Category Archives: marketing

Changing times: how social media has revolutionised the music industry

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It is a matter of years since music was generally only available in various physical forms such as CDs, or online in a select few places such as Napster. We have now reached the stage where music is available in a myriad of locations across the web and social media has certainly played its part in bringing the music industry to where it is now, therefore opening up a potential market for a social network like miXXerS.

The advent of social media has opened up an entirely new platform where artists can promote their music to a wide range of people, fans and potential fans alike. Artists can link fans to new music, inform them of upcoming music as well as promote any upcoming live events they may be performing at. We are at a point where you will likely hear any news about your favourite artists on social media before you hear or see it anywhere else. Features like Twitter’s trending topics highlight any recent news that has generated a lot of talk over social media. A big announcement from a music artist is likely to end up on this list. Outside of the music they produce, artists are able to promote themselves by interacting with their fans, something which social media has enabled on a much greater scale.

Case Study: Spor

Spor, the alter-ego for UK based drum and bass producer Jon Gooch, was created in 2006, taking the electronic music industry by storm. After a lengthy hiatus, Spor returned to the scene in February, immediately announcing his new and long awaited album, and sending drum and bass fans into a frenzy all over social media. Moving away from the traditional approach of releasing an album, Spor announced that he would be first releasing the album as a ‘pay as you want bundle’, where purchasers can choose the price they pay for the album, as a torrent through the BitTorrent bundles service. Spor further promoted his return to the drum and bass scene by doing an ‘ask me anything’ thread on the message board website, Reddit. Spor’s use of social media, from announcing his comeback and new album, to his interactions with his fans over a number of social networking platforms, enabled him to generate as much publicity and hype for his new release as possible.

Ethical Ways to Attract Visitors To Our Site

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For a social website, especially  a new website, it is important to know how to attract more visitors.  We have thought about this and found some useful and also ethical suggestions from Forbes where this information is sourced.

  1. Focus on content creation. Good content markets itself. When you put the effort into building and promoting great pieces of content, the natural result is more traffic to your website via shares and referrals.
  2. Add social sharing buttons to your website. Don’t assume that your readers will take the initiative to share your content on their own. Instead, make it easy for your site to accrue more visitors from social networking sites by adding social sharing buttons to your company’s blog posts.
  3. Answer questions on social networking sites. When you see people asking questions online, provide whatever helpful information you can. Doing so will earn you both website traffic and customers for life.
  4. Distribute press releases for actual achievements. While you shouldn’t abuse press release distribution websites to promote insignificant accomplishments, take advantage of this traffic stream whenever you have something noteworthy to share.
  5. Use SEO responsibly. Don’t over-optimize your website, but do make use of current SEO best practices (which put the emphasis on looking “natural”) to let the search engines know where they should list your site in the natural search results. High rankings will result in plenty of new visitors to your website.
  6. Invest in your website’s blog. By publishing high-value posts consistently, you’ll build your relationship with your readers, resulting in visitors who check back frequently to view your latest posts.
  7. Share slide decks and other presentations. Posting informative materials to sites like Slideshare will help you to increase both brand awareness and website traffic through exposure to new markets and new potential customers.
  8. Build a killer email newsletter. When readers find valuable email newsletters, they tend to share them with others. If your current email followup sequence is lackluster, making improvements here could result in significantly more referral traffic.
  9. Publish a helpful podcast. Similarly, producing a regular, high-quality podcast will increase referred website visitors, while reaching new visitors through podcast directories.
  10. Deploy infographics. Infographics get shared more often than most other types of content. This makes them ideal candidates for traffic generation campaigns that make use of content marketing.
  11. Run a YouTube channel. YouTube is one of the web’s largest search engines, making it a great way to expose new audiences to your brand.
  12. Ask visitors to share your site with others. Simply asking your visitors to forward your articles to others or share them on their social networking profiles is a great way to quickly boost page views.
  13. Write guest posts for top industry sites. Ask other websites in your industry if you can pen guest posts for their blogs. Having your content featured there isn’t just great for traffic – it’s a good way to build your perceived authority as well.
  14. Connect with influencers in your niche. Having an authority figure in your industry share just one of your blog articles can result in a tremendous amount of new traffic, subscribers and buyers, so make relationship building a key part of your company’s marketing strategy.
  15. Pay attention to up-and-coming social networks. Newer social networks likeTumbler and Pinterest are sprouting up all the time. Because there can be a significant “first adopter” advantage to the people that establish a presence on these sites early on, keep an eye out for these future opportunities.
  16. Eliminate website errors. If the search engines aren’t able to index your website properly (which can occur due to a number of different errors), you may not be receiving all the search traffic you should be.
  17. Add pillar content to your website. Every website should have at least a few pieces of “pillar” content — in-depth, well-written content that will always be of interest to readers — to help drive traffic via person-to-person sharing.
  18. Over-deliver on your company’s products or services. From a word-of-mouth traffic standpoint, over-delivering can’t be beat. When you go above and beyond in your industry, customers will recommend you to others – leading to more traffic and a higher marketing ROI.
  19. Interview experts within your industry. People love hearing from experts, so if you can snag an interview and publish it on your site, you’re in for a big surge of traffic from the authority’s existing audience.
  20. Comment on other websites. Leaving valuable comments on other websites’ blogs can be a great way to build traffic back to your own site. Just be sure to say more in your comment than, “Great post!” or “Thanks for sharing!”

Reference: http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2012/08/31/20-easy-ethical-ways-to-attract-more-website-visitors/

Social Music Marketing, Brands? Millenials & Digital Natives: miXXerS

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Source: http://thesociallife.org/social-media-marketing-what-does-that-meme/

Source: http://thesociallife.org/social-media-marketing-what-does-that-meme/

In doing my research on business models I found that SoundCloud was working with non music related brands to sponsor musicians on the site and therefore drive participation of DJs, musicians and party/concert producers who are paying customers but also users who come to interact with them and each other. While this could be a business strategy we employ I think there needs to be deeper analysis of this before pursuing.

We are leading with the idea that social music is an aim and in an of itself. Social media can provide musicians with an easier way to land sponsorships and brand partnerships. For example, one celebrity sponsored tweet can generate $2,500 to $8,000. By partnering with DJs and musicians, brands are equipped with an even bigger microphone to reach their customers, in addition to the musician/DJ stamp of approval.

“According to data from William Chipps, author of the IEG Sponsorship report, corporate sponsorship by consumer brands incorporating music into marketing programs was expected to exceed $1.17 billion last year, nearly double what it was six years earlier.” (Panos Panay, CEO of Sonicbids)

Digital Natives and Millennials which are the primary target group for miXXerS (18 – 35 year olds) not only like music but listen to it a lot even if they are not as brand loyal as their parents (WSL Retail) especially since they cannot always afford loyalty and make decisions more based on competing prices.  More brands are turning to emerging artists (not backed by a label, entrepreneurial) who are socially connected online and able to build a loyal fan base through active engagement on social networks. Given Millennials and digital natives are our target audience such a strategy can prove useful.

Attaching an artist to branded content is a sure way to guarantee consumers enjoy and remember their experience, and therefore, the brand…. Their collective reach is incredibly appealing, according to a study from Music Metric. That’s because emerging artists are reaching hundreds of millions of fans who are already engaged and connected with them, and these very fans can activate on behalf of a brand. (Panos Panay, CEO of Sonicbids)

A brands spokesman speaking about the brilliance of their product is not as effective as referent power of someone’s favorite musician or DJ speaking about that product in a favorable light. This relates to the concept of power as influence as well as the extent to which that power is propagated throughout the network through reposts, follows, likes and conversations etc. While miXXerS can potentially enable this we will examine the issues surrounding this before making any such decision and at launch this would not be a part of our business model.

Potential Revenue Stream for miXXerS

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Advertising Revenue

Advert location Click thru Rate
Top Banner Main Page 0.23%
Side advert Main Page 0.30%
Custom 0.37%
Interstitial 5.70%
App List 7.14%
Panels 12.60%

 

((Bea.F.,2013)

Prices might vary according to the location of the advert. Clearly, advertising your product or services on the panel would cost little bit more than the top banner as CTR on panels are a lot more.

Advert Revenue Calculation

This is a hierarchal structure and you will see number of users decreasing as calculation move forward. Let’s depict the calculation per 30,000 users who will sign up to the application.

According to the Stanford venture Lab 90% of the users download the application (sign up). Out of this 90% – 80% will have Internet connection on a regular basis. So let’s do some calculations now based on these figures.

0.9 X 0.8 X 30,000 = 21,6000

So now our actual users are only 21,600 people

Now lets focus on time. 5 Minutes = 600 seconds/ 30 seconds = 10 (To find ad depiction)

10 X 21, 600 = 216,000 ad representation

According to Stanford venture lab only 10% of the people actually carry on using the application after download and out of that only 80% actually have internet connection at all times.

30,000 X 0.10 X 0.8 = 2,400

According the lab normally people use the application for about 10 minutes a day, which is a lot more when it comes to social media but we will stick to 10 minute for the sake of calculations just say for 25 days a month.

10 X 25 = 250

Each advert lasts for 30 seconds so now we are going to multiply 250 by 2 = 500 ads per person.

Now we are going to multiply our actually users with potential users 

8000 X 500 = 4,000,000

Calculate the revenue per 30,000 users 

21,6000 + 4,000,000 = 4,216,000

if we say ÂŁ2 per 1000 advert

4,216,000/ 1000 X 2 = ÂŁ 8432 per 30,000 users

(Gleeson.P.,2015)

 Reference

Bea.F.,2013. What is an average mobile ad click-through rate?. Available from: http://appflood.com/blog/average-ctr-by-ad-formats [Accessed on 26th april 2015]

 

Gleeson.P.,2015 . How to calculate mobile ad revenue. Avaliable from: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/calculate-mobile-ad-revenue-74440.html [Accessed on 26th april 2015]

 

 

 

 

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