Your music may tell people your story, but that assumes they will listen.
Artists like to believe their music tells their story.
And it might—as long as someone listens to it. How do you plan to hook everyone else?
How does someone who encounters you on social media via random mention or sound on TikTok learn about you? If they want to support you financially or otherwise, are there clear ways to do that?
Everywhere you exist online provides space for creators to tell their stories. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Resso, and Tidal all have artist profiles. Anyone who finds you on these platforms should be able to learn about you, but a shocking number of independent artists continue to leave these spaces blank.
Maybe the motivation is artistic. Perhaps these artists feel the music should speak for itself, but again—that idea hinges on people hearing the music and paying close attention.
The vast majority of humanity—99.9999%—will judge you and your music before hearing a note if they think of you at all. You need to use every tool at your disposal to convey your music’s core ideas and motivations to your masses.
Your music is—at best—the start of your storytelling journey. As Music Biz host James Shotwell explains in the following video, storytelling serves a very important role in the outcome of any artist’s career. Knowing who you are is not enough. It might have been at one point, but everyone can reach anyone at a moment’s notice. Succinctly conveying your journey to others will help separate you from your peers and create a clearly defined, unique path for you through music.
Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.
Branding is an important part of any career, but it doesn’t have to be intimidating or time-consuming.
Let’s be clear: You have a brand whether or not you embrace the idea of branding as an essential part of existing as an artist in the modern age. Your brand exists and evolves whether regardless of your participation in its progression. People will think what they will or worse—not think of you at all.
Brand marketing is the process of establishing and growing a relationship between a brand (that’s you) and consumers (your current and future audience).
Every aspect of your career, both online and in the real world, impacts your brand. Some artists spend their careers meticulously crafting personas and fictitious worlds that they use to establish a brand that audiences can lose themselves in. Others prefer a more natural approach, presenting and behaving as everyday people in incredible jobs. Both ideas can work, and both can backfire. Authenticity reigns supreme.
When learning about branding, many artists shy away from the idea because they feel it will become too time-consuming to maintain. Musicians are trying to make music, and that creative pursuit rarely adheres to a traditional business model, despite being a business nonetheless.
In our latest Music Biz video, host James Shotwell presents five unique ways artist develop their brands and explains easy ways to apply similar thinking to any career. The purpose of this discussion is not to finalize your brand but to generate new ways of thinking about your art and how you tell your story through the many elements of your career.
After many have promoted the idea of constant posting across multiple platforms, Haulix recommends taking a step back and starting over with a fresh perspective on all things social.
We messed up! Shortly after launching our month-long challenge to post daily TikTok updates, the video-sharing platform released new guidance for creators. After years of so-called gurus promoting the idea of publishing multiple videos every day—an idea that has led many creators to resent the platform—TikTok now claims daily content is not required for meaningful growth.
We, like you, were already weeks into our challenge when this news reached us. We thought about continuing ahead as planned, but then we stopped and gave TikTok’s advice some serious consideration. The more we thought about it, the more we realized our mistakes. Like many social media teachers, we’ve often cited the need to be persistent in publishing content to appease the algorithm. We put quantity over quality, and—more importantly—we put it over our sanity.
Nobody can post quality content every day. That is doubly true when discussing creators only on social media to promote their passion. Musicians who aspire to write life-changing songs can only afford so much creative space and time for marketing. The idea that the only way to get ahead is to produce thousands of pieces of social content for every song they write is unsustainable.
In his latest Music Biz update, host James Shotwell guides artists trying to make their mark on social media while grinding it out in the underground music scene. He also offers an apology, along with a new plan for social media success that should make your mind—and wallet—happy.
Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.
Impact dates make the radio world go round. Here’s everything you need to know before promoting your next single.
Have you ever wondered how songs reach radio stations? In certain circumstances, radio is the first place on Earth to hear new music, such as with the recent return of pop sensation Adele. Other times, the radio doesn’t play a popular song until months after it has trended online. Why? It all comes down to impact dates.
In the simplest terms, an impact date (also known as the “add date”) tells radio programmers when they can add a song into rotation at their station. The date has no connection to public release dates and may take place months before—or after—a song is available for sale to the general public.
Does every song/single have an impact date?
No, only songs actively promoted to radio have impact dates.
What should an artist consider when choosing an impact date?
A few things:
Which songs are you choosing, and why? Is it your best song or the one most likely to find commercial success?
What is the competition like? There tend to be more singles promoted to radio in the spring and fall than during the summer or winter.
When will I be ready to promote the song? You shouldn’t set a date before you have your material in place.
How will you promote the song and your career in parallel with your radio promotion? For example, are you also on tour? Do you have a new album that the song appears on? What is the urgency behind the song?
How do I reach radio programmers?
Haulix is the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Record labels, publicists, independent artists, and more use Haulix to share new and unreleased audio with members of the media and other music professionals. They also offer free, 30-day trials for all new accounts.
Haulix promos make it easy to share important release information with others, including release and impact dates, album descriptions, artist photos, photographer credits, music videos, and more.
Discover the difference for yourself and promote alongside the biggest name in music by starting a free trial today! Click here for more information.
From too much social media to a total lack of payment options, we’re highlighting the worst mistakes musicians continue to make while promoting themselves in 2022.
Every music career is different. You can choose to write original songs on ukelele or write complicated harmonies that only the world’s best clarinet players can perform, and any one of a billion things in between. The beauty of music is that it can become whatever you make, but no matter your creation, you still need promotion.
We can talk all day about TikTok idea generation and the best ways to negotiate a sync deal, but none of that matters if you’re not prepared for success. That means being positioned for discovery, which requires being easily found online. That may seem easy enough, but it’s surprisingly simple for musicians to stretch themselves thin on social media, leaving them stressed over things that should be fun (engaging with fans).
Beyond those mistakes, we still encounter artists who shy away from asking for support. Follows and likes may give you a momentary serotonin boost, but neither pay your bills. Today’s musicians cannot afford to be coy. If you want people to give you money, you need to provide a means of receiving cash. That should be obvious, but experience tells us it is not.
In his latest Music Biz update, host James Shotwell breaks down three unbelievably common mistakes musicians continue to make in 2022. These problems often stem from fear, and James provides guidance to help artists overcome any obstacles that may stand between them and grow the community of fans who support their music.
From Blackpink’s eye-popping PUBG event to the ‘Car Thing’ fire sale, we’ve gathered the biggest music news of the week.
September is here. Before you go making Billie Joe Armstrong jokes, please know we have no patience for it. Green Day wrote a hit song about grieving a dead parent, so now they become a punchline for one month each year? Nope. We have no interest in that.
It’s weird how moving from August to September feels like an event where the transition between others months does not. Almost overnight, our culture shifts from summer to fall, and it’s suddenly cool to wear hoodies again. We aren’t complaining.
We are in the final phase of multiple developments months in the making. Before the next edition of this post is live, our team will have deployed said update and made it available to our global client base.
We cannot ease your workload or give you more hours in the day, but we can help you stay informed. Below you’ll find the biggest stories of the week, all covered by the best outlets in tech and entertainment. Click around, learn what’s happening, and use the weekend to prepare for the end of the month.
But let’s be honest. There is no way we can hope to cover everything that happens. If you see a headline we missed that people need to know, please do not hesitate to send james@haulix.com an email. We’ll include your links in the next update.
The in-game concert was promoted globally in physical locations including Times Square in New York, with Vincent Wang, Head of PUBG MOBILE Publishing at Tencent Games, calling the tie-up with the K-pop group, “PUBG MOBILE’s biggest partnership yet.”
Running over two weekends in July, the “immersive audio-visual experience” was watched by 15.7 million viewers globally across the concert series.
Additionally, the music video for the track Ready For Love, which was released as part of the partnership, has now been watched over 146 million times since its launch.
The concert won the ‘Best Metaverse Performance’ at the MTV Video Music Awards over the weekend, from a shortlist that included Ariana Grande in Fortnite, Charli XCX in Roblox, and Justin Bieber in Wave.
Swedish rockers Ghost earn their first No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hard Rock Streaming Songs chart, as “Mary on a Cross” crowns the list dated Sept. 3.
In the Aug. 19-25 tracking period, the song vaulted by 48% to 4.9 million official U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
Originally released as part of a two-song single in 2019 (longside “Kiss the Go-Goat”, “Cross” has been revitalized in recent weeks due to a trend using both the original and an altered version of the song on TikTok.
Accessible Festivals has announced a new program to give free concert tickets to fans with disabilities. The Dan Grover Memorial Ticket Grant Program will provide tickets to major music festivals including Austin City Limits, Electric Daisy Carnival, Lollapalooza, BottleRock Napa Valley, Rolling Loud New York, Stagecoach, and more.
The program is spearheaded by Austin Whitney, founder of Accessible Festivals, and was inspired by his own experience attending concerts as a disabled person. A 2007 car accident left Whitney paralyzed from the waist down, causing him depression and anxiety. That year, he was able to attend the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, which helped him get through the difficulties of adjusting to life with disabilities.
“Ultimately my business life is all about working to improve festivals for people with disabilities and working promoters to reduce their liabilities and improve their businesses for all things ADA [Americans With Disabilities Act],” Whitney shared with Billboard. “At the end of the day, the mission of the company is very tied to a social purpose which is making helping people with disabilities find and attend music festivals which can be transformative events.”
Spotify’s Car Thing had a short-lived life. Announced in spring 2021, the car accessory made it easier to interface with the Spotify app on your phone. It was of limited use, and as we noted in our review, it just made more sense to use your phone that you needed to have access to anyway. In late July this year, the music streaming giant announced that Car Thing would not be a thing anymore. Soon after the news, Spotify had a fire sale on the accessory, dropping it to $45—a 50% discount from its retail price. If you were patient and did not pull the trigger on the accessory, you can now get it for an even lower price.
Spotify is running a Back to School sale on the Car Thing, offering it for just $30. That’s a massive $60 discount off its $90 MSRP. If you are somehow still interested in the accessory, this is perhaps the deal you should not miss. With Car Thing no longer in production, the deal is unlikely to come back once Spotify exhausts its stock. Unlike the last deal, there’s no coupon code you need to use here. Just head over to Spotify’s store and buy the accessory.
SONG OF THE WEEK: Pierce The Veil – “Pass The Nirvana”
With a busy fall tour and release season ahead, it’s time to ensure you’re not falling into bad behaviors that could spoil your marketing efforts.
Fall is the best time to be a part of the music community. It’s the busiest time of year but also the best. Between the avalanche of releases and the constant touring, there is always something to do and a hundred more tasks waiting for you tomorrow.
Every year, we encounter musicians and teams who are so excited by the season that they let simple mistakes slip by amid the rush to get everything done. These accidents may seem easy to overlook as isolated incidents, but combined, they can create slow-rising chaos that spoils any promotional efforts your team has planned.
Mistakes happen. Nobody that successfully does anything with their life reaches their goals without a few setbacks. But there are several common mistakes that industry experts and working professionals alike have been shouting about for four decades that still get made every day. Something as simple as knowing who you’re talking to and what it is they do seems never to cross the mind of certain artists. That oversight ultimately results in the artist not receiving the exposure or opportunities they seek.
In this Music Biz update, host James Shotwell explores half a dozen common mistakes artists make when marketing their music. These are some of the worst and most abhorrent mistakes, all of which are covered again and again by industry experts of all sizes. Suppose artists can slow down and review their efforts before reaching out to professionals and fans alike. In that case, Shotwell explains, they will likely discover easy fixes that will lead to a bigger, more meaningful impact with their outreach.
Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.
From the world’s first canceled AI musician to iHeartMedia’s Fortnite debut, we’ve gathered the biggest music news stories of the week.
If you’re reading this—congratulations! You’ve survived another month in 2022 and made it through the summer. Everywhere you look, kids are returning to school, temperatures are beginning to fall, and the sun is staying in bed a bit later each morning. The leaves will soon change, but first, we must survive the early fall album release bumrush that occurs every September and October. That’s right! The busiest time of year is here, and we’ll support you every step of the way.
We’re working hard on exciting new developments for Haulix that will be revealed in the coming weeks. These changes completely rethink our business and how we can help the music community connect. You probably have a lot of questions, but that’s all we can say for now.
We cannot ease your workload or give you more hours in the day, but we can help you stay informed. Below you’ll find the biggest stories of the week, all covered by the best outlets in tech and entertainment. Click around, learn what’s happening, and use the weekend to prepare for the end of the month.
But let’s be honest. There is no way we can hope to cover everything that happens. If you see a headline we missed that people need to know, please do not hesitate to send james@haulix.com an email. We’ll include your links in the next update.
Presented in its worst possible light, the FN Meka controversy — in which Capitol signed, and then quickly dropped, a virtual rapper that used the N-word in its songs and was depicted in racially stereotypical scenarios in videos — seems like an inconceivable blunder. But a closer look at the details, along with conversations with sources close to the situation, suggests that, while inexcusable and loaded with oversights, Capitol’s role in the FN Meka fiasco may not have been as insensitive as it might seem.
However, above all, it is yet another glaring result of the lack of diversity throughout the music industry — not just at Capitol, not just at major companies, but everywhere.
After it was spotted in testing by several users, TikTok has confirmed that it’s currently experimenting with a new ‘Nearby’ content feed, in addition to the current ‘For You’ and ‘Following’ tabs.
As it sounds, TikTok’s Nearby feed displays content posted by users in your current location.
That could enable TikTok to showcase locally relevant updates which relate to your interests.
“For example, if your For You page often displays restaurant recommendations or must-see hiking spots, the Nearby feed should show you videos of restaurants and hiking trails that are near you.”
Streaming service Deezer has published its latest financial results, revealing that its revenues grew by 12.1% year-on-year in the first six months of 2022.
That meant revenues of €219.4m ($219.6m) split between Deezer’s consumer business (up 12.2% to €155m) and its B2B revenues (up 7.9% to €57.6m). Its home country France accounted for €132.4m of Deezer’s revenues in the first half of this year though: 60.3% of the total, only slightly less than the 60.9% for the same period last year.
How about subscriber numbers? They actually fell from 9.7 million at the end of June 2021 to 9.4 million a year later. Deezer lost 200,000 net direct (consumer) subscribers over that time, and 100,000 B2B subscribers. The company says that’s because it implemented “a significant reduction of unprofitable spend in non-core long tail markets”, while exiting Russia earlier this year lost it 104,000 subscribers alone.
Deezer is predicting €455m of revenue for the calendar year 2022, up 14% year-on-year. As a reminder of the competition it faces, Spotify posted €2.86bn of revenues for Q2 2022 alone. Newly a public company, Deezer’s market cap is €486.5m at the time of writing.
iHeartMedia has launched its first virtual world on Fortnite, called iHeartLand, as the company extends its marketing investments into the metaverse and toward younger audiences.
iHeart, which brought in $954 million in revenue during the second quarter, first announced plans in January to launch its own branded virtual world on platforms like Roblox as part of the radio giant’s larger Web3 strategy. Wednesday’s launch of iHeartLand in Fortnite marks the first unveiling of iHeartMedia’s virtual world and will serve as the testing ground for future iterations of iHeartLand on other world-building games, executives told The Hollywood Reporter.
iHeartLand was created by the game developer Atlas Creative using Fortnite’s creative mode and includes a main stage, multiple mini-games and an iHeart “headquarters,” which features a recording studio and a replica of the tunnel entrance to iHeart’s headquarters in New York City.
Players will get to explore the virtual island, play the games, take selfies on the red carpet and view performances on the main stage, called State Farm Park, which is expected to host 20 events in the next year with musicians and popular iHeart podcasters. At launch, the mini games will include a car racing game on an iHeart-shaped racetrack, an obstacle course set in the clouds, a building game and a musical chairs–esque game that requires players to jump from various colored tiles and avoid landing on certain colors. Playing these games will give users the chance to earn “gold,” which is a currency specific to iHeartLand on Fortnite and can be spent on items like fireworks and Boogie Bombs, a grenade-like object that forces players’ avatars to dance.
You can’t sell your art until you know how to discuss it. We can help you define your identity and purpose with five simple questions.
The most common problem we encounter when working with musicians relates to their identity. Like you and I, musicians have difficulty understanding who they are and what motivates them to create. Taking time to find the answers to these questions is important, but most don’t know where to begin.
The answers you seek are closer than you think! With five questions, we can help anyone understand who they are, what they do, why they do it, who they hope to reach, and what their audience gets from their music. It’s a deceptively simple questionnaire, but one that can be used to alter the course of your career radically.
Who are you?
What do you do?
Why do you do it?
What do your listeners want?
How does your music change people?
In this Music Biz update, James Shotwell breaks down the five things every artist needs to know to understand their career. That includes their identity, their purpose, and their target market. These items make up the foundation of any successful marketing campaign and can be used in many other ways.
The key to maximizing your responses’ value lies in your answers’ specificity. The more details you can write down, the more information you have to build future campaigns. These answers tell you who you are, what you do, why you do it, why people care, and what they get from consuming your music. You now have a target market, a value proposition, and a firm understanding of the product (your music). Get out there and promote!
Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.
From audio reactions on Spotify to the latest streaming scam, we’ve gathered the need-to-know music news of the week.
Welcome to the thirty-third Friday of 2022. We are over 3/5 of the way through the year for those keeping count. While kids head back to school and temperatures begin to cool, the music industry is preparing for an incredibly busy fall release and tour season. We feel for you if you’ve got dates or records to promote. It’s a warzone out there, but still—we wouldn’t do anything else.
We’re working hard on exciting new developments for Haulix that will be revealed in the coming weeks. These changes completely rethink our business and how we can help the music community connect. You probably have a lot of questions, but that’s all we can say for now.
We cannot ease your workload or give you more hours in the day, but we can help you stay informed. Below you’ll find the biggest stories of the week, all covered by the best outlets in tech and entertainment. Click around, learn what’s happening, and use the weekend to prepare for the end of the month.
But let’s be honest. There is no way we can hope to cover everything that happens. If you see a headline we missed that people need to know, please do not hesitate to send james@haulix.com an email. We’ll include your links in the next update.
Swedish music streaming platform Spotify is working on a new feature to let users post audio comments or reactions to music playlists.
A Reddit user in Vietnam first spotted this Spotify experiment, reports The Verge.
“So what do you think? Record an episode to share your thoughts on the playlist,” read the interface.
Below the notification is a record button to start the audio recording.
There are also some simple editing options like being able to add background music and tags.
The reaction feature seems to be accessible via a microphone icon on the playlist’s page, the report noted.
“We are currently running a limited test of in-app audio creation, but have no further details to share at this time,” the company was quoted as saying.
Artist-first music streaming and discovery platform Audiomack announced the debut of Premiere Access, a industry-leading feature that allows artists to reward their biggest fans by making a unreleased projects available on Audiomack before the general release.
“Artists deserve the most powerful tools possible to build their work into financially thriving enterprises,” Audiomack VP of Product Charlie Kaplan said. “Music companies have the opportunity and obligation to enable creators to explore diverse means of monetization and help realize their work’s financial potential.”
For musicians on Audiomack, Premiere Access offers a brand-new revenue stream that goes beyond standard streaming. Now that they are signed up for the Audiomack Monetization Program (AMP), artists can upload their work to Audiomack, use the Premiere Access function, and choose the duration of exclusivity for their release’s backers.
Puerto Rican hitmaker Bad Bunny leads the list of finalists for the 2022 Billboard Latin Music Awards, with a staggering 23 nods across 13 categories. (The only other artist to ever score that many is Ozuna in 2019.)
Bad Bunny is up for artist of the year, tour of the year, Hot Latin Songs artist of the year, male, and top Latin album of the year for his chart-topping album Un Verano Sin Ti, which is back at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart this week for an eighth nonconsecutive frame on top.
Following Bad Bunny is Colombian star Karol G with 15 entries in 11 categories, a record number of nods for a female artist. (The old record was held jointly by Jenni Rivera, who had 12 nods in 2014, and Shakira, who had 12 in 2018.) Karol G’s categories include artist of the year and Hot Latin Songs artist of the year, female, as well as Hot Latin Song of the year, vocal event, for her Becky G collab “MAMIII.”
What if tagging the wrong artist pages was not just a headache to resolve but also a money-making scheme?
What if obscure artists were profiting by purposely tagging big-name artists as primary collaborators, thus reaching said artists’ fanbases via algorithmic music delivery systems like Spotify’s Release Radar?
This is the story of an artist/record label, variously known as Diversify and Variegate.
