INDUSTRY 2021 The ongoing DDC tornado...

For a superb, in-depth analysis of many key industry issues I'd recommend this article from the medium site.

My previous multiply updated post, tracking 2018-19, carries a detailed breakdown of the key staging points from 1999 to today, including briefly huge markets that exploded into prominence then disappeared. I also did a further summary post! And there are MANY more posts you can browse via the tags...

This graph from medium's feature (1 of several there) is a great visual summary of the massive impact of digital disruption - which, remember, is especially linked to developments in online distribution.

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HOW STREAMING PAYMENTS REFLECT BIG 3'S 75% MARKET SHARE

https://boingboing.net/2021/09/26/how-a-math-trick-helped-one-band-made-500-more-in-streaming-music-royalties.html

LOVE ISLAND IS MAJOR HITMAKER

The ultra-trashy 'reality' show uses a lot of obscure musicians, part of its targeting of gen Z/Y, who often find their work appearing in the charts as a result. A combination of Shazaming tunes and the show's Spotify playlists supercharge the popularity of many of the songs/artists featured. Guardian.

K-POP FANS BUY ADS FOR THEIR HEROES...AMD FOOD CARTS

BBC reports on the K-Pop stans, who buy as space worldwide, not just in Korea - and make charity donations.

TRIVIUM MAKE MORE FROM TWITCH THAN ALL OTHER AUDIO SITES COMBINED!

Loudwire interviews Matt Healy on this crazy stat! Metalsucks lays out the key figures - $10k a month from 224k listeners. That works out x10 the revenue/payment rate of music streaming (vastly bigger audience...for same payment!).

MUSIC RIGHTS NEW MONOPOLIST: HIPGNOSIS 

DB ANALYSIS: Elberse did a very convincing job of destroying the credibility of the long tail theory in her Blockbusters book, showing that a small number of tentpole hits (in books, games, film, music) account for the vast bulk of sales. Since she wrote this the same has been observed of Spotify. However - that overlooks the revenue from back-catalogue music (and TV/film through multiple global channels) from radio, TV, film and games licensing ... not to mention advertising. So perhaps Malcolm Gladwell's concept has some meaning after all?

Guardian. 'The London-listed company, which earns royalties every time one of the 65,000 songs to which it owns the rights is played, said that revenues climbed 66% from $83m (£59m) to $138m in the year to the end of March.

Hipgnosis, which spent $1bn buying 84 new song catalogues last year, said the increase in streaming while the live music sector remained shut down fuelled a 50% increase in profits to $107m.'

UK MUSIC STARS LAUNCH CAMPAIGN FOR MUSIC STREAMING REGULATOR AND FAIR PAYMENTS

Guardian. 'It argues that streaming via services such as Spotify and Apple Music be legislated more like radio. “The law has not kept up with the pace of technological change and, as a result, performers and songwriters do not enjoy the same protections as they do in radio,” the letter states. “Today’s musicians receive very little income from their performances – most featured artists receive tiny fractions of a US cent per stream and session musicians receive nothing at all.”

SUMMER 2020 TASK 2 INDUSTRY RESEARCH

The following 2 posts are the main resource for this task/theme, 1 of the 3 basic research areas of the coursework (CIA - though with the added emphasis on media language and theory, this is more like MICA or TICA).

http://musividz.blogspot.lu/2016/04/industry-digital-streamed-past-physical.html

https://musividz.blogspot.com/2018/11/big-3-universal-boom-as-physical.html

The basic themes follow, but 1st some useful Ppts, which may be swapped out for updated versions over time:

Industry music bicep tbc from DB3igs

Merch metallica from DB3igs

MUSIC VIDEO HISTORY + PROTOTYPES
in a nutshell, read the Austerlitz book which is specifically on this point. There's an extensive history before MTV made them a default promo device, going back decades earlier than even the key archetype (The Beatles 1960s film A Hard Day's Night).

ANALOGUE FORMATS: RISE AND FALL 
show understanding of how the music industry has undergone changes before digitisation. Sheet music was the revenue driver a century ago, with gramophone records slower to become dominant. Vinyl became notably dominant with the rise of the teen as a distinct demographic with disposable income in the 1950s. Cassettes slowly rose as a rival from the 1960s, becoming the biggest format by the 70s/80s - especially when the Sony Walkman hit. Vinyl and tape sales slowly collapsed as CDs kickstarted the digital revolution in the 80s ... but have taken on hipster coolness and are ironically zeitgeisty - why?

DIGITAL MARKETS: CDs, CRAZY FROGS, PIRATES + NAPSTER, SPOTIFY... 
Carefully + specifically establish when + why the music industry's global revenues peaked, and why they began falling again ... until very recently they've finally began rising again. Consider the piracy issue, engaging with web 2.0 as you do. Explain how UGC eventually became a revenue-raising tool for the record labels. Look at the controversies over payment rates, and how radically they differ across platforms. Do a case study of 1 or more acts with music on multiple platforms (like my Bicep case study).

MODERN REVENUE DRIVERS: MERCH, TIX ETC 
While vinyl's high price means low sales do bring in useful revenue, look at how merch (analyse the range of items for some bands + how these usually reflect a wide audience IF they're for big or older/long-established acts like Metallica), live concerts (VIP tix etc), licensing (games, TV, film) + sponsorships now bring in most of artists' income.

BANNED IN THE USA: CENSORSHIP + REGULATION 
There is limited formal regulation, though the BBFC (UK) do have a voluntary system, and YouTube at least notionally apply an age-rating system - plus the parental advisory/explicit lyrics stickers in the US. Just like the film industry, the music biz has faced times of extreme governmental/political pressure fuelled by the press: the 80s metal/rap moral panic leading to hearings (and arrests for selling a 2 Live Crew record); the Dixie Chicks and Beatles record-burnings from different eras; the Gulf War radio blacklist of songs about war ... and peace; Elvis wiggling his hips; UK grime artists effectively banned by the police

OWNERSHIP: INDIES AND BIG 3 
Just how dominant are they? How can Indies compete? This is a very similar issue/debate to your AS film industry learning - online/social media + crowdfunding + self-distribution + self-marketing [AM's use of MySpace a great early archetype] are all important.

INDUSTRY Metallica biggest tour earner EVER

I would've thought it'd be U2 or the Rolling Stones, but with $1.4bn lifetime ticket sales it's the band who haven't recorded anything decent since 1991, when they recorded their 5th-best album...

Also loved the fact thrown in that the 2 biggest 'apparel sellers' (items of clothing sold) worldwide are NYC baseball caps and ... Metallica tee-shirts. Fond memories of the endlessly controversy-causing Metal up... tee from back in the day before that 5th album dropped, ripped to shreds at a Belfast death metal mini-festival!

https://loudwire.com/metallica-biggest-touring-band-ever/

Dennis Arfa, an agent at Artist Group International, feels Metallica can rightfully lay claim being the "biggest band in the world."  He explained, "Not only are they a stadium attraction, but they sell out in secondary and tertiary markets where you wouldn’t see many artists playing at all. The fact they can do the type of business they do all over the world – the two biggest apparel pieces in the world are a Yankees hat and a Metallica T-shirt. This isn’t a 10-year phenomenon, this is a stadium band since the mid-’90s and they have continued to win on the biggest levels, with $6 million-plus grosses."

INDUSTRY 2018-19 points

IN THIS POST:
See below for a list of themes/points/case studies covered.
The idea of this is to gather a range of resources, as I encounter them, which help to inform you on the music industry. it will be a rather big post! Use this with an earlier summary with examples mostly not referenced here, but also the various tags!!!

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8520844/money-makers-major-labels-individual-revenues

Do they pay enough? This audio atrocity made a lot of money for a charisma-free star... Read on to find out who

“At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing music,” said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. Now, he added, it could be said “that digital is saving music.” [NYTimes]

......

Did you know that primitive, bleepy (polyphonic) ringtones were the 1st major market for the music biz on the then new smartphones? This headline comes from 2005, when people paid up to $/£4 for a single ringtone, changing these as the charts changed. Online distribution, popularised by piracy site Napster from 1999, began to be monetised by labels from 2000, and by 2003 this was a booming market. In a sign of how fast things change, digital downloads, the 2nd big market, are tipped to disappear soon ... and the ringtone market (and charts!) already has. Of course, there's now a retro market for this defunct technology, and Crazy Frog lives on...
....

TO EDIT......
http://ultimateclassicrock.com/metallica-napster-lawsuit/
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/tim-ingham-music-industry-status-2018-771105/

HMV is a bedrock of the British music industry – its loss would affect us all

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/dec/30/hmv-is-a-bedrock-of-the-british-music-industry-its-loss-would-affect-us-all?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

IN THIS POST: 
I began this just as a summary on a report on UMG's increasing profits, but I've widened it out to provide key facts/figures on the music industry. As well as multiple tags (monetising, merchandise, music industry, Spotify, distribution etc) you can find key posts like this industry summary, ppt on Bicep example with more egs of monetising, and this post with graphs and stream revenue calculators, + this 2018 summary which drew on multiple articles:

• when did it peak (were revenues highest)? 1999
• why did revenues fall after this? Online distribution made piracy easy (eg Napster) and undermined the appeal of expensive CDs 
• by today a whole generation has grown up with the attitude that music is/should be free; not prepared to pay for albums (there's even a political party campaigning for this: The Pirate Party)
• ...indeed, the album is being undermined, with streams from albums on Spotify typically focused on just 3-4 songs
• monetizing recorded music is therefore not as easy as it once was;
• the existing business practice, distributing recorded music as physical media, was disrupted by convergence/digitisation
• the smartphone (+phablets/tablets) is the key converged device for the music industry, overtaking the PC where previously people would access the likes of Napster
• by 2012, streaming/digital sales revenues overtook physical sales in the US
• it wasn't until 2017 that this happened in the overall, global market (broadband, 3G/4G rollout and take-up being slower in many markets)
• the digital sales market was initially key, especially iTunes sales, but will soon be overtaken by vinyl revenues!!! 
• other early digital markets have quickly disappeared as technology accelerated: ringtones were a huge market just a decade ago
• the video in this post uses the 'polymorphic', 8-bit music style that people used to pay a few euros to get for their phones, before continued convergence made it easy to load your own (probably ripped from YouTube) MP3
• starting in 2000, this was the 1st way the music biz had of making money from phones - the US ringtone market alone was worth $300m by 2004 (Japan $900m, globally about $3.5bn [see Wiki]). It declined from 2008 on; by 2014, the ringtone chart was abandoned (see this article)

  

  a whole market that's now gone: polyphonic ringtones

• see this interactive website to sample a range of ringtones over time! 
• streaming now accounts for over half of all music industry revenues and is growing, while physical media sales continue to fall 
• UMG 2017-2018: digital (streaming/sales) up 1/3, physical down 20%
• the payment per stream remains controversial: the music industry strongly argue that YouTube especially must pay much more - see the calculator below
• the EU may pass laws to force YouTube to pay more...
• ...which may lead to millions of fan videos being taken down!!!
• touring (tickets) and merchandising, + sponsorship, tie-ins, etc are another key means of monetising for artists and labels
• but labels increasingly force artists to sign '360 deals' including image rights + a % of tour revenues

........................................
DOES YOUTUBE PAY ENOUGH PER STREAM??
I've blogged on this (and Spotify and others before); here's a revenue calculator for 1 of the most streamed videos ever ... you can try it for others ...

UNIVERSAL'S PROFITS SOAR EVEN AS PHYSICAL MEDIA CONTINUES TO FALL

Lot of great details in this musicbusinessworldwide feature on the corporate fortunes of UMG (Universal Music Group), one of the big 3 that accounts for a combined 80% of the global music industry's revenues...

• UMG's streaming revenues are greater than Spotify's total revenues, a reminder of the diversity within a market dominated by bug names like Spotify, YouTube and Apple, but with plenty more such as Amazon and Deezer.
• Overall revenues are rising despite continuing steep falls in physical media revenues.
• Rock music is very much secondary to rap/rnb/urban for sales (this goes back about a decade)

There's lots of business terms/abbreviations here:

• YoY = year-on-year (eg 2018 profits up on 2017's)
• Q4 = Quarter 4 (businesses publish reports on revenues, profits, losses every 3 months ... every quarter

If you were to ask Sir Lucian Grainge what his favorite genre of music is right now, you’d have to guess he’d say hip-hop.
According to Vivendi, Universal Music Group’s five biggest revenue-generating artists in the first nine months of this year were: (i) Drake; (ii) Post Malone; (iii) Kendrick Lamar; (iv) XXXTentacion; and (v) Migos.
These acts drove UMG’s recorded music sales in the first nine months of 2018 to an all-time high of €3.28bn ($3.93bn), up 10.2% YoY at constant currency.

Remember that the music industry constantly moans about piracy and the streaming platforms paying too little per stream ... yet profits are increasing overall.

HOW PROFITS BEGAN RISING AGAIN AFTER FALLING EVERY YEAR FROM 1999-2011

After years of falling from their 1999 peak, the industry (not just UMG) starting growing again in 2012, as this 2013 report highlights:

The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought recovery might have begun.
The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5 billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide significant encouragement.
“It’s clear that 2012 saw the global recording industry moving onto the road to recovery,” said Frances Moore, chief executive of the federation, which is based in London. “There’s a palpable buzz in the air that I haven’t felt for a long time.”For years, the music industry’s decline looked terminal, with the record companies seemingly unable to come up with digital business models that could compete with the lure of online piracy. Last year, however, digital sales and other new sources of revenue grew significantly enough to offset the continuing decline in CD sales.

UNIVERSAL'S GRIP TIGHTENS AS THEY SIGN UP TAYLOR SWIFT
Universal just tightened its grip on the industry with the signing of Taylor Swift, though they agreed to give her ownership of the masters of all recorded music, a big change from usual industry practice, and to pass money from sale of its shares in Spotify to its artists.

Taylor Swift leaves lifelong label to sign with Universal Music Group

More details: Taylor Swift strikes a blow for fellow artists as digital revenues soar

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/24/taylor-swift-blow-fellow-artists-streaming-revenues-soar-universal-spotify?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

https://www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/20648/danny-michel-opens-up-about-reality-being-musician

$44.99 sales, including $0.003 per Spotify stream, for a Canadian artist's top 10 hit (Canada charts and figures)

New campaign to get Spotify etc to tag Indie artists and boost the 19.55% global share not taken by the big 3.

https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2018/11/spotify-apple-music-urged-to-label-indie-music.html

https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2018/11/the-music-business-is-about-more-than-just-the-big-three.html

Music biz revenues grew in 2017+2018 as streaming booms.

Universal expanding in China/Asia.

Metallica launch Enter Night Pilsner, building on whiskey (Rolling Stone).
They even released a 'making of' video! (Blabbermouth)

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/jobs/spotify-manager-artist-label-marketing-us/

Physical sales so reduced, a Jan 2019 #1 only had 823 album sales!!!

Average Spotify user only paying 5.5o, and falling, as global rollout in poorer countries builds and family plans too.

https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/01/record-labels-evolve-to-stay-relevant-in-the-streaming-era-musonomics-report.html

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/features/8492870/spotify-direct-to-artist-tools-label-territory

https://www.newstatesman.com/2019/01/is-the-music-industry-dead

SELF-PUBLISHING by Indie act gr8 industry insight

https://youtu.be/Ehg15tYK5LI

A solo artist speaking about his experience of dodgy Indie labels who sell themselves on doing the online work like getting tracks onto Spotify etc ... And how easy he realised this was when he tried for himself after discovering how the label were letting him down.

You'll note how he plugs his own website, and holds up physical copies of his CDs, in trying to monetise his music ... He even signs off with a plea for viewers to add his songs to their Spotify playlists to boost their plays!

More news on Indie distribution: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/glassnote-signs-global-distribution-deal-with-kobalts-awal-leaves-behind-major-label-system/

YOUTUBE faces EU music video rights hike

UPDATED UPDATE!!

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/whos-telling-the-truth-youtube-or-the-music-industry-756663/



Spoiler alert ... the tech giants won this battle:YouTube and Facebook escape billions in copyright payouts after EU vote

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/05/youtube-could-escape-billions-in-copyright-payouts-after-eu-vote?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

'YouTube faces paying billions to music stars after copyright vote'

Great article + big news, as this impacts YouTube's distribution of music videos - it could lead to a mass deletion of music videos from the site, pending clear + specific agreements being signed with labels/rights holders.

NB: there is no change in law YET; this initial requires a further vote in the European Parliament in July before it takes on legal status, and it seems likely several states will object to it.

The quotes below contain some killer stats, the type I've often cited before:

• YouTube pays out about 67¢ per its 1.3bn music video-watching users ($856m/£650m annual)
• that's less than half the total royalties payout for 25 BILLION streams than is generated by just 4.1m vinyl record sales!!!
• Spotify pays out about $20 per user (272m users, annual total $5.6bn royalties)

For years the music industry has argued that YouTube exploits the lack of legal protection around music videos being viewed on its service to pay minimal amounts to artists and labels when they are viewed. The music industry has lobbied that this “value gap” between the true worth of the music videos and what YouTube decides to pay needs to be addressed with legislation.

On Wednesday, a crucial vote by the European parliament’s legal affairs committee went the way of the music industry with an agreement to adopt copyright laws that will force platforms such as YouTube to seek licences for music videos.

YouTube has an estimated 1.3 billion users who regularly watch music videos and it paid $856m (£650m) in royalties to music companies last year – an estimated 67 cents per user annually. In the UK, record labels and artists earn more than double the royalties from the sale of 4.1m vinyl records than they did from the 25bn music videos watched on YouTube last year.

By contrast, income from the 272 million music fans who paid for ad-supported services such as Spotify, generated $5.6bn in royalties, or about $20 per user annually.

...

DIGITISATION album sales halve 2015-18 singles rule again

Lot of great detail here, the bottom line being not just the accelerating decline of physical media sales, but the death of the album - with examples given such as Drake's 25-track album where 3 songs account for over 60% of all streams from the album, 19 others a combined 18%!

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-album-is-in-deep-trouble-and-the-music-business-probably-cant-save-it-753795/

MUSIC INDUSTRY stats summary CDs behind streaming

UPDATE: 

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/mastodon-guitarist-says-bands-cant-survive-current-economic-climate/

Guardian: UK record labels' revenue grows at fastest rate since 1995.


The disruption from digitisation is now a long established phenomenon in the music industry - the outdated chart below fails to distinguish the collapse of the digital download market, and its near-complete replacement by streaming.



You can see the enormous impact of digital disruption here:




Here's a calculator.
I tried the Astrid S example of the 47m streams of Such a Boy:




In this post I blogged on multi examples, including One Direction, a big mainstream pop band's estimated $50m from a hit album ($36m sales, $14m from streams) ... just a sixth of their $300m touring income over the same time period (2015), not counting merch! Revenue directly from music sales/streams is falling overall, though labels are finding new ways to keep their overall revenues up.


Here you can see the staggering difference in how many sales/streams it takes for an artist to earn $1,260, ie the US legal minimum (employers cannot pay any lower!) monthly wage, which of course they want more than!!! You need 1m Spotify streams, or 4m YouTube streams to earn this!!!









...

MERCHANDISING Whiskey in the jar - branded booze

(yes, a wee Thin Lizzy intertextual ref there...)


Here's yet more, including Indie rockers Shed 7: 
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/iron-maiden-queen-madness-make-13639252.amp#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s

 frequently raise the point that digitization has meant that artists and record labels alike have sought to monetize other areas, and booze is a prime example of how wide this move into branded merchandising is. Take the example of Iron Maiden - they don't just sell one branded beer ... they have a whole website dedicated to their beer line! Smart branding.

See IronMaidenbeer.com.

There is an age check:


See TeamRock article for lots of other examples (and a nice Megadeth intertextual ref).

(and here's a further update:)

I mention beer as a great example of merch - you can buy both Slayer and Iron Maiden beer in Luxembourg (Auchan), and Motorhead, plus some other branded wine/spirits if I recall correctly. That this is now a common strategy, especially in heavy metal, can be seen from a simple google ('heavy metal beer'). See this Pinterest for a gallery (pic, right comes from it):

MUSIC INDUSTRY 2018 some pointers

This is a quick post inspired by encountering the site musicbusinessworldwide.com

UPDATE: Useful review of music video trends in 2918, including the return of mega-budgets for a handful of elite artists:

Drake’s mates and Taylor Swift’s cosplay: exploring the 2018 music video

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/19/drakes-mates-and-taylor-swifts-cosplay-exploring-the-2018-music-video?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

I was looking for some info on the 1D GCSE exam case study but spotted a number of great articles on here. So here's a few pointers based on the site.

You can find a bullet list I previously did summing up some key music industry points (with many links to posts) here.

AS CDS DISAPPEAR TOURS ARE JUST THE TICKET: 1D EXAMPLE
A point I make many, many times: the traditional music industry model has been through disruption from digitisation (though it hasn't rebalanced the competition in favour of Indies; see Anita Elberse's fascinating analysis of how big 3 acts utterly dominate Amazon sales, making the 'long tail theory' seem absurd), so labels are looking for new revenue sources. Merchandise is a key factor - when I went to see The Wedding Present (UK Indie band) in Luxembourg last year, I got to chat to the singer after the gig, who was at the merch stall signing his own comic book range alongside the usual tee-shirts etc.

The likes of 1D aren't going to do that. They did sell VIP packages for gigs - something else I saw at a Depeche Mode gig, with multiple tiers including a basic that simply allowed you into the venue earlier to hear the soundcheck. I've blogged on Taylor Swift and Katy b Perry doing this, with fans paying a lot for a selfie opportunity. [meet-and-greets post]

The basic breakdown is clear though - most major artists (Indies too) will gain more from tours than album sales. Even combined with streaming (which is now bigger than physical sales and download sales combined) that remains the case. Getting onto TV ads, film/game OSTs are also potentially lucrative.

DIGIPAK Streaming killing off Best Of comps

Useful industry context here for your digipak, which is almost certain to be a best of. The point is NOT to abandon that format but rather to show awareness of the declining commercial prospects of it, and why this is.

For every convention there are always exceptions, and here we can see re-recorded Best Ofs thriving, with the Elvis collection, freshly cut with a new orchestral backing track, the top-selling such comp in 2017, a trick Kylie has also used in the past, and one hit wonder Sophie Ellis-Baxter is set to in 2018.

The death of the best of: why Rihanna will never get her greatest hits https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/12/playlist-curation-killing-off-greatest-hits-album-rihanna?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

VINYL hits 4m in UK Sainsburys launch label Metallica Master Retromania

This is how Sainsbury's announced the launch

Sainsbury’s customers can now pick up some exclusive, freshly pressed vinyl alongside their freshly pressed fruit juices. (Sainsbury's,1st Nov. 2017)

Sadly the vinyl boom, boosted by nostalgia* from the deaths of the likes of Prince and Bowie, whose final album Blackstar was a vinyl bestseller, is led this year by the tragic return from early retirement of Ed Sheeran.

Further evidence of how mainstream this vinyl resurgence is, a major Xmas pressie source, the Gallagher brothers solo records and Sergeant Peppers are joined as major sellers by ... supermarket Sainsbury's own label.

Grab a loaf, milk and a compilation record with some Van der Graaf Generator. Tremendous. Though the only real national music store chain left, HMV, remains the dominant force in vinyl sales for now.

See Guardian: Ed Sheeran and Gallagher brothers lead vinyl revival at HMV. and Sainsbury's announcement.

Here's a very useful video suggested by Richard D:

... 

*THEORY TIP + A SPOTof INDUSTRY ANALYSIS: 

Simon Reynolds wrote an interesting book, Retromania, about the profound change in the cultural position of music and how its consumed brought about by digitisation. Thanks to YouTube especially, older acts never actually fade away. Pop was always considered ephemeral: pop acts would have their year or so of popularity then fade from the limelight and memory as their teen/tween fanbase got older and bored.

Now we can easily access older acts material, and record labels see back catalogue as a key driver of revenue. Spotify is full of special editions, and even re-recordings (eg Def Leppard's Hysteria), which enable a band to regain control of revenue streams rather than the record label they were signed to for the original album.

The Smiths, The Sex Pistols and Metallica are but 3 recent examples of bands re-releasing iconic albums with lots of studio outtakes, demos etc, sold in multiple packages (with vinyl options in all 3 of these examples). The Master of Puppets boxset was gifted by the Danish PM to his Indonesian equivalent, and you can also treat yourself to the very dull featuring singer James Hetfield's hands, part of the publicity and marketing campaign that kicked in months before the release date.

INDUSTRY Vevo the music video giant

Vevo is an entity you need to engage with to show a good grasp of the industry, a case of the music giants combining to monetise and control the distribution of their videos through YouTube.
See Lifewire, Wiki for simple explanations, and look into your own artist for Vevo links.

They're the major music industry force behind the Tory attempt to enforce age ratings on music videos, voluntarily engaging in the BBFC scheme. See this Guardian Music tag for more on this.

STREAMING 2.4m YouTube views to earn months minimum wage

http://www.metalsucks.net/2017/08/07/which-streaming-music-service-currently-has-the-best-payout-rate-for-artists/

WOMEN still controlled by men, Instagram only space for genuine expression?

A good look here at how patronising patriarchy, an assumption that women are more pliable and will do as instructed, remains ingrained in the music biz, and an interesting side note on how being 'woke' (Katy bloody Perry's farcical attempt to show her socially conscious side leading to that garbling of language) is seen as important for branding and the opportunity to land marketing deals with brands.

A perhaps too uncritical, but useful, highlighting of Instagram especially as social media being the only space where female artists are permitted to freely express themselves - ignoring the product placement rife in these platforms and other forms of artifice.

Pop’s glass ceiling: why new female stars can’t break through https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/21/pops-glass-ceiling-why-new-female-stars-cant-break-through?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

INDUSTRY Website only book Testament to diversification

A novel idea, the band book...

Thrash legends Testament (Burnt Offerings, Over the Wall, Souls of Black and many other classics that'll add a sonic boom to any day) are producing a band history which can only be ordered through their website, and comes with a personalised inscription.

Of course, there's a video from the lead singer, the venom vocalled Chuck Billy, to announce/flog the tome...

http://www.metalsucks.net/2017/03/10/testament-are-working-on-a-book-the-official-illustrated-history/

SPOTIFY getting on a playlist key to profit

Also spotted a useful quote from Lily Allen on how it's difficult to make money from music - it's more about branding deals, endorsements.

Lily Allen: ‘We need to fight back against these forces’

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/06/we-need-to-fight-back-against-forces-lily-allen

A useful quote from a veteran UK Indie label boss:

If you get on the right Spotify playlist, it could pay for your album. My friend Ian who runs How Does It Feel to Be Loved has a band call Haiku Salut – they were on a Spotify playlist and it made them a load of money. It’s different from just sending a record to NME. There’s no longer one source that has that single power those magazine had. That’s possibly a good thing, but I feel sorry for a lot of music writers who are expected to provide content for free.

Guardian: Bed bugs, Brexit and goodbyes: 20 years of indie, as told by Fortuna Pop! 

Guardian: 'They could destroy the album': how Spotify's playlists have changed music for ever.

Since posting this I keep seeing more and more references to the same point, the power of the Spotify playlist - as I write (5.4.18) Spotify has just launched on the stock market leading to more analysis of its role, power and future. Like Amazon, its in a race against time to establish such a huge market lead that it has huge power over labels when striking deals over payments/royalties.

I spotted on Facebook that a Marillion/Fish fangroup (All the best freaks are here) had a thread about Fish (singer) pulling all his albums bar one (which he's touring next year) off Spotify, and someone mentioned a Fish Facebook blog I'd forgotten about - so here it is!

...

MERCHANDISING Soot 4 loot NIN style

Another example of the infinite possibilities that exist for merchandising, and a novel way of making the audience feel a connection to the artist

http://www.metalsucks.net/2017/03/02/nine-inch-nails-make-dirt-now/

Spotify chief most powerful figure in music industry

The big three are all represented alongside major management agencies and touring agents, but it's Spotify, seen as responsible for an unexpected rise in music industry revenues, with its 51% share of the US streaming market (a challenge here for Apple, who also feature in the top 10), that tops the pile according to industry magazine Billboard.

Spotify's Daniel Ek named most powerful person in the music business. 

WEB 2.0 LYRIC VIDEO Bring Me The Horizon example

See also:http://loudwire.com/starset-360-degree-ricochet-lyric-video/
http://www.metrolyrics.com/lyric-videos.html
Are Coldplay and Justin Bieber's fan-made music videos just cheap marketing ploys?

The idea long predates the digital age: (I see 351studio, a specialist producer of lyric videos, also cite this!)

This is a topic I've blogged on previously, looking at Anthrax and Jane's Addiction examples. I quite likely haven't tagged additional posts that reference this phenomenon.

When creating your own simulacra of existing artists (typically but not always the case - Sunburnt in December being a fine example of a student group that professionally recorded their own band) you need to be closely examining how they, and the industry more generally, seeks to engage with audiences.

The lyric video is one such means. This emerged as and remains a popular form of UGC or fan-made video, but more recently many artists (or their record labels!) have been adding and heavily promoting their own lyric videos. The attraction is obvious - production costs are minimal; providing the lyrics can boost concert atmosphere; the official lyric video can help spark further UGC efforts, whilst pushing traffic to the official YT channel.

Here's a BMTH example, reflecting 1 of 2 common approaches: white text on a black background, though they have both animated the text (something you can do in FCPX using keyframing and/or Motion) and the band's logo (using 1 ore more still images as a backdrop - often the album cover - is the other common approach).



This simple video has been a useful revenue driver for the act/their label, with approaching 32m views as of Jan 2017:

Indeed, an interesting reflection on the nature of music video consumption in our converged age, the lyric video has x7 the views of the actual main promo vid!

The Wiki on the term focuses on music videos which put the lyrics on screen, a different concept to the overlaying of typed lyrics on (usually) still images, but notes that the lyric video often precedes the release of the main promo vid:

A lyric video is one in which the words to the song are the main element of the video. The music video for R.E.M.'s "Fall On Me" interspersed the song's lyrics with abstract film footage. In 1987, Prince released a video for his song "Sign o' the Times". The video featured the song's words pulsing to the music presented along with abstract geometric shapes; an effect created by Bill Konersman.^[55][56]
In 1990 George Michael released "Praying For Time" as a lyric video. He had refused to make a traditional music video, so his label released a simple clip that displayed the song's lyrics on a black screen.^[57]
A lyric video may be released separately by a music label prior to the more usual video featuring the artist. Cee Lo Green, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Muse, Blur, Ellie Goulding and Avenged Sevenfold among many others, have released lyric videos.^[58]

There are even companies who specialise in producing lyric videos, such as 351 Studios:

Today’s digital age changes the way we promote new releases. These days, Lyric Video Production is part of the standard package when artists and labels release a new song. Each day we can see hundreds of new lyric videos on YouTube and other streaming services. There is big competition out there! Lyric Video Production actually dates back to 1965, in Bob Dylan’s release “Subterranean Homesick Blues” as an official music video. But now it’s a different story. It’s a new industry standard. There are also categories for best Lyric Videos in awards by multiple music networks.

Are you looking for a lyric video maker? 351 Studio is the best, most professional lyric video company. We are behind many major and independent artists and labels. With the best creative minds in the team, we can offer you unique, trendy, professional and industry-standard lyric videos for your songs, incorporating your style as an artist, your vibe, any graphics you may have, some video footage, and all animated with perfect dynamics to your song.