SONG CONTEST BLOG

Billboard and Music Week recently released their 1st Quarter publishers rankings and share report.  Bug Music ranks at #6 on Billboard’s Top 10 Publisher Airplay chart, holding 2.82% of the U.S. radio airplay chart share, a whopping increase of 70% over 4th Quarter figures last year.  During the same period, Bug Music was responsible for 10% of the songs on the Billboard Country 100 and ranked #5 on Billboard’s Top 10 Rock Publishers.   In the UK, a matching chart dominance and upward curve can be traced.  CEO, John Rudolph, attributes revenue growth to the persistent drive of old skool music publishing activities in conjunction with new business model speculation.

“Bug Music is a music company made of amazing writers, artists, and songs.  We recognized the need a few years ago to not only be aggressive in developing our traditional music publishing business, but to be more inventive in utilizing our partners and their songs by diversifying the role of an independent music company,” said Rudolph. “We believe the turmoil of the economic climate today has afforded us great opportunities to create new models for the future ranging from releasing records to developing brands around songs.”

For those in the know, Bug Music is a music publishing leviathan, most notably for its 2007 acquisition of Windswept Music and Trio/Quartet catalogs, adding 250,000 copyrights to its name including “The Real Slim Shady”, “Fever”, “What a Wonderful World”, “Stormy Weather”, “I Walk the Line”, “Summer in the City”, “Under the Boardwalk”, “Lust for Life” and many other mega-hits.  Recent deals include a joint venture with Nashville-natives, Kings of Leon, and a co-publishing relationship with Kara DioGuardi, the American Idol Judge and one of the highest earning songwriters in the world.

Taking the company’s 34-year tenure and size into consideration, with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, London and Munich, Bug Music is refreshingly hip and open-minded, pursuing new technologies to cater to their publishing administration and publically detailing their approach to new acquisitions and client engagement.

Now, let’s check out DioGuardi’s bod again for those who missed it live:

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Guitar Hero is one of the most successful video games ever introduced into the market, developed to provide players with a true guitar playing experience via a guitar shaped peripheral modeled on the Gibson SG.  The Guitar Hero series has sold 23 million units to date, earning $1.6 billion at retail.  Ranked sixth by Billboard’s “The 100 Best Ways For Your Music To Get Attention”, the music-focused gaming experience has changed the face of the music industry through lucrative licensing deals, uplifts in game-related downloads, and unprecedented exposure for any artist  appearing in or in some way associated with the game.

Phenomenal success begets phenomenal marketing and advertising budgets.  Guitar Hero is no exception.  Here is a personal favourite (for obvious reasons):

In September 2008, Billboard Magazine published a  list titled, “The 100 Best Ways For Your Music To Get Attention” which caught my attention this month when I received the top 20 from Peter Spellman’s Music Biz Insight newsletter.  Note the volume of high profile opportunities in the licensing branch of the music industry as opposed to the more traditional sales and ticketing divisions which would have dominated this list through the 90’s:

1. Placement in a television ad for Apple

2. Performance on Oprah (6.6 million viewership)

3. Placement in a television commercial that runs during a special event with significant viewership (97.5 million viewers for the 2008 Super Bowl, for instance)

4. Song Featured as iTunes “Free Single of the Week”

5. Song covered on American Idol (approx.  27 million viewers)

6. Placement in Activision’s “Guitar Hero” videogame (approx. 10 million unit sales)

7. Song placed during a hit movie’s opening credits

8. Placement in a heavy-rotation television commercial for Nike

9. Performance on Lollapalooza Main Stage

10. Placement in MTV’s “Rock Band” videogame (US sales total 3.4 million units to date)

11. Video on YouTube’s Most-Viewed Videos page for music (approx. 75 million unique visitors)

12. Cover editorial in Rolling Stone

13. Placement in Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto” (4.7 million unit sales and growing)

14. Placement on HBO’s “Entourage”

15. Video on the YouTube’s home page

16. Placement in ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy”

17. Any single or video listed in the “Free on iTunes” section

18. Single played on Radio Disney (approx. 36.5 million listeners per week)

19. Performance on Bonnaroo’s What/Main Stage

20. Placement in CW’s “Gossip Girl”

Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” spent seven weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 during the summer of 2008 and has sold 3.1 million downloads according to Nielsen SoundScan.  Her subsequent single, “Hot N Cold,” reached number three on the Hot 100 charts and sold 2.9 million downloads.  Although her album sales did not match her singles sales, she enjoyed over 800,000 copies sold since June – and this brings her to A-list revenue figures, even if sales cap off before the million mark.

Perry’s ‘big break’ was when “Ur So Gay”, produced by and co-written with Greg Wells (OneRepublic, Mika), caught the attention of Madonna who mentioned it as her “favorite song right now” on KISS FM and KRQ’s JohnJay & Rich morning show in Arizona.  This, it seems, was enough to capture audience attention and catapult “I Kissed A Girl” as an international hit in the summer of 2008.

When I first heard it, I thought it was brilliant!  The combination of edgy production values and a memorable and somewhat controversial hook and chorus theme captured my attention immediately.  In terms of songwriting – like it or not – it is a masterfully written song.  “Hot N Cold”, her second installment along the same vein, did not do so much for me, perhaps because I felt that I had enough of Perry after the constant rotation of “I Kissed A Girl” but, her follow-up, “Thinking of You”, which just hit the radio, is a watered-down Katy Perry sound and crafted just as superbly as the others.  Notice that she’s not wearing any fruit but her 1930’s undergarments are, as you would expect, omnipresent in this clip.

“Life Is a Highway” is a song written by Tom Cochrane, from his 1991 album Mad Mad World. The song was Cochrane’s most famous song, as it was a number one hit in his native Canada, and was ubiquitous on Canadian radio in 1991. The song also peaked at number six on the Billboard charts in the United States in 1992. The song has been covered and released by Chris LeDoux, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Rascal Flatts.

Tom Cochrane

Chris LeDoux

Rascal Flatts