kept sending me junior level vacancies in music companies. I was never looking for a âjobââââI had a job (but thanks for thinking of me â¤ď¸). However, I trusted that this friend knew me better as a professional, so I opened the link.
I was immediately intrigued. I hadnât heard of IDAGIO before, but Iâve spent a lot of time thinking about niche services. At one point, the plan for Zvooq was to not build a typical one-size-fits-all app like all the other music streaming services are doing, but instead it would be to split different types of music-related behaviours into smaller apps. The goal would then become to monopolize those behaviours: like Google has monopolized search behaviour (now called Googling), and Shazam has monopolized Shazaming. Long term, it would allow us to expand that ecosystem of apps beyond streaming content, so we would be able to monetize behaviours with higher margins than behaviours related to music listening.
We ended up building just one, Fonoteka, before we had to switch strategies due to a mix of market reality, licensing terms, and burn rate. That was fine: it was what the business needed, and what Russia as a market needed.
Since then, there have been a number of niche music ideas, like services for indie rock, high quality streaming, etc. And while those are all commendable, I was never quite interested in them, because it just seemed like those services would not have a strong enough strategic competitive advantage in the face of tech giants with bulging coffers. Their offers were often also just marginally better, but getting people to install an app and build a habit around your service, unlearn their old solution, learn to do it your way⌠thatâs a huge thing to ask of people, especially once you need to go beyond the super early adopters.
But niche works on a local level. You can see it with Yandex.Music and Zvooq in Russia, with Anghami in the Middle East, and Gaana in India.
Over the last decade, Iâve lived in Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and The Netherlands (where Iâm from). Each country has unique ways of interacting with music. Music has a different place in each culture. I think local music services work, because they combine catalogues and local taste with a deep understanding of how their target audience connects to music. It allows them to build something catering exactly to those behaviours. Itâs music and behaviour combined.
When I started talking to the IDAGIO team, I soon understood that they too combine these elements. Classical music, in all its shapes and forms, has many peculiarities, which will remain an object of study for me for the next years. The fact that the same work often has a multitude of recordings by different performers already sets it apart. One can map a lot of behaviours around navigation, exploring, and comparison to just this one fact.
An example of one way in which IDAGIO lets people explore various performances of the same work.
Despite being younger and having more modest funding, IDAGIO has already built a product that caters better to classical music fans than the other streaming services do (and also serves lossless streams). Understanding that, I was fast convinced that this was something I seriously needed to consider.
So I got on a plane and met the team. Over the course of three days, we ran a condensed design sprint, isolated a problem we wanted to tackle together, interviewed expert team members, explored options, drew up solutions, and prototyped a demo to test with the target audience. Itâs an intense exercise, especially when youâre also being sized up as a potential team member, but the team did such a good job at making me feel welcome and at home (â¤ď¸). Through our conversations, lunches, and collaboration, I was impressed with the teamâs intelligence, creativity, and general thoughtfulness.
Then I spent some extra time in Berlinâââafter all, Iâd be moving there. Aforementioned friend took me to a medical museum with a room full of glass cabinets containing jars with contents which will give me nightmares for years to come. Besides that, I met a bunch of other friends, music tech professionals, and entrepreneurs, who collectively convinced me of the high caliber of talent and creative inspiration in the city.
Returning home, I made a decision I didnât expect to make this year, nor in the years to come. A decision to make a radical switch in priorities.
Motivation, for me, comes from the capacity to grow and to do things with meaningful impact. MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE has exposed me to a lot of different people, a lot of different problems, and has allowed me to do what I find interesting, what Iâm good at, but also what I grow and learn from. With IDAGIO I can do all of the latter, but with depth, and with a team.
Classical music online has been sidelined a bit. It makes a lot of sense when you place it in a historical perspective: a lot has changed in recent years. The webâs demographic skews older now. You can notice this by counting the number of family members on Facebook. The internet used to be something most adults would just use for work, so if you were building entertainment services, you target the young, early adopter demographic. Thatâs pop music, rock, electronic, hiphop, etc. Classical was there, sure, but Spotify wasnât designed around it, iTunes wasnât, YouTube wasnât.
Now weâre actually reaching a new phase for music online. The streaming foundation has been built. Streaming is going mainstream. The platforms from the 2007â2009 wave are maturing and looking beyond their original early adopter audiences⌠So weâre going to see a lot of early adopters that are not properly served anymore. Theyâre going to migrate, look for new homes. A very important segment there, one that has always been underserved, are classical music fans. And now, this niche audience is sizeable enough to actually build a service around.
Why? Well, the internet has changed since the large last wave of music startups. Mobile is becoming the default way people connect to the web. For adults, this has made the web less of a thing for âworkâ, and has made entertainment more accessible. Connected environments make it easy to send your mobile audio to your home hifi set, or car speakers. The amount of people on the internet has more than doubled.
This makes the niche play so much more viable than just a few years ago. It has to be done with love, care, and a very good understanding of whose problem youâre trying to solve (and what that problem is). IDAGIO has exactly the right brilliant minds in place to pull this off and Iâm flattered that in 2 weeks time, Iâll get to spend 2,000 hours a year with them.
What happens to the agency?
Iâll be winding down the agency side of MxTxF. This means Iâm not taking on any more clients, but Iâm happy to refer you to great people I know. Some longer term projects, that just take a couple of hours per week, Iâll keep on to bring to completion.
What happens to the newsletter?
The newsletter goes on! I get a lot of personal fulfilment out of it. The agency was born out of the newsletter, so who knows what more it will spawn. Iâm actually figuring out a way to add audio and video content to the mix. I expect Midem and SĂłnar+D next June will be pilots for that. Berlin is a great place for music tech, so if anything, I hope the newsletter will only get more interesting as time goes on.
Besides the personal fulfilment, it allows me to be in touch with this wonderful community, to meet fascinating people, and occasionally to help organise a panel and bring some of my favourite minds into the same room at the same time.
If youâd like to support the newsletter, you can help me out on Patreon. You can become a patron of the newsletterâââwith your support, I can add extra resources to the newsletter, which will let me push the content to the next level (high on the list: a decent camera).
Elgar making an early recording of the work in 1920. Those pipes are acoustic recording horns, which were piped to a diaphragm which would vibrate a cutting stylusâââdirectly turning sound waves into a material recording.
Iâd love to hear about your favourite works and recordings. Feel free to email me on bg@idagio.com, with a link, and tell me what I should listen for.
Finding your way to success can be confusing as an artist. Hereâs what you should be focusing on.
At the Play & Produce conference in Ghent, Belgium, I joined a panel about digital revenue streams with Jef Martens (Basto / LazyJay), and Sebastien Lintz who does digital for Hardwell, artist management at Sorted, and is label manager at Revealed Recordings.
We discussed a lot of topics, some of which are covered in this article, but a lot of questions were left unanswered when we ran out of time.
So, for all those musicians that want to turn their craft into their livelihood, I wanted to create a basic resource to be able to refer to. This article goes over:
Making good music.
Getting your music in front of the right audiences.
Networking (!).
Retaining your fans & building community.
Monetization.
Youâll learn some new tricks to get better at what youâre doing, but more importantly: the below teaches you to develop your own strategy. Dive in!
Step zero: make really good music.
Before anything else, you need to make great music. This is part skill, part taste, and part understanding of trends. The best music is timeless, but before it becomes timeless, great music has to be timely.
As your skills develop, so will your ability to develop a consistent sound thatâs unique to you. This is important, because itâs unlikely youâll ever be âthe bestââââsimple mathematics. However, if you make a sound that stands out, you donât need to be the best, you just have to make something remarkable.
Seems like an obvious step, but it often needs repeating. If youâre feeling lost or overwhelmed, know that the most important thing to work on is to develop your music and your skills. Everything develops from there.
Step one: getting your music heard.
Make a lot of music and release a lot of music. Make sure itâs easy to find, to stumble upon, to access, and to share.
There are a variety of tools that help you distribute your music to a lot of different places, like Labelgrid, or distributors like CD Baby and TuneCore. They help you to be everywhere your (future) fans might be.
In order to be discovered, make sure to put time into the artwork and accompanying description for your music. The description provides keywords for people to find your music, so donât hold back on mentioning the names of bands that influence you, genres, etc.
Make it easy to share your music. Great music is inherently viral. Since YouTube is the most universal music player, you must have your music on there. Make sure the title has all the relevant information plus an indication about the type of music, to guarantee more clicks when people share it.
Regarding the artwork, you should understand that we live in the age of feeds. Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram encourage us to scroll endlessly, because it means weâll spend more time on their platforms.
If your sound is good, people will share it (hence step zero).
From there, you need to find your audience.
(pro tip: get your music everywhere, but figure out what channels work best for you and double down on them. Doing a little bit of everything is a good way to not get traction anywhere. Make sure you actually enjoy using the channels you focus on, because if itâs not fun for you, youâre going to get exhausted and inconsistent eventually.)
Step one point five: finding your audience.
If you understand your musicâs audience and where they hang out, or who else they listen to, you can start doing specific things to get your music into their ears, such as:
Remix other artists in your genre. Donât ask for permission, but communicate to them once your remix is done. After all: their repost helps you reach their audience and chances are theyâll have a bigger audience than you. Play nice. And donât put your remix on Spotify or other monetized places without permission. Itâs less about the legal issues, and more that itâs just bad for human relations.
Connect with communities in your genre. On Reddit you can find loads of communities where producers are helping others to learn to master their art. You can also connect to communities around certain genres or prominent labels inside a genre. If Redditâs not your thing, you can find groups like these on Facebook too.
Pitch your tracks to channels your audience follows. These may be blogs, YouTube channels, or internet radio stations. You can be more creative also: if thereâs a popular video game streamer on Twitch that listens to a lot of music like yours, you could reach out to them, offer to make a personal theme song for them in exchange for a certain amount of airtime on their stream. Be creative.
The value of being (one of) the first. On our panel, Sebastien Lintz pointed out that being one of the first people on a platform can have big advantages. So keep your eye on new apps that pop up, get on there, try them out, see what happens. This is how you secure a first-mover advantage for a specific segment. Not convinced? Just look at what Vine and Musical.ly have enabled.
Step two: develop strong relations with people.
Success in music is usually a combination of music skills and people skills. When you see an overnight success, what you donât see is the many years of preparation involved in that.
An artist may be young, but the team around them will know exactly who to talk to, who to ask for favours, the right people to work with, etc.
So, donât be shy. Make sure youâre frequently in the same room as people who can help you. If you have a chance to pitch your music and get feedback, then go do it, even if you think youâre not ready. The feedback youâll get will be valuable, but itâs also a good chance to get into the mind of label A&Rs, learn how they think, and youâll know who they are if you run into them again.
These things happen in live settings, but sometimes people like Sebastien call for artists to submit music & have it publicly reviewed.
Speak to the DJs, promoters, organisers, etc. at local shows.
Go to conferences and set aside your shyness. Go chat with people, find out what theyâre doing, and if thereâs a panelist you find interesting, grab them for a chat. Theyâre there to speak to people and theyâre interested in meeting you.
Basically: talk to people, and if itâs uncomfortable, then take a friend with you whoâs good with that. The music business is a network business, so understand that youâre building relations that will last your entire career. Start early.
Step three: retaining your fans.
With the previous steps, you should have a way to get your music heard by people. Attention is fickleâââso the big question here is not how to get people to listen to your music, but how do you get people to listen to your music again? And again, and again, and again.
You need to feed them to places where you can reach them again. Itâs incredibly valuable, so if youâre annoyed with vloggers telling people to subscribe in every video: place yourself in their shoes. And do that!
Find the best ways to reach people. Facebook posts, once you scale your fanbase, may only have a 5% reach. Tweets are similar. Itâs one of the reasons why I started a newsletter to talk about the future of music. For the last year, the open rate has been close to 50%. The typical artist newsletter has a 20â25% open rate.
Ads & remarketing. Sometimes itâs worth it to pay for ads. For instance, if you create a unified link for your release with a tool like Linkfire, you can integrate Google Analytics & AdSense. This way, youâll get some data about the people that checked out your release and youâll be able to target them on sites they visit, or when they Google something⌠Got a show in a town with a lot of fans? Set an ad that reveals your show the next time they Google for something fun to do on the weekend.
The basic jest of social profiles is this: be consistent, stay relevant, and frequent. Donât abuse peopleâs permission to appear in their feeds or inbox, because theyâll unsubscribe or learn to ignore you. Good luck winning their attention back then.
Step three point five: building your fan community.
I love using the example of the fanbase as a house party. In my many years of awkward beers with strangers, Iâve learned there are roughly two types of house parties:
The type where you get let in, stand around a room with strangers, where nobodyâs really entertained and just waiting for the host to come chat with them, and thinking of an excuse to bail ASAP. đŠ
The type where the host lets you in, immediately introduces you to people you should talk to, suggesting topics you can discuss, and then at some point in the night you realize you havenât even seen the host in an hour, because youâve been having such a good time with their friends. đĽ
Building a community is a great way to get your fans to keep their attention on you, even after you leave the room. Not only that, but you now have the power to get back into the room, shut everyone up, and ask people to amplify what you have to say:
âHaving a great time? Letâs get some more people in here! Text your friends. BYOB.â
Facebook Groups are an excellent way to do this. It also lets you mix fans that youâve known for a long time (eg. friends), with first generation fans, and later fans.
Help keep the community active. Get people to talk about music, art, whatever you find interesting and is somehow a relevant connector. The music shared in the group doesnât have to be just your music.
Step four: âshut up and take my moneyâ
Having a connected fanbase allows you to intimately understand who the people that listen to your music are, what they care about, how their minds work, what they find cool, etc.
This allows you to better package the experiences you provide to them.
In music, the money is in the package. Whether itâs the live show, the download, merch or something else.. This means you can make the music you believe in, while also developing ways to make money off of it.
I usually hold up Yellow Claw as an example of a group that understands their fans really well and have developed multiple business models based on that understanding.
Basically, what it comes down to is this:
Great music shouldnât have to be charity, so donât put yourself in the position of having to beg fans to âplease buy my album.â
Instead, think the other way around: what can I make for my fans that will make them thank me for giving them the opportunity to spend money on me?
No need to employ dark voodoo techniques. đš Itâs just a matter of getting into the right frame of mind. Letâs call it the Kickstarter State of Mind.
Successful Kickstarters are a combination of:
A great product or idea (a metaphor for your music).
A charismatic call to action (a metaphor for your artist persona and brand).
Exciting rewards for contributing money.
Go spend some time on Kickstarter and see how price tiers work. Usually they cater to different types of audiences, or fans with differing levels of commitment. But they all have this in common:
People are super excited to be able to spend their money. Not for youâââthatâs just a nice bonus. But for themselves.
Recap
Step zero: make really great music. Keep working on your skills. This is by far the most important part. Itâs the fuel for everything else. If nothing seems to be working, it may just be because your music is not good enough, or simply doesnât stand out. Sorry.
Step one: getting your music heard. Get your music everywhere, take into account what your music looks like when people share, and double down on the channels that work best for you.
Step one point five: finding your audience. Use other peopleâs audience (OPA) by remixing, pitching curators, connecting to communities, and securing a first-mover advantage.
Step two: developing strong industry relations. Make no mistake: the music business is a business of human connections. Start early. Be nice & professional.
Step three: retaining your fans. Keep your fansâ attention by connecting them to your socials and finding other clever ways to reach them again.
Step three point five: building your fan community. Fans help keep each othersâ attention on you and can help amplify your message. Be the host of the most fun house party theyâve ever attended.
Step four: âshut up and take my moneyâ. Besides conventional revenue streams, you should be creating things that are so exciting for fans that theyâll thank you for the opportunity to spend their money.
Is it that simple?
Well, yes.
The hard part is that you need to put in a lot of hours. You have to be smart and relentless. Practice grit. You have to persevere, but also know when to cut your losses.
As long as youâre flying solo, take a look at job descriptions at labels or management agencies to understand how to strategically release music and build towards milestones.
Once youâre ready to build your team:
Work with people that inspire you. Donât work with assholes.
And for fuckâs sake, keep your focus on your music.
Your music always comes first.
Implementing the obvious missing feature could point to a new product direction for Spotify.
About a month ago, Spotify introduced Daily Mix, a new set of playlists that lets you ârediscoverâ your favourite music. It mixes past favourites with tracks you might like and its stated aim is to take the work out of organizing daily listening.
For years, Spotify has focused on creating better âlean back experiencesâ that allow for more passive listening. A music tech productâs typical early adopters are people that are heavily invested in the process, but as they achieve greater market penetration, they need to target new audiences.
At first, Spotify focused on human curation and it remains a strong focus. More recently, after the Echo Nest acquisition, Spotify has chosen to give algorithms more play, such as through Discover Weekly and Release Radar, and now Daily Mix.
The obvious missing feature from Daily Mix, and much requested, is the ability to download tracks to your device through an offline sync feature.
Their official explanation for it, frequent updates and large amounts of tracks, doesnât really seem to add up. Many users offline sync large playlists that are regularly updated. If itâs an issue, then users just pick one or two favs of their Daily Mix playlists and sync them.
As I thought about it, it reminded me of what I envisioned Soundcloudâs future as a subscription service would be. Soundcloudâs current proposition of serving dead artistsâ music alongside the brand, brand new for $10 / month, doesnât make any sense and likely got forced upon them by labels taking a tough stand and impatient investors.
What I always thought Soundcloud would do, was simply to release an app that would allow users to offline sync their favourites and charge users about $2 to $4 a month. As Spotifyâs reportedly in talks to acquire Soundcloud, perhaps Daily Mix can be their first step into launching more price points.
Letâs imagine Daily Mix as a spin-off.
New price point
Spotifyâs in need of a new price point. On average, the monthly spend of Spotifyâs new subscribers is $3.09, not $9.99. This is due to discounting. Spotify, and others, are having a difficult time bringing in the mainstream music consumer at $9.99 per month.
Spinning off Daily Mix as a separate product for the mainstream consumer could provide those users with a limited, but focused experience and monetize them without discounting.
The price point is a great way to onboard users. A user may use Spotifyâs main app in ad-supported mode, but pay for Daily Mix. Theyâll get used to having a monthly payment in music. Meanwhile, if they want to hear more by a certain artist in their Daily Mix, they can tap the artist name and be directed to the main Spotify app.
Inside Spotifyâs main app, they can work to upsell users to higher price points for additional functionality.
Moving beyond all-you-can-eat (AYCE)
The original proposition of music services was that if you pay $9.99 a month, youâll get all the music out there⌠However, with streaming holdouts and exclusives, this doesnât seem viable. Due to the original frame, consumers are sometimes unwilling to spend more on digital music.
Music services need to shift away from having users associate their payments exclusively with the content, and instead monetize functionality around music.
Cannibalisation?
There remains the question of cannibalisation. Part of Spotifyâs users who currently pay $9.99 / month may actually find that a Daily Mix app serves them well enough and subsequently downgrade. This makes an app like Daily Mix tough to license.
There are precedents though. Apps like MTV Trax let users download & listen to the most popular hits on a daily basis and in some markets, like Spain, they charge around $1 / week.
Alternatively, Spotify could wrap Daily Mix into some kind of trial, minimize functionality and hide the playlists to give it more of a radio feel, or work on the premium offer to be able to retain more premium subscribers, as well as upsell more effectively.
Another idea: expand Daily Mix with something not included in the main Spotify app, so that music aficionados can be convinced to spend some money on top of their $9.99.
Extra features for power users in $9.99
In a multi-app strategy, there are 3 things Spotify must do:
Make sure user conversion funnels for each app are functioning;
Make sure the lower tier apps donât cannibalize the higher tier too much;
Optimize upsell funnels across its products.
Spotify likely needs it current feature set with Discover Weekly, Release Radar, Daily Mix and other features in order to onboard and retain users. Also, they donât want to piss off subscribers, so they need to come up with product propositions that differ enough from the scope of the current product.
Some examples of features that could be sold at extra cost:
Buy Pacemaker and let Spotify create actual mixes for you;
Playlist creation games, eg. with friends or well-known artists;
Theyâll have to figure out the specifics out soon and work out a plan on how to counter cannibalisation. As more mid-tier price point music subscription apps are entering the market, Spotify will need to compete.
Who would you rather lose a customer to? Someone elseâs app, or your own?
