German media group Bertelsmann has reportedly purchased BMG Rights Management outright. Originally the owners of 49% of the company, Bertelsmann bought the remainder of the company at roughly $390 million. It is believed that an agreement was reached very quickly once negotiations started. That said, the agreement is subject to regulatory approval. No word yet on how this could impact BMG artists such as Bruno Mars, Johnny Cash, and Will.i.am. [AlLindstrom]
The music industry: it’s either a casino rife with debaucherous gambling, a field teeming with fertile growth possibilities, or just a really weird place to be right now. The early-2013 tally was bumped by MusiXmatch, which scored a solid, $3.7 million infusion this week. Which brings the January tally to $58.4 million, powered by a healthy, Google investment in VEVO (estimated by sources at $50 million).
Actually, that’s softer than a surging January in 2012, when investments topped $65.5 million. In 2011, that figure was $53.1 million. And with that, here’s a glance at the last year or so… [DigitalMusicNews]
The urge to believe there is a magic formula for success, and that it can be deduced from studying past hits, is powerful. Strategic Communications Group CEO Mark Hausman believes he has distilled The 3 Hallmarks of Exceptional Content. Columnist Marcel Williams is convinced he knows The Essential Features of a Hit Record. Their two cents on the subject may be worth a nickel, but as Yogi Berra observed, “a nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
These checklists, while almost intuitively obvious and rightly containing features correlated with past successes, fail immediately as predictors of the future by being neithernecessary nor sufficient. Their authors cannot prove that all the characteristics are necessary for success; i.e. eliminating any one of them will guarantee failure. (Mr Williams even admits as much.) Nor can they prove that their list is sufficient for success; i.e. a work possessing all these characteristics may still be a failure for lacking other elements.
The lists highlight statistical regularities—good for documenting the past, lousy for predicting the future. In The Financial Regulators’ Dilemma economist Edwin G. Dolan illustrates how statistical regularities do not always reflect causal relationships using the so-called Nickels Paradox:
Suppose the Federal Reserve observes a strong past correlation between the number of nickels issued by the U.S. mint and the rate of inflation. Does that mean restricting the issue of nickels would be a sufficient instrument to control inflation? Of course not—not if pennies, dimes, bank balances, and money in all other forms were issued in the same quantities as before. All that would happen is that the previously observed correlation of nickels with inflation would disappear.
How does the Nickels Paradox apply here? Suppose all music producers take Mr. Williams advice to heart, and 100% of future tracks can be characterized by: catchiness, timeliness, a strong vocal, and accomplished performance. There would still be only 100 releases on The Billboard Hot 100 in a given week, and the vagaries of public taste would still decide who gets there. Or, taking Mr. Hausman at his word, suppose all future web content has: a unique perspective, great “get” and/or brilliantly constructed prose. All that would happen is these would cease being differentiating features in attracting readership.
Don’t stop critiquing your past work, learning from others, applying rigor and discipline, or nurturing creativity in your quest for greatness. Just don’t mistake performance metrics forpredictive ones. And use that advice for what it’s worth.
[About the author. Consumer Electronics and Software industry veteran Tom Dennehy publishes the online journal Surface to Air, triangulating among ideas and events at the intersection of the physical music past and the weightless digital future. Follow him on Twitter @InAurem_a2d.] [MusicThinkTank]
How Universal Publishing Production Music Works
00:33 – About Corinna C. Poeszus
01:42 – Comparing the music industry of present and the past
02:09 – How major labels started making money after the recording crisis hit
04:00 – Why making music “free”
04:25 – What UPPM does exactly
05:46 – How a production company works with your existing composition
07:06 – How an artist can get a deal with UPPM
10:30 – SPECIAL: Conversation inside Corinna’s office in Universal Berlin
Props to Hypebot & AlLindstrom
Want your music to be used in films or games? Have a CD that came out five years ago, but never sold well, and don’t know what you can do with it now? Well, you have something to learn from major labels.
The new issue of Stand Above The Noise features an interview with Corinna C. Poeszus, General Manager of Universal Publishing Production Music (Germany).
We conducted the chat on the roof of the Universal building in Berlin, a place journalists don’t have access to usually, as well as inside Corinna’s office, where she was kind enough to show us some of UPPM’s most successful projects.
So what is Universal Publishing Production Music and how can this knowledge be useful to you? Watch the video above for the answers:
Grammy Award-winning production duo Danja and Engineer Marcella Araica aka “Ms. Lago” discuss how they met at Timbaland’s studio and collaborated on hits including Timbaland’s “The Way I Are” feat. Keri Hilson and Britney Spears’ “Gimme More.” They also talk about founding N.A.R.S. Records, how it’s different from other labels and upcoming projects with Luke James, Kevin Cossom, Caligula and, Wyld.
Wallace Collins, an entertainment attorney based in New York, gives a wide-ranging interview on numerous topics of interest to anyone interested in a career in music or music law. He shares his advice on how to become a music lawyer and what a typical day looks like in his office, and begins an extended discussion of the legal side of music as it affects players — why it’s hard to get out of a “bad” contract, when an artist should seek legal advice, what a “work for hire” is and how that term affects musicians signed to a label, how the Controlled Composition Clause can cost you lots of earnings potential, how copyright works, what compulsory licenses are, and much, much more.
What does branding have to do with you as a music artist? In a word: everything. Your brand extends far beyond the logos on your website or merchandise items. Branding is about awareness, both of yourself and the public’s mental positioning of you. Being aware of what you are subtly and unconsciously conveying to the public is key to controlling the magnetism of your brand. But before you can begin to develop brand awareness, you need to adhere to what are the 3 C’s of branding.
Clarity
Be clear about who you are, and who you are not. You need to understand your unique promise of value, and how this sets you apart from others. This first step is critical because it forces you to see yourself as others do. Once you’ve made it clear about what you are all about, you will soon attract and build a more targeted fan base that will better resonate with you because you’ve taken a position.
You don’t want to be all things to all people, especially when you’re just starting out. You do want to be the leader a particular tribe based on what you believe individually, and thus express artistically. A good brand taps into emotions, and emotions drive most, if not all of our decisions.
So ask yourself:
“What makes me distinctive? And how do I communicate that?”
Remember to be authentic, and always true to yourself.
Clarity then extends to your logos, your social media topics, and even the diction you use when talking to your fans. Are you more formal and write in proper grammar, or are you more laid back and talk as though you are chatting or texting? Do you care about what’s going on in politics, or do live life more carefree?
Either way, try to choose a position and stick with it. Branding is all about trust, and if you constantly change what you’re all about, people can become confused and eventually tune out.
Consistency
Consistency is what gives the public faith in your abilities and your delivery. It creates expectations. Once you’ve taken a position, you need to remain consistent with it.
From a digital standpoint, all your web properties should be aligned with one another, and you want to make it perfectly clear that someone has arrived at yourofficial web property. The branding elements from your website should fickle down to all your other web assets (such as your Facebook and Twitter) so that they are all consistent in look and feel. Think of your website as the mother ship, and all the other web and social assets as smaller ships conveying the bigger message.
Constancy
Once you’ve defined who you are and what you’re all about on a consistent level, you want to ensure that you remain active in conveying this. This doesn’t mean constantly bombarding fans with promotional messaging. What it does mean is being there on a constant basis to engage and interact with your audience, but only to the degree where you’re not overwhelming them and also not leaving them out in the cold.
Fans want to interact with you, but they don’t want to be spammed with how great you are or why they should spend money on you. Think of your web engagements as your own reality TV show or soap opera: if the story continues with regularly scheduled programming, people will tune in. They don’t, however, want to see commercials running the entire time.
Once you’ve employed these 3 C’s to your brand, you can begin positioning it. Once you’ve defined it, seek out all opportunities to better position your brand. Find those who will be most receptive to what it is that you have to offer and focus on them.
Building a brand takes a lot of time and effort but once you put in the work to build a good, consistent reputation, it will continue to pay dividends into the future.
Via Hypebot & AlLindstrom
Hypebot created a very interesting article that covers the iTunes payment scale. Take a closer look at the breakdown of music sold on the biggest music distributor in the word. Check it out below.
That is, according to federal court documents filed Wednesday by attorneys for Chuck D. The detailed breakdown shows that for every 1,000 iTunes downloads sold, a UMG-signed artist gets paid $80.33. And that’s after the label collects on a 25% ‘Container Charge for Audiophile Records,’ as well as a 15% ‘Net Sales Deduction‘.
Which means that for every one download, the payout is roughly 8.033 cents. [AlLindstrom]
2012 ushered in a bleak reality on music consumption in the US. We had a couple of big names sell major units, Adele leading the pack (“21? reached diamond status/10 million records sold). This graph shows sales for the last 5 years, although we are a long way from 2008, the decline was not as bad as projected.
According to Soundscan data, album sales for 2012 are coming in at around 4% below 2011 levels (includes both physical and digital). Downloads rose by about 6%. [AlLindstrom]
Multi-Grammy nominee fun. and Janelle Monae just finished a strong rendition of their smash, “We Are Young” followed by a well-received Ne-Yo perf of “Let Me Love You (Until You Learn to Love Yourself).” Album of the Year: The Black Keys, El Camino;Mumford & Sons, Babel; fun., Some Nights; Frank Ocean, channel ORANGE, Jack White, Blunderbuss. Best Country Solo Performance:Dierks Bentley (“Home”), Eric Church (“Springsteen”), Ronnie Dunn(“Cost of Livin’”), Hunter Hayes (“Wanted”), Blake Shelton (“Over”) and Carrie Underwood (“Blown Away”). In the evening’s final major category, Song of the Year, a songwriter’s’ award, the nominees included newcomer Ed Sheeran for “The A Team,” Miguel for “Adom,” Tavish Crowe, Carly Rae Jepsen andJosh Ramsay for “Call Me Maybe,” Jorgen Elofsson, David Garrison, Greg Kurstin and Al Tamposi for Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” and Jack Antonoff,Jeff Bhasker, Andrew Dost andNate Reuss for fun.’s “We Are Young.” And no, Linda Chorney did not receive a nomination this year. [HitsDailyDouble]usic
