SONG CONTEST BLOG

Pandora, the revolutionary streaming music and tastemaker service, and one of the most disruptive promotional platforms for musicians of every style and caliber, has imposed new rules for submission of music to its playlist database by artists and labels.  In the past, Pandora accepted music in almost any form at no cost.  Now, artists and labels must have a CD of their music, a unique UPC code for that CD (for vendors to keep track of inventory), and it must be available for purchase on Amazon, rules that most artists and labels already comply with.  However, some indies are not yet on Amazon.  In order to meet Pandora’s new criteria, artists and labels will need to obtain a unique UPC code for the physical album they wish promote prior to joining the Amazon Advantage Program at a cost of $29.95/yr, per Pandora’s recommendation, to make it available for sale.  These new measures will standardize the album artwork spec Pandora displays on its playlists, pulling all the images directly from Amazon, and linking every playable track to the Amazon store.  Amazon takes a 55% commission from sales from which it pays Pandora a share for referrals.  Considering that the Net proceeds of six or seven CDs annually will cover the cost of the Amazon Advantage Program plus the fee for the UPC code, I reckon that any artist worth hearing will be only too happy to oblige.

If you don’t already have a UPC code, you can get one here or through any number of musician resources such as CD Baby, Discmakers, and Nimbit.  Check out Pandora’s submission FAQ and Amazon Advantage Program for application details.

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Music discovery and playlist service, Grooveshark, was selected as one of ten winners in CNET’s 2009 Webware 100 in the “Audio & Music” category, sharing the spotlight with the formidable usual suspects including iTunes, AmazonMP3, and Pandora.  This is indeed a privilege for the Floridian upstart which triumphed over CD Baby, iLike, Sellaband, Jango, and other well publicized and funded music dotcoms.  Nearly 630,000 votes were cast this year.

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Jango Airplay

Online streaming radio and music tastemaker, Jango, has launched a somewhat controversial artist promotion programme called Jango Airplay.  Essentially a pay-to-play scheme [and reminiscent of terrestrial radio “payola” which has been illegal since the fifties], Jango Airplay provides artists and their agents a direct means of plugging their songs to Jango’s listener base of 6 million for a fee.  Much like the StumbleUpon advertising initiative, displaying a sponsored web page for every nine unsponsored web-pages, the promotional value of this scheme is not absolute: “If you get 50 positive ratings, your song starts playing for free in general rotation on Jango. If your song continues to get good ratings, it will be played more and more often and in more and more stations.”  For $30, Jango Airplay offers 1000 plays, each track linked to its distributor (i.e. Amazon, iTune).

Pay-to-play may be an unpopular paradigm among musicians but this is actually an unprecedented opportunity for artists and labels to reach a new audience and guarantee some rotation.  For not much more than pocket change, bootstrapped musicians can gain some insight on who is most likely to listen to them, rate them up, and perhaps even purchase something.  Assuming that Jango Airplay plugs sponsored tracks appropriately, this is a truly awesome marketing platform for the music industry.

Related Post: SeeqPod

Music search engine, SeeqPod, that has already indexed (but not stored) 12 million songs, has been handed a formal complaint from EMI following a lawsuit from Warner last year.  Unlike Pandora and Imeem, the company has not pursued licenses to provide “playable search results” maintaining that they are not responsible for content sources and, therefore, free from any obligation to the copyright holder.  Legally questionable, Seeqpod has become very successful and the two major labels are probably going after it to settle on a mutual business model rather than to shut it down.  The news prompted me to play with the system a little and I enjoyed learning about their artist-centric advertising progamme that’s highly targeted and cost competitive.  Providing 5000 “exposures” (i.e. impressions) a month for $19.95, SeeqPod Echo is a nicely put together search-oriented advertising interface which may very well generate some relevant traffic for artists and music promoters who wish to tap into SeeqPod’s massive music listening community.  I’m curious to learn how the conversion rates stack up.

In a post called “Don’t Confuse Technology with Marketing” published today on The Music Snob, I found the opening statement intriguing: “The use of music marketing technology is not in and of itself an act of music marketing.”  The post develops into an insightful, artist’s perspective on the plethora of web-based music marketing and networking solutions aimed at independent artists and promoters, and questions their claim – each service with its unique proposition – as “an act of marketing” by mere subscription to and execution of their service. The Music Snob highlights that the majority of these services provide a means for fans to find the artist and not visa versa.  For instance, if the artist is distributing his music to iTunes, he is certainly making his music available for purchase… but that’s not marketing, that’s plain old supply.  So how do you create demand?  By marketing.

One of the successful attributes of social networks is the balance of push and pull marketing.  In push marketing, you look for and find friends.  In pull marketing, friends look for and find you.  Popular folks enjoy more of the pull while the less socially apt have to push.  This is a tried and tested socio-ecosystem, online and off.  However, musicians and music listeners are, by definition, unequal.  There may be a cross over – musicians may also listen to and purchase music and music listeners may also write songs and play in band – but one is supplying and the other is consuming.  In a world where music is ubiquitous and available in limitless varieties, the marketplace is not in favour of the musician and, therefore,  he must actively market (push and push hard) to find music listeners to consume his music.  The advent of taste making music technology such as Pandora, iLike and Last.fm has made it easier for musicians to develop their presence online but that, I hope The Snob will agree, is far too passive to constitute a true marketing effort through technology which, first and foremost, caters to the consumer’s appetite for music (and not necessarily your music).

From my understanding, what this post suggests, at least in part, is that few artists manage to market themselves successfully, even with an array of revolutionary “marketing” tools, and, resultantly, the music industry’s bottom line pretty much remains the same: a handful of artists sell while the vast majority don’t, even if all of them have a presence on MySpace, Facebook, ReverbNation, Sellaband, OurStage, Music Nation, Sonicbids etc. etc.

“This is a very sad day for Pandora, and for me personally. Today we reduced our staff from 140 to 120 employees. Like virtually every company, Pandora is not immune to the challenges presented by the current economic turmoil. We are trying to react quickly and responsibly to the new environment…

There are tough times ahead for the economy, but our listenership is growing rapidly, the Internet radio royalty rate resolution seems finally near, and the explosion of mobile devices like the iPhone are opening up a world of opportunity for internet radio to expand off the desktop. Moreover, our ad sales are growing so well that, not only did we not make any reductions there, we need to continue to hire more.”

– Tim Westergreen, Founder