sandboxMUSIC MARKETING FOR THE DIGITAL ERA SEPTEMBER 10 2014

ISSUE 116

06 Tools PledgeMusic 07-08 Campaigns Etienne de Crécy, Paloma Faith,

Transgressive Records, Rolling Stones 09-12 Behind The Campaign Sinfini Music

CLOUDBUSTINGwhat monEtising SoundCloud and Mixcloud

will mean for music marketing

2 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

COVERFEATURE

S oundCloud has always occupied its own rather individual space in the digital imagination: it’s a streaming

service but for individual tracks and mixes, rather than albums; it’s a promotional tool for labels but has something of the anarchic feel of social media.

Until recently, though, the biggest difference with SoundCloud was that it didn’t pay out to rightsholders, something that got some parts of the music industry rather hot under the collar.

All that changed at the end of August when SoundCloud launched On SoundCloud, a creator/partner programme allowing musicians to make money from third-party advertising on the platform.

The initiative built on the launch of SoundCloud Pro and Pro Unlimited accounts last year, effectively adding the new tier of Premier Partner to the mix, as SoundCloud chief business officer Jeff Toig explains.

“On SoundCloud, our new partner programme for creators, has three tiers of service – Partner, Pro and Premier,” he says. “Entry to the free Partner level gives partners three hours of free upload time per account, basic features and stats. Pro Partners get more upload time per

CLOUDBUSTING what monEtising SoundCloud and Mixcloud

will mean for music marketing Both SoundCloud and Mixcloud have focused heavily

on giving underground musicians and DJs a way to build

their audience and they are now both making significant changes

to their business models that could have enormous repercussions

for how they are used. As SoundCloud in particular has been criticised

for building its model around copyrights but not paying creators,

it is now addressing this – but the grassroots acts and fans who

took it this far could be driven away if it just becomes dominated

by major acts or a brash push towards revenue generation

that compromises the user experience. It is a high wire act and

one that will change (for good or for bad) how it is used in marketing

account, plus expanded features and stats.”

He adds, “Premier Partners have the opportunity to make money on the platform [by having adverts placed alongside their content]. Access is by invitation only for now and we’ll be rolling it out to more creators over time.”

As it launched On SoundCloud , the company also revealed that it had signed licensing deals with a small number of music industry partners, including publishers Sony/ATV and BMG as well as distributors INgrooves and Seed, who will henceforth earn money from SoundCloud. Eventually, the company said it plans to introduce a paid subscription service that will let users skip ads too, with revenue

again shared with its partnersThis wasn’t quite the full monetisation

and licensing plan that some in the music industry were expecting, but it does mean artists will have two opportunities to make money from SoundCloud – either signing up as Premier Partners (contracts permitting) or via their existing deals with SoundCloud’s music industry partners.

What’s more, as the company’s co-founder and CTO Eric Wahlforss told music:)ally in June, more commercial plans are afoot. “Right now in the US we’re experimenting with different monetisation approaches,” he revealed. “We’re testing out different things: throwing a couple of things out there and testing the waters a bit.”

This is almost certainly good news for the music industry. But the question remains as to whether it will change how people use SoundCloud, which has become one of the key marketing platforms for the digital music industry. And if it will, how will it?

The big unknown, for the moment, is money. SoundCloud may be about to start paying rightsholders, but no one is saying how much. And this could theoretically have a big impact on what happens to the service: if the rate SoundCloud pays is significantly higher than all other streaming services then the site could soon be home to lots of major label catalogues, exclusives

COVERFEATURE

3 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

and pre-releases as labels spy the opportunity to make some serious cash.

Given the current difficulties in making money from streaming music, this is an unlikely scenario. But the fact that SoundCloud is set to pay royalties will almost certainly mean the resistance some bigger labels/artists have shown towards the platform will start to evaporate. And if the majors get an equity stake in SoundCloud – as it is understood they will – this could give them greater leverage over the platform.

That, in turn, will greatly increase the number of tracks on SoundCloud, according to Toig. “As labels and artists understand that they can make money with us, we expect that they’ll want to add more content to the platform,” he says.

This is a positive for SoundCloud, with more content likely driving more users.

The possible flip side, however, is that more major label content could change the way the public see SoundCloud, as underground dance labels are joined on the

platform by major recording companies and big pop stars.

Toig is confident that SoundCloud won’t get

swamped by major label acts, citing the broad range of partners the service already has. “SoundCloud is for everyone – not just the majors,” he argues.

He goes on to explain that On SoundCloud launched “with a broad array of creators

from across the platform, including labels, independent artists, publishers, podcasters, comedy networks and MCNs”.

“We’re an open platform,” he says. “The breadth of content on SoundCloud is as real-time and broad as human creativity itself – from bedroom artists uploading their first tracks to established artists planning their worldwide release.”

Such openness is admirable and SoundCloud has long stressed that it is a home for “sounds” rather than simply music. As such, an increase in non-music

content as a result of SoundCloud’s monetisation plans would surely be welcome for the company (and it’s worth noting that comedy site Funny Or Die is among SoundCloud’s first commercial partners). Again, though, the caveat is that music losing its monopoly on SoundCloud could possibly have a knock-on effect on the site’s devoted music users.

The other big unknown is how the SoundCloud community – the company is said to have 250m users – will react

COVERFEATURE

4 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

Even before users were able to make money from SoundCloud, many labels and artists were already using it as a promotional platform. The company’s chief business officer Jeff Toig talked us through three recent examples of promotional activity on SoundCloud. Beyoncé launched her ‘End Of Time’ remix contest on SoundCloud, where fans could remix the track for the chance to win $4,000, and to have their creation included on an upcoming Beyoncé release. The contest ran for one month, and saw over 3,000 tracks submitted. The winner, Jimek, received a congratulatory Skype call from Beyoncé herself and became a notable DJ in Poland.

Skrillex called

out a few artists on SoundCloud that he was listening to during a Reddit AMA. In a follow-up interview, one of the artists who was called out (TrollPhace) said, “I received a fl ood of new fans and plays across the board. The first 24 hours I got 100,000 plays on my SoundCloud alone. Mind-boggling, really.” This is a great example of a high-profile artist using SoundCloud to discover and support an emerging artist.

Diplo Approved[In April, tastemaker DJ and producer Diplo launched a SoundCloud account, Diplo

Approved , “that has all the best music in the world that isn’t mine”.]

Setting up a separate profile for curating sounds across the platform can be a smart way to keep your own content highlighted separately and give you more freedom as an artist to share the creativity on SoundCloud that inspires you.

SOUNDCLOUD PROMOTIONAL ISSUES

One way in which SoundCloud use will almost certainly change is in the statistics it offers users.

Again, SoundCloud is not saying exactly what stats its different user tiers will be able to access,

but the launch of its Pro and Pro Unlimited tiers allowed

users to see counts, likes, reposts, downloads and comments on a city-by-city basis (which can obviously help in planning tours).

SOUNDCLOUD STATS SUPPLY

SoundCloud is not the only music streaming platform to make moves into monetisation of late: Mixcloud, a platform aimed at DJs and online radio, launched its own Pro and Premium accounts in August. The former is aimed at uploaders, giving them a “sophisticated analytics dashboard”, while the latter is for listeners, allowing them to enjoy music ad-free.

music:)ally spoke to the company’s co-founder NiCo PErEz about what the moves will mean.

How have artists and labels been using Mixcloud as a promotional platform so far?Mixcloud is built primarily for DJs, radio presenters and curators. There is some overlap

between artists and DJs, e.g. Moby and Zero 7, and also labels and curators, e.g. Domino

Records and Hospital Records . Do you think the launch of Premium and Pro will change the way labels and artists use Mixcloud? if so, how?Premium is an offering for listeners and the main feature is an ad-free experience. Pro is built for those uploading and we’re really excited about the new analytics dashboard, ability to schedule uploads and a few secret features we’re working on now. Will the analytics dashboard radically change things for Pro users?For DJs and radio presenters, the new analytics

dashboard will let them see where in a show or a mix listeners are dropping off. This is a really powerful way to understand your audience better.

They’ll also be able to see the geographical location of their listeners, what websites they’re coming from and if they’re on a phone, laptop or tablet. Do you think listeners will start leaving Mixcloud if it’s getting “commercialised”. And how will acts respond if so?We’ve had advertising on Mixcloud since day one, and we’ve always strived to keep a balance between content and ads. From speaking with our users, I think we’ve done a fairly good job of getting that balance right.

Will people who were not so serious about Mixcloud now put it up their priority list?Since we launched our redesigned site earlier this year, we’ve seen a lot more people sign up and adopt the platform. With the launch of these new Pro and Premium accounts, we’re taking one step closer to our goal of rethinking radio for the digital generation. Our focus is firmly on building tools and services for curators, and an excellent listening experience for everyone to discover new music and audio.

MOVES TOWARDS MONETISATION

COVERFEATURE

5 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

to advertising. For the moment, no one knows. But the nightmare scenario for the company is that users instead will leave the platform for one of its streaming rivals rather than shell out to skip ads.

Toig, as you might expect, says this is unlikely, stressing that there will only be “occasional advertising” introduced to the platform. What’s more, he believes that SoundCloud users will understand the financial reality of advertising.

“We believe our highly social, millennial community understands that there should be a way for creators to get paid for their art,” he says.

“Every time users see or hear an ad, artists get paid. For people who

would prefer not to hear occasional advertising, we’re also developing a consumer subscription offering.

“We’ll share news on that in the months to come.” :)

6 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

TOOLS PLEDGEMUSIC became its fastest-selling catalogue project to date. Major acts using the platform for their new albums include Interpol and Weezer, while Pledge also worked with Mute Records on the new Erasure album, The Violet Flame.

An interesting digital gimmick the site has set up is that pledgers can have updates from the band automatically pushed out and posted on the fan’s personal social media. sandbox was somewhat surprised that a user would allow this as automatic social posting is normally seen as an irritant, but Rogers explained that these are super-fans and so do not act like the average user.

But if this is a D2C platform, why not just sell directly through an artist profile? The answer here is the community. Rogers also explains that artists can still do this once the album is out and that all data (email addresses etc.) belongs to the artist. The pages can also allow for retargeting. With the launch of the BandPage connection, the products can also be pulled through to an artist’s Spotify profile.

The main danger in doing these campaigns is letting down your fans. When creating the campaigns, artists are often quick to think of great (often unusual) ideas to promise to their fans. The problem is that in the run up to the album release, deadlines often become very tight and an over-promised Pledge campaign can be time-consuming and logistically demanding. Disappointing a super-fan can be a very costly mistake so Pledge campaigns should be properly planned throughout. :)

As PledgeMusic turns five, we catch up with Benji RogeRs, the service’s founder and president, to talk about its progress and how it has evolved.

Pledge Music is often tagged as a crowdfunding platform (the “Kickstarter of music”), but the company continues to push to be defined more as a D2C platform – one that involves fans from the early stages and emphasises on making those fans part of the record/project. Rogers’ take is that there is a strong group of super-fans who want more content and are willing to pay for it – but artists and labels, for the most part, are not giving it to them.

Pledge is also different to Kickstarter in the way it sets up projects. Goals of projects can be set up as a total sum, number of album sales, hidden financial targets (where only the % of completion is shown) or even a simple pre-sale with no goal.

The Pledge team will work with the artist, manager and label to understand which is the right approach. They tend to advise staying away from emphasising the monetary sum and move more into making fans part of the journey – so hidden targets are common. For projects with a goal, Pledge can boast 88% of them either reaching their target or exceeding it.

The first interesting development for the platform is around the community it has created. In the past it was the artist who brought the traffic to the sites and the projects. Now up to 40% of the fans supporting projects are Pledge super-

users. This powerful community dynamic is also what keeps services like Bandcamp and Kickstarter growing.

There are 750k monthly active users on the platform and they are supporting 60-80 albums being released a month. The demographics of this community are dominated by two markets – the US (43%) and the UK (21%) – and there is a heavy skew towards male pledgers (70%). The age group is spread as follows: 20% are aged 18-24; 30% are aged 25-34; and 22% are aged 35-44.

The stand out fact is that these pledgers pay on average $61 per transaction. What are they paying for? First, it is access to the album in all aspects: name, artwork, digital copies, signed physical copies, test pressings and so on (83% of purchases are physical). But also experiential packages such as meet & greets, invites to the studio, fan-only gigs, private shows at your house or more esoteric things like the opportunity to catch an artist swinging at a baseball.

The recommendation is to create about 10-15 products with a range across digital, physical and experiential. Products should be priced competitively. Fans need to feel like they are getting a good value deal otherwise they may not support you in the future.

Which leads us onto: how many times can you do this? If all products are fulfilled, technically you can start immediately. Take, for example, Ginger Wildheart who managed three campaigns in two years. But to achieve this, Pledge emphasises that fans must get more than just what they pay for: so that means plenty of on-going communication, behind the scenes on the making of the project and exclusives to fans (both before and after the campaign).

A second key development is the shift in the positioning of Pledge. In the past it may have been seen as a platform bands could use as an alternative to labels to fund an album, whereas now major acts are using the platform as a way to get fans involved (read: monetise) from the start.

A recent example was Union Square Music and ZTT doing a campaign for the Frankie Goes To Hollywood boxset, which

7 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

The latest projects from the digital marketing arena CAMPAIGNS

need help with an eye-catching song title? Look no further than French Dj and producer etienne de Crécy.

His latest track, ‘#hashtagmyass’ (commenting on social networking and the language used therein), has got its own dedicated website (hashtagmyass.com) that invites users to connect their Instagram profiles in order to generate a personalised music video. The video itself includes users’ photos, based on popularity and tags, that are projected onto vinyl before leading into a section that perfectly suits the song title – but is perhaps not very PG.

The users can, once the video is created, share it on various social media platforms, including YouTube. All of the videos are collected under a Super Discount 3 channel – the name of de Crécy’s new album. Collectively the videos can help in generating

a strong YouTube channel that has a bigger chance of appearing in search results and driving attention to the platform. Users who want to get rid of their video afterwards need to beware as they themselves cannot take down videos and must go through a takedown request process.

Up until the time of writing (9th September), the number of gathered views on YouTube is 101,975 – an impressive total in two weeks for a (relatively) niche artist. It’s still too early to evaluate the full results of the campaign, but considering the continuing flow of uploads occurring, it’s looking optimistic. sandbox loves this fresh take on interactive videos – even if there are a few too many backsides appearing in the video. It’s enough to put you off your profiteroles.

Paloma Faith has, together with sony Music (her label), launched a design competition in partnership with Talenthouse. Designers are asked to create their own interpretation of the artwork from Faith’s latest album, A Perfect Contradiction.

The winner will be chosen by the singer along with a team of judges and they will receive prizes including £800, tickets to a show plus a meet & greet during Faith’s 2015 tour. The winning artwork will be featured on Paloma Faith’s limited-edition poster, merchandise, social skins and on

Hunger TV. A community winner will also be chosen via social media.

Art community platform Talenthouse was the platform that was also used back in June when Sandbox reported on Sony UK and Sony Xperia’s talent competition, #getrecorddeal.

“Labels and artists are always looking for new creative ways to market and break artists. In an ever-cluttered market, creative content that engages mainstream audience and tastemakers in the creative space can help enhance a campaign,” says Talenhouse co-founder, Maya Bogle.

Crowdfunding has now become an essential part of certain artists’ livelihoods, but crowdsourcing is still in its early days. Kiss previously teamed up with crowdsourcing platform Tongal to seek ideas on how to best celebrate their 40 years in the rock ‘n’ roll business (see sandbox 106 from April). Tongal was also used for a Bob Marley campaign that, in partnership with Ben & Jerry’s, launched the ‘One Love’ music video project that asked directors to pitch ideas for a music video. There are plenty of opportunities for artists’ to engage and continue to develop this area in the future.

PALOMA FAITH COURTS DESIGN TALENTJUST #HASHTAGMYASS

8 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

The latest projects from the digital marketing arena CAMPAIGNSThe Transgressive label is marking its first decade with a month of giveaways. The label is handing out previously unreleased and rare tracks every day for the whole month of september via its website .

The tracks will cover both its present and past roster, including The Shins, Foals, Neon Indian and The Antlers. In order to receive the download, users have to first submit their emails.

The campaign enables people to focus on each and every track and have a celebration around that for a day as opposed to a one-off review of a compilation.

The campaign is a good way of collecting label-centric signups rather than ones for individual bands and it allows better targeting and long-term relationships with Transgressive’s audience. It’s also a good way of continuing the label’s tastemaker status.

sandbox understands that the response to the campaign has been off to a good start, with thousands of signups within the first week and numerous features and articles by the blogging community resulting in a top listing on Hype Machine. sandbox reported on a similar move made by Steve

Angello’s label, Size Records, back in March. Drip-feeding exclusives does provide a good opportunity to generate hype around a release as well as building a continuing email database from an audience that has clearly shown interest in the label – but there’s also a challenge in continuing to keep that interest throughout a longer campaign.

The giveaway month will lead up to Transgressive’s big birthday bash show that will be held at the Barbican Centre in London on 30th September.

The Rolling stones have teamed up with e-commerce firm screenburn to give their fans access to streams of a number of their films on Facebook .

The band are making six films available for users to rent for 48 hours and titles include the filming of their show in London’s Hyde Park last year (Sweet Summer Sun), Stones In Exile and their 50th anniversary documentary, Crossfire Hurricane.

The films are all collected under the Screenburn tab that can be found on the band’s Facebook profile page, with each title going for £3.49. Screenburn is a video platform that enables direct sales and rentals on Facebook as well as being adapted for mobile and tablets. The company has previously had similar partnerships with Katy Perry, Paul

McCartney and The Libertines.Film rentals are certainly one way of

offering fans a little something extra while still opening up a gap for those fans who don’t want to own the films – as well as offering them content via the platforms they spend most time on.

Music download and streaming services have also tested the waters in this area, with Google Play Music releasing an exclusive Clash documentary series last year as well as Spotify’s ongoing Landmark series. The streaming services definitely have an edge and potential to further explore this area in the future.

The band’s socials remind sandbox that it really isn’t difficult to keep artist profiles relevant and fresh. Perhaps this could be something for other (younger) artists to draw inspiration from.

TRANSGRESSIVE RECORDS IS IN A GIVEAWAY MOOD ROLLING STONES – I JUST WANT TO SEE HIS FACEBOOK

BEHIND THE CAMPAIGN SINFINI MUSIC

BEHIND THE CAMPAIGNSINFINI MUSIC

Defining the role of sinfini Sinfini is really about creating an editorially independent and credible digital platform for classical music. We are about being content creators and using that content and marketing to effectively broaden the market for classical music as a whole and also to start the broader transition from the

10 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

Behind The Campaign normally zooms in on an artist campaign, but in a slight break with tradition we look here at sinfini Music, the classical music platform developed by Universal Music in the UK and which has now launched in Australia. The service is label agnostic as it looks to push classical music as a whole to a broader audience, creating bespoke guides and video content to help it achieve that goal (tagline: “Cutting through classical”). We talk to MARK LeWis, marketing and insight manager at sinfini/Universal, about the international roll out, how online comic strips are being used to broaden the audience and why classical is still struggling to slot neatly into digital services.

physical space to the digital space for the classical audience. The site is designed out of those ambitions.

its blog originsIt all started as a blog and it was important to have a presence online. While the site was being designed and built for launch, we

11 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

had already started creating content. The blog was a way of starting to develop the brand in a small way and make a name of Sinfini Music – and also so that, when the site launched, we already had an existing set of articles and features. It was a nice way to start to develop a name for ourselves.

The site, when it launched, represented a major step on from the blog, which was more just text articles with films. When the site launched, we had the whole range of Sinfini experiences to play with.

We have proper navigation, indexing and tagging so we could create the backbone of the site with our biographies, profiles and playlists.

We deliberately soft launched the site in November 2012 and we didn’t make much of a splash about it until April of the following year when we had a more public launch.

We produced a couple of live Sinfini sessions in our High Street Kensington [London] office with Avi Avital , the mandolin player, and Martynas , the accordion player, to show our readers online the types of artists we feel really represent what we do.

Creating the sinfini storeThe Sinfini “Store” tab was launched at the

end of last year. That is as much about it being a discovery and curation engine, with the vast majority of products being fulfilled by Amazon and iTunes. That’s the same for local markets as they roll out, such as in Australia. We work on

an affiliate retailer basis here.

Making classical work properly online and the need to refine searchThere is definitely an issue [for classical] in regards to metadata and it is something that lots of people are trying to resolve. There are so many different ways that people think about classical music and respond to it so finding the best way for searches to work online can be tricky. There are factors like the composer, which symphony orchestra is playing, who is conducting, which soloists are performing; these are all pieces of information that consumers at all levels of knowledge will search on. Metadata has always been an issue with bringing classical online. Shifting people online is harder

because of that. What Sinfini is trying to tackle is in regards to the volume of catalogue in classical. It is vast. Say you have heard Wagner’s ‘Ride Of The Valkyries’ while watching Apocalypse Now, if you type in “Ride Of The Valkyries” in Amazon you’ll get thousands of search results. The big decision is around which one you buy and which one you listen to.

On Sinfini we have a store on the site that is, in its essence, a useful search engine in terms of filters. On Sinfini, instead of being presented with 20,000 responses you’ll get presented with 10. Because you know and trust our brand, you will know that those 10 will be the ones you want to purchase or listen to.

There is a core set of classical consumers who will be instantly able to tell if you stream a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony conduced by Herbert von Karajan as opposed to one conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. There will be a core set of consumers who will be able to navigate those options to find the one they want. There is a big market out there – which is a core market for Sinfini – who just want to consume and discover classical music, but they need a guide. They need someone to tell them why this particular conductor might be more

relevant to them than someone else. Or they might just want to know which one will sound best and that they’ll like and are not interested in the conductor at the initial point of discovery.

What the Sinfini store tries to do is replicate the idea of your local high street retailer, staffed with people you can trust and who can tell you which is the best recording to buy for whatever reason you want to buy.

Listening is a big part of the experience on Sinfini. We have over 700 playlists from Spotify embedded in Sinfini. They are all designed to offer you a journey through music. We have specially commissioned biographies on all the major composers. Each composer will have a playlist that has been designed to offer the user the best way to experience their works.

The vast majority of the products on offer in our store are fulfilled by Amazon or iTunes, but each piece will have a link to Spotify so people can listen to the full piece.

involvement with the edinburgh international FestivalSinfini was the digital media partner for the Edinburgh International Festival this year. We produced lots of content for their

BEHIND THE CAMPAIGNSINFINI MUSIC

12 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

BEHIND THE CAMPAIGNSINFINI MUSIC

website and for our website over the course of the festival. We sponsored a concert there as well this August.

The partnership came out of an initial contact from Edinburgh International Festival itself. They were looking for a digital content partner to help to build the stickiness of their new website they were developing at the time. Content marketing is a trend at the moment for organisations and they [Edinburgh International Festival] recognised our unique approach to classical music and the way we communicated about it. They wanted to have a part of our world on their website but also recognised that we are still a growing brand so the power of their brand internationally would be attractive to us.

As part of the deal, we have not only written articles about the festival that sit on Sinfini Music, we have also created something called Opera Strip which takes the plots of major operas and digests them into comic strips. They are drawn by an illustrator [William Elliott] who doesn’t have a background in classical music at all, so it is a quite new and different take on opera. The interesting departure for Sinfini is that we have used our resources to produce 55 podcasts that sit on Edinburgh’s website. There is a podcast per event at their festival that are co-produced by us with our tone and featuring journalists that we respect.

sinfini Australia and further international expansionAustralia is our first local territory release.

WANT To fEATurE iN BEHiND THE CAMPAigN? Marketing people: do you have a campaign you are working on that you would like to see featured in Behind The Campaign in a future edition of sandbox? If so, send a brief synopsis of it to Eamonn Forde for consideration and your work (and your words) could appear here.Email: eamonn.forde@me.com

Organically the site has developed a very international userbase. We have about 30% of our users from North America, which roughly matches the number from the UK. There is a big market for classical

music that is already finding its way to Sinfini. But our local launches are producing content that is packaged more ideally for consumers in other territories.

A number of other companies

have chosen Australia as their second launch platform [e.g. Pandora and Beats] and we are doing so. There is an active market out there and it makes sense for us to use that as the test bed for how Sinfini will work when it is rolled out across various different territories.

There will be [other international launches this year] but we can’t say which ones just yet. Over the next year there will be other – possibly non-English language – versions of the site as well.

Targeting the audience betterWe concentrate on making sure we are there when people are searching for

classical music online. We make sure we target those people as best we can using all the online marketing tools you would expect – paid search, display and so forth. There are different scales of audience for Sinfini. We have our core audience who are important to us and that is really the classical core audience. But we want to reach beyond that.

Partnerships are a way of doing that for us, so it’s about brand awareness and working with organisations to reach their audiences who might be engaged with culture as well as music. The Edinburgh partnership is an example of that where we created content for their website and made use of their marketing channels to communicate about Sinfini to a wider Scottish and international audience in that context.

Research and understanding the classical audience better[Audience research] was something we developed out of an increased desire to understand more about how, globally, consumers are interacting with classical music today – especially with the growth of streaming as well as the importance of digital retailers like Amazon and iTunes. From a marketing perspective, we have a need to better understand how people are consuming classical so that we can make things like Sinfini a bit more consumer-focused; and for the industry as a whole it is really useful for everyone to understand that.

The site has a 10-minute survey that takes a snapshot of global attitudes to streaming, how people discover classical music, what is more important and less important for them and how that relates to their live attendance. By the end of the process we will hopefully be able to start looking at what streaming services people

are using to listen to classical, if there are any patterns we can see globally, if there are any differences between different countries and so on. Sweden we already know is a very digitally engaged market generally for music. We are working with partners like the BPI in the UK and ARIA in Australia to try and get a global picture. Hopefully we will be able to compare different countries and patterns.

next stepsWe are working on a project to create resources for music teachers in the UK – and hopefully internationally – to take Sinfini’s approach to classical music and making resources that will help music teachers at secondary schools to bring that approach to their students. :)

13 | sandbox | Issue 116 | 10.09.14

Published by music:)ally.

music:)ally is a music business information and strategy company.

We focus on the change taking place in the industry and provide information and insight into every aspect of the business: consumer research analysing the changing behaviour and trends in the industry, consultancy services to companies ranging from blue chip retailers and telecoms companies to start-ups; and training around methods to digitally market your artists and maximise the effectiveness of digital campaigns as well as events.

We are now also offering digital marketing services to labels, artist managers, artists and other music related companies from campaign advice and strategy through to implementation and execution.

Clients include:

Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music, Spotify, Deezer, Ignition, Beggars, Modest, Red Bull, Shazam, Domino and more

If you have a digital campaign related story for sandbox, please contact Nikoo Sadr on nikoo@musically.com

If you’d like to talk to us about our digital marketing/mentoringtraining services, consultancy or specific research services, please contact Karim Fanous on karim@musically.com If you’d like to subscribe, add new subscribers, or talk about a corporate deal please contact Anthony Churchman on anthony@musically.com

Digital marketing services

Campaign support services: • Strategy• CRM and Email tools• Digital housekeeping• Social networking updates• Search and online advertising• Mobile applications• Blogs and online PR outreach• Measuring campaign effectiveness

Contact Karim Fanous on karim@musically.com or +44 (0)20 7250 3637 to discuss your digital marketing needs.

Training services: • In house company mentoring• Workshops• Digital briefings• Digital MOT sessions

music:)ally has delivered digital marketing training sessions for a wide range of clients including Universal Music, EMI, AIM/London Connected and many individuals

Check out music:)ally’s training opportunities here Contact Anthony Churchman on anthony@musically.com or +44 (0)20 7250 3637 to discuss your training needs

ABOUTSANDBOX

CONTACT Studio 11, Holborn Studios 49-50 Eagle Wharf Rd London N1 7ED

☎ +44 (0)20 7250 3637

www.MusicAlly.com

mail@MusicAlly.com

registered company number: 04525243

VAT number: 858212321

© Music Ally Ltd. For the purposes of personal, private use the subscriber may print this publication or move it to a storage medium; however, this publication is intended for subscribers only and as such may not be redistributed without permission.

Subscribers agree to terms and conditions set up on the music:)ally website, except where a separate contract takes precedence. music:)ally has taken all reasonable endeavours to ensure the validity of all items reported within this document.

We do not assume, and hereby disclaim, any liability for loss or damage caused by errors or omissions. In particular the content is not intended to be relied upon in making (or refraining from making) investments or other decisions. We cannot be held responsible for the contents of any linked sites.