#better streaming platforms than Spotify | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spliffymae · 1 year

Text

musicproducer!connie…

kio’s notes - some sfw headcanons inspired by this connie fic i read on wp a while back. it was my first connie fic and the start of this connie brain rot. i wish it was still up 🤧 shit was soooo good!

also inspired by @chrollohearttags rockstar!eren series and @privateparty3 rapper!connie

also check this

⊱ ──────── {.⋅ ✺ ⋅.}──────── ⊰

now let me say this,

connie mfn springer had a golden ear!

he could make a song out of anything, truth be told. his abuela used to tell him he was blessed with “god’s gift.” yeah, he had a voice as soothing and smooth as velvet. but put it over a track with a piano medley and some soft beats, oh baby! the man had a voice that made the greek muses swoon.

musicproducer!connie had a couple of his own songs out on streaming platforms. he mostly used spotify and apple music for his official music, and soundcloud for official music or for quick ideas he wanted his followers to hear. he loved singing, but not as much as he loved to create. producing was where connie truly felt he belonged. he couldn’t count the number of times he’s fallen asleep at his desk, drooling on his piano keys because he pulled an all nighter to finish a song because he got a sound stuck in his head and just needed to bring it to life.

(honorable mentions to the times he hears songs not by him and thinks “i can make this better” and just completely changed the entire vibe of the song)

but musicproducer!connie loved sounds. everything and anything had potential to be a song. whether it be the crunching of the fall leaves under his boot, or the bounce of the basketball he dribbled in his backyard court, or even the sound of his car’s indicator—connie found music in any sound.

if you asked musicproducer!connie what he couldn’t live without, he would describe to you in detail his music setup. his laptop, the hard drive with all his songs, his drum pad, his bass guitar, his red beats headphones, the software he uses…he would go on forever!

musicproducer!connie would be the genius behind his friends’ music as well. they would come to him either with a chopped up idea of what they wanted or sometimes come to him empty handed with nothing but a hope. either way, connie would be sitting in his home studio with his friends, working on a song. he loved helping them, so he looked at it as great bonding time too.

musicproducer!connie was also quite big on social media. he had a following of 700k on instagram and over a million listeners across his streaming services. he also had a twitch, where he would post at least twice a week, one of those times being him making instrumentals from scratch with his viewers watching and helping. he loved to interact with his followers. knowing there were people out there who connected with his music on a deep level made him so happy. hell, the first single he dropped he was kicking his feet at all the supportive feedback he was getting.

musicproducer!connie even did shows here and there! they would be house shows, with maybe 1000 people at least. he would sing some of his hits, but would mainly be the dj, working the booth for his friends. he always and only performed with his friends.

honestly, music was everything to connie and then some. it was his passion. it was what made him who he is. but most of all, it was something he always did with you.

yessir! musicproducer!connie would be telling a lie if he said he became the artist he is today on his own. if it weren’t for you, he probably would’ve quit a long time ago, when his sophomore project didn’t receive as much hype/attention as his debut.

you were always his biggest fan, though. you would use your social media following to promote his work, much to connie’s joy. what he loved more than sharing his music was you sharing it, because in turn you would be showcasing the relationship between you and connie to your hundreds of thousands of followers.

like those times he would be sitting on the floor of his living room, creating a song on his laptop. you would be behind him, sitting between the couch and him with the side of your face pressed against his back. he would be in his own world with his headphones on, you would be busy on your phone, and yet connie felt it was one of the best ways to spend time with you.

your glossy lips would be in a faint pout as you recorded yourself, stretching your arm up and out to show connie’s entire back, this tan freckled skin showcasing the tense of his muscles whenever he would reach for his pen to scribble away notes in his notebook.

you would simply post the video to your snapchat, captioning it “1/2 of us is in their creative bag rn”. you would follow up that snap with another short video, this time it being you leaving small kisses along the expanse of connie’s back. because of your gloss the lip prints were visible and you would smile mischievously.

musicproducer!connie loved you. he loved to have you near him. so when he would go on these red carpet events with his friends, you would be at his side, the two of you dressed beautifully as you smiled for the cameras. connie would make it his mission to have you flustered the whole night, giving you soft neck kisses and whispering both sweet and naughty things in your ear while he held you close. like,

“you look so beautiful tonight, i’m so lucky to have you, mi cielita.”

“i can’t wait to take this off of you, baby.. give you the proper attention you deserve.”

“been missing my lil’ songbird so much.” he would just miss the shell of your ear with his teeth, looking down at you with his eyes droopy with lust. “have you missed me, baby?”

“of course, baby. but the show ain’t even start yet.” you said with a squeal, already feeling the blood rush straight to your cheeks. there was no doubt the cameras caught that. if they somehow didn’t, then they sure must’ve captured the lovestruck look connie gave you whenever his eyes would fall on you.

“i can’t help it, mami. just love having you.” he would mumble, giving you the softest of pecks as to not mess up your lipstick.

musicproducer!connie was in deep when it came to you. and if it wasn’t obvious by the way he showered you with physical affection, then it must be from the way he had you as his producer tag, the five second audio starting with you giggling, then in your best ‘smooth r&b’ voice, saying “issa connie springer production.” connie remembers the first project he used that on—a joint lover’s ep onyankopon wanted him on. til this day, how many years later, every time a song from the ep comes on, your cheeks get hot and body all tingly at the flustered feeling that overwhelms you. it was your first time ever being on a record

musicproducer!connie used you for a lot of his songs, it was mainly on the background vocals of different projects he would do. but he also used you as inspiration. he moonlighted as a songwriter, mainly helping other artists with filler lyrics or strengthening what they already have. it would be rare connie was asked to write a song start to finish, but whenever he did, he found he was thinking back to your relationship. both good and bad times, just thinking of you filled him with enough inspiration to create several masterpieces.

yeah, musicproducer!connie loves you. he has what seems to be an endless amount of ways to express his love to you. but if all else fails, he knows his music will do it’s job every. damn. time.

#ﾟ aot╤╤｡ 𖠋 #🌞🍃spliffymae #connie springer #connie x black reader #connie springer x blackfemreader #connie aot #music producer connie #connie attack on titan #fluff #im most def making this a series

612 notes · View notes

psshaw · 3 months

Text

The more time I spend on Spotify, the more it pushes me away from the outer edges of the platform and toward the mushy middle. This is where everyone is serviced the same songs simply because that is what’s popular. In 2018, while the app’s algorithmic autoplay feature was on, I was served the Pavement song “Harness Your Hopes", a wordy and melodic—and by all accounts obscure—B-side from the beloved indie band. The song has over 100 million streams, more than twice as much as their actual college rock hit from the ’90s, “Cut Your Hair", the one Pavement song your average Gen X’er might actually recognize. How did this happen? In 2020, Stereogum investigated the mystery but came up empty-handed from a technological perspective, though the answer seems obvious to me: Whereas many Pavement songs are oblique, rangy, and noisy, “Harness Your Hopes” is among the most pleasant and inoffensive songs in the band’s catalog. It is now, in the altered reality of Spotify, the quintessential Pavement song. When frontman Stephen Malkmus was asked about this anomaly, he sounded blithely defeated: “At this point we take what we can get, even in a debased form. Because what’s left?” The whole “Harness Your Hopes” situation is in part a result of what’s called “cumulative advantage.” It’s the idea that if something—a song, a person, an idea—happens to be slightly more popular than something else at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. (On the other hand, something that does not catch on will usually recede in popularity, regardless of quality.) This is the metric of how most social recommendation algorithms work—on Facebook, the more “likes” an article has, the better odds a user will read it. But when this is applied to what songs are sent to which people, Spotify can engineer its own market of popularity as well as what song defines a band. Popular songs on Spotify are popular within the app because they are what most people are listening to. So from both a behavioral psychology and business perspective, it makes sense for Spotify to assume that you want to listen to what other people are listening to. The chances of the average listener staying on the app longer are much higher if Spotify curates songs that have had a similar effect on people whose taste matches theirs.

#hideous! hideous horrible awful implications for culture

35 notes · View notes

ladycharles · 5 months

Text

Spotify is trying to get out of paying independent artists...

Next year they plan to change their rules to instate a 1000 stream/song/year cutoff under which songs will not make money at all. Worse, if the song doesn't reach 1000 within a month they will not pay EVER for that month even if it makes it to 1000 the next day.

These may not seem like huge amounts per artist but it adds up to millions of dollars and sets the precedent of not paying artists for their work. They will not stop here without a fight.

Shameless hypocrisy from me:

So why did I link a Spotify playlist? Those are my tracks with under 1000 plays this year* 🤣 Maybe you'll find something you like and we can keep the fractional cents flowing 💖💸💰

I have 21 000 streams this year from thousands of awesome people like you - I am not far in this journey but am well into the top 20% on the platform, so you can imagine how many artists are going to get nothing at all.

What you can do

If you want to help artists buying on Bandcamp is the most direct option. For streaming I can vouch for Tidal being a platform with better payout rates, better sound quality, and a smoother interface - not perfect but a lot closer. If you're willing, there's a petition in the above link I think.

If you are a musician and want to stand up, join UMAW. They are a new international union, the first representing artists and music workers in the new digital era. They already have impressive wins including getting Ticket master venues to stop taking merch cuts and improving pay at SXSW, a top US festival. They have sliding scale dues including potential exemptions for artists who can't yet afford 3 dollars a month (a thousand streams in Spotify terms). And we get to be in the same union 😉💖

Going forward I don't know if I will remove my stuff or what. I don't want my music unaccessible to my fans and that is the largest platform by far. I would love to hear what you think. I just know that I am privileged to be able to afford to make music and don't want to see this becoming even more closed off to the vital voices that haven't got funds or support. Between AI and streaming, one wonders if musicians will even exist in the future - let's keep the future full of dancing and merriment instead of this technofeudal nightmare the Daniel Eks of the world want to embrace.

*Noella might seem like a lie since it lists well over 1000 streams on my profile, this is the album version though and that's the single.

#Sorry long post #Probably not good to admit how many of my songs don't qualify #spotify #indie rock #glam rock #lady charles #musician #nonbinary musicians #manic pixie dream world #UMAW #United Musicians and Allied Workers #Union strong #genderfluid #nonbinary

46 notes · View notes

lokisasylum · 10 months

Text

Lets talk about something controversial--

Lets talk about how BALLS-DEEP taekookers have embedded themselves inside the fandom to the point of Armys DEFENDING THEM over protecting the ones constantly being the target of this disgusting breed.

We (the OG fans who were there since the beginning and noticed the moment it started) warned ya'll about this; for MONTHS, for YEARS. But ya'll didn't listen. Just let it happen.

It started with Big “OT7″ accounts ignoring the issue and deeming it “just shipping wars”, “focus on BTS only”, to the fandom collectively turning a blind eye the bigger the hate got with every little "ignore and block", every "you need to curate your TL better so you don't constantly see that--"

We warned ya'll and you called us Crazy, you called us Delusional, you called us Entitled, you called us Problematic Old Hags. And now I fear we may never get rid of taekookers AT ALL.

EXHIBIT A:

Lets start with something that happened a few days ago. It started with a TKer using a set-up account to drag The Weekend for that weirdo netflix series. Which for some reason it called the attention of Abel (the lead vocal)'s attention to the point of quoting it, which in turn gave the tweet MORE attention/views.

As soon as the tweet started getting the desired amount of clout, the TKer changed the entire layout from taekook to Jimin to make it seem like "oh, pjms again starting shit because they're bored" (when in reality Jimin stans were hyper focused on streaming & buying 'Like Crazy' since the song was about to break the record for longest days charting and also the 119 #1s on iTunes), but what everyone ignored completely was the fact that despite switching the layout the person was actively dragging & defaming Jimin on that same acc & liking tweets from Jimin antis. But NOBODY CARED ABOUT THAT, because armys only saw "a jimin stan being problematic". And it took ONE Jennie solo stan calling out armys hypocrisy for the way they've always given trashcookers a free-pass in their fandom instead of defending Jimin, when both he and Jennie get the most hate from them on all platforms.

But AGAIN, what did the fandom do? Instead of actively reporting and trying to get the TKer suspended, they switched to attacking that Jennie solo stan AND slvtshaming Jennie as well. As for the person who started the whole thing? Deactivated and is probably STILL around with a different account spreading more hate and ways to get away with it.

EXHIBIT B: The #s war from yesterday.

Again, it was a TKer who started trending those disgusting tags over a harmless joke about spotify debut numbers. The hashtags were ALL initially AGAINST JIMIN ONLY, and each one more vile than the last and the bastards even celebrated that they got them to trend so quickly and were even putting money into keeping them up longer.

(I spent an unhealthy amount of hours out of my life yesterday reporting & blocking people from BOTH ends, but it was just neverending! And for some reason twitter wasn’t showing all of the reports I made which frustrated me even more).

But armys only cared about the issue when Jimin stans actually started fighting back, using the SAME #s against TKers. NOT BECAUSE JIMIN HAD BEEN DEHUMANIZED/DEFAMED FIRST, BUT BECAUSE NOW IT INVOLVED 2 MORE MEMBERS (otherwise they would have ignored it). So instead of helping to clear the searches and reporting EVERYONE who was using the #s, they ONLY reported/suspended Jimin stans and instead trended “BTS IS 7″ initially, while the TKer who started this whole thing is STILL around, active on another acc after deactivating.

This gave TKers the upper-hand to once again SWITCH THE SITUATION IN THEIR FAVOR, by gaslighting armys/ot7s into thinking and trending: “solosOUT” “ALL SOLOS ARE ANTIS” “WE LOVE YOU TAEKOOK” “WE LOVE YOU [X, Y, Z member]”

(I even saw BTS members who weren’t involved in the issue being included in the tags as well to divert attention further from the fact that it was taekook shippers who started this shit).

And if you had looked closely at the first tweets using these tags, you would have noticed TONS of taekookers with the cult symbol on their username at the same time putting ALL of the blame on Jimin stans and accusing armys of ONLY caring about Jimin but never defending Taekook.

Which now has officially enabled the mentality inside the fandom that calling out Taekook Shippers = shading/hating Taehyung & Jungkook as individuals.

But its OKAY to call out Jikookers/Kookminers (cause they’re now “Tae antis” by association) & anyone who defends Jimin, because its OKAY for Jimin to get hate/shade as long as Taekook are protected. LOL what a fucking joke of a fandom (Alexa, play “Face-Off” )

EXHIBIT C: VMinKook at SG’s concert today

The 3 maknaes were literally standing/sitting together, playing. vibing to the concert (there’s literal clips of them talking, interacting and playing with the army bombs). But what topics made noise first?

“Taekook together at the concert” “Taekook concert date” “Taekook ignored Jimin, as they should” “Jimin left first/alone in his own car because he’s bitter.”

I even saw one where tkers were UPSET because “Jimin didnt pay attention” whenever tk interacted. Like sis makeup your mind, are you happy he’s no longer interacting like before or are you desperate for his validation that will never come???

Jimin is unbothered, happy and busy and probably had some schedule to attend after the concert, but these deranged mfers will always see what they want and armys will always give them a free-pass instead of addressing the pink elephants on parade in the room.

And if this is the fandom we have to go back to when and IF BTS ever return as 7 after enlistment (given that they don’t actually disband after that not so subtle hint suga made at the end of the concert)? Then I’m about ready to drop BTS as a whole the moment Jimin goes in for his service. ‘Cause this ain’t it.

#BTS #jimin #park jimin #bangtan #armys #bts armys #jimin antis #bts antis #jikook #kookmin #taekook #OT7 is a MYTH #this fandom will be the death of BTS #I hope it implodes #vminkook #vkookmin #taeminkook

85 notes · View notes

no-stupid-questions-official · 1 month

Note

Asking again because y'all misunderstood my points a bit. I'm looking for a music streaming platform that is free (because I have NO MONEY! I WANT TO PAY ARTISTS BUT CAN'T!!), pays artists (a decent amount at best, but even a tiny payment is better than Spotify which apparently isn't paying most artists anymore??) (I KNOW they need to get money from somewhere! ads are ok!), let's you play what and when you want, let's you make playlists, let's you actually SHUFFLE music, and isn't too crazy with ads (and by this I mean, isn't playing a ton of ads between music every 5 seconds. Spotify doesn't even let me browse while an ad plays anymore. Visual only ads on the side are good, and audio ads that interrupt at a reasonable rate is also good! I'm NOT actually asking for zero ads! I just mentioned it as a pipe dream 😭)

#question

15 notes · View notes

silverfoxlou · 1 year

Text

Behind The Campaign :: Louis Tomlinson

Former One Direction star Louis Tomlinson released his debut album in 2020 through Sony but moved to BMG for his second album, Faith In The Future, in November 2022. Lisa Wilkinson, director of UK marketing (new recordings) at BMG, explains how they looked to reposition him in the market, what learnings were coming from his live success as well as his own festival, why his merchandise strategy directly informed his multi-formatted record release strategy, how they were able to build him without mass radio support, where a wider male audience was targeted this time round, why Twitter remains his most powerful social media platform and how a highly vocal and engaged fanbase was nurtured further and directly involved in the campaign.

1 Coming to BMG for his second solo album 2 The centrality of merchandise 3 The radio conundrum 4 Targeting a male audience 5 Building his songwriting profile 6 Targeting the press 7 Boosting the digital strategy 8 QR code and interactive community map at his Away From Home festival 9 Twitter as his main platform and setting him up on TikTok 10 Chart battle with Bruce Springsteen and the power of in-stores 11 Stationhead and Tim’s Twitter Listening Party 12 Fan-made Spotify Canvases 13 Documentary and the next steps

1. Coming to BMG for his second solo album

This is his first album with BMG. His debut album, Walls in 2020, was with Syco Music [via Sony]. That was off the back of X Factor with Simon Cowell.

He had done a couple of more commercial singles – one with Steve Aoki [‘Just Hold On’] and one with Bebe Rexha and Digital Farm Animals [‘Back To You’]. They were really successful streaming singles, but that’s not who Louis is. For the boys in One Direction, the ones that have been successful and the songs that have been successful are the ones that have stayed super pop and commercial. Louis did that but it’s just not who he is.

I think he felt, in that structure, that he just wasn’t getting the support to be who he wanted to be. That’s exactly why people come to us. It’s an artist services deal and we’re there to support you and advise you.

You can see from his live business and his merchandise business – and every other thing that Louis does – that there is an incredible fanbase there for him.

When they [Syco] released Walls, they achieved 14,000 units in week one and got to number 4 in Q1 in January 2020. We thought that just didn’t feel reflective of what was happening [around him].

We went and saw him at various venues on his world tour. We went to New York and saw those two shows and we went to Italy and watched his Milan stadium show in front of 30,000 people.

You’re looking and you’re thinking, “Those numbers don’t make any sense. How on Earth did you fumble that?” We were confident that we could do better than that.

He had a signing dinner in October 2021 and then his world tour started in February 2000 [sic], which was the delayed tour [due to the pandemic]. It went all the way through to September, pretty much nonstop.

They sold half a million tickets that year. All the while he’s on tour, he’s still making the album.

‘Out Of My System’ was released as a DSP-focused track before the album. It’s the rockiest and heaviest track on the album. He came straight off stage, went into a vocal booth off the side of the stage [to record it]. Because of the energy, he was so fired up. It was a difficult process because it was creating an album on the road.

He wanted to make an album for live. It was a totally different experience for him. Covid hit just a few months after Walls dropped so the tour was out of the question.

Before we started working on the album campaign, he did a show at Crystal Palace Bowl, which was the first incarnation of his Away From Home festival that he’s created and curated, which is for up-and-coming indie bands.

He gave away 8,000 tickets in August 2021 when we could start doing outdoor things again. I was there and was thinking, “There’s something big going on here.” The fans were so committed and dedicated.

Considering this is someone who hasn’t had real radio support or is seen in celebrity magazines or on social posts, this is a huge phenomenon.

That continued into the tour.

2 The centrality of merchandise

We started on the creative really early and that was a key factor in how successful the album was. We knew early on from discussions with management that his merch business was berserk. We knew what kind of fans he has. With their merch drops during Covid, they played around with the strategy. They got in a really cool design team and they would just do regular drops – limited-edition releases and you’ll never see it again. Everything just sold out constantly.

That informed the whole product strategy.

We knew we had to make product that’s limited in its nature because it encourages demand.

The fans just want it. It’s got to look amazing; it’s got to have Louis looking phenomenal because they just adore him; it’s got to be priced right; and there’s got to be a selection. So it’s more stuff, but less of it.

Instead of treating it like a music product, treat it like merchandise. We absolutely nailed that strategy.

We sold 35,000 records and around 2,500 units were streaming. A good chunk of that was physical album sales. It’s going to inform our strategy for any other albums we do with him.

We did 19 products in the end. We did a standard CD, we did a CD ‘zine which had 82 pages of beautiful content and photos, we had a picture disc vinyl, we did around eight different exclusive retail vinyl albums, we had a splatter vinyl for HMV, we had a colour one for Amazon, we had a clear one for Spotify, we had several more for Urban Outfitters and Target, we had an indie retailers one.

It was a collector thing: how many of the vinyl albums have you managed to get? We did a double deluxe vinyl for D2C. We did cassettes where the artwork joined together when you got all three. They were embossed and glowed in the dark. Louis has Easter eggs that he drops everywhere. The number 28 is like a lucky number, so you see 28 dotted around places. The same with 369 – he uses it in many iterations. If you had a UV light, you’d be able to see ‘3’, ‘6’ and ‘9’ embossed on each cassette.

3 The radio conundrum

We have seen historically that it has been tricky to get radio for him – but not because of any artist proposition issue. It’s just sonically that he wants to do something different to what radio wants to play.

It’s tricky because it falls through the gaps a little bit with what he wants to do. We’ve always looked at it as: let’s just assume there are zero promo opportunities at radio, TV and press. Let’s just take out promo entirely.

What you have got is a global, engaged, fanatical fanbase. You can do more with that than you can with those other things if you don’t have fans.

I would much rather have an artist who’s got an absolutely berserk global fanbase and that gets absolutely no support from traditional media – because you can work with that – than have an artist that’s not really got a particularly big fanbase but radio loves them and TV loves them. What does that matter if you’ve not got the fans?

We did always want to get promo because we would love to be able to expand Louis’ fanbase. But you’ve got to compete against Harry [Styles] and Niall [Horan]. They’re the first people you’ve got to compete against because, to play three One Direction members on the radio, I don’t know if radio stations would. Then you’ve got the sonic battle as well where he wants to keep it pretty raw.

The first single was ‘Bigger Than Me’, which is a big song to sing. It was a good bridge between the last album and this album. It gave the fans what they wanted.

We had really good feedback from radio. They played it to Clara [Amfo, Radio 1] without telling her who it was. She loved it and she did actually play it as one of the hottest tracks of the week. Greg James’s producers said it was brilliant. They absolutely adored it. Matt Edmondson and Mollie King’s team loved it. They thought it was great. But it got blocked at playlist conversations. It was like, Come on!

That was really disappointing because, pre-release, we were getting incredible feedback from producers, but we just couldn’t get it through the playlisting. We’d always planned for it not to go on radio, but if it got on radio that’d be just a brilliant bonus. So it didn’t harm our campaign strategy at all.

He’s too pop for indie stations and he’s too indie for the BBC [Radio 1]. It’s frustrating, but he’s making the music he wants to make and the fans love it. So what do you do?

‘Silver Tongues’ came out just before the album dropped, which was the official second single. That bridged the gap between those two singles. It was much more guitar based. It was up-tempo but it wasn’t too indie.

On the day that the album was released, fans bombarded Greg’s show on the 10 Minute Takeover [on the Radio 1 breakfast show]. And he played it! It was lovely but you could tell it was done like, “OK, I’ve done it now. Go away.” Which is just so sad because his demographic is right in that lane. It’s 18-25.

4 Targeting a male audience

‘Out Of My System’ was released as a DSP track, and that was really to show a different side of what was going to be on the album. It was the hardest one, the rockiest one, the speediest one, it was all about the band. It is one of the best streaming tracks on the album; it has really taken hold.

That was really just to get the male audience because we knew from the analytics we had prior to release that, although his demographics on social media are largely female, wider research that we did with our media teams said that he has a male fanbase. They’re just consumers. If they were to hear him on the radio, they wouldn’t turn it off – that kind of thing – but they’re not necessarily following him on social media. We knew that there was an opportunity there to reach another audience.

5 Building his songwriting profile

We just gave him creative freedom. Louis is really smart. He was the most proficient songwriter within One Direction. He has more songwriting credits than any of the other four members. We know that he’s a talented songwriter so it was just putting him together with people who can give him the confidence, like this album did, to move him out of his comfort zone.

There are some tracks on there that he will say were inspired by people like DMA’s and their album The Glow. ‘All This Time’ and ‘She Is Beauty We Are World Class’ have that slightly more experimental sound to them, which I think took a few people by surprise. He has really incredible writers like David Sneddon, Robert Harvey, George Tizzard and Rick Parkhouse. He has said multiple times in interviews that they gave him the confidence to have fun with it.

I don’t think he expected to get the amount of tracks that he did. It was a big album with 16 tracks. Then we put another three tracks on a digital deluxe edition in week one which shifted another 15,000 units globally.

6 Targeting the press

One of the big wins we had on this campaign was the NME coming on board. They were not interested last time. There was no music press. So one of our key targets on this campaign was to get music press.

We really wanted to get a Rolling Stone cover but the one we wanted to go for Harry was on. So we shifted and we retargeted the NME. We took them to Louis’ Away From Home festival in Malaga [in summer 2022]. He sold it out – 15,000 tickets in 24 hours.

NME did various interviews with Louis for their website and for their socials. They spoke to the bands that were on. It was a real seal of approval. And from that point onwards, we had nothing but great press from NME.

They supported everything – all the singles and we got a four-star review of the album. It was not like we bought it, but it was because we put them in the right place to really see him.

7 Boosting the digital strategy

There were two real strategic decisions that we made at the beginning that affected the outcome: one was the physical product strategy; and the other was the digital marketing strategy. If you don’t have traditional promo, and you’ve got an ardent global fanbase, digital is the most important way of getting your marketing across.

When we first started working with management, they said to us that there were some things that were non-negotiable. Everything should be fair, so we shouldn’t feel like we’re only offering things to fans of a certain demographic or to fans in a certain territory. It’s global. It’s got to be accessible. It’s got to be affordable. And it’s got to be innovative.

They are so good at doing things that break records and break the internet.

They did their livestream in 2020 and Louis sold over 200,000 tickets. It was the most-streamed livestream of a male solo artist during lockdown.

They had quite high expectations of the digital campaign going forward.

We spent quite a long time, about three months, prior to launching trying to figure out how we were going to break the internet.

With #LT369, we trended within about five minutes worldwide of that hashtag going out. When you tweeted the hashtag, it took you to a mini site where a Twitter map was starting to flag where people’s locations were. Over the course of the teaser week, the flags started to fall away but would leave ‘BTM’ which stood for ‘Bigger Than Me’, so we were teasing the single name.

We did a playlist builder and it was generated on socials as a cassette mixtape. You could share it and design your own cover on it. These were just things that really got the fans talking and engaged.

8 QR code and interactive community map at his Away From Home festival

The interactive map was linked to a QR code. We put QR codes around the festival site with absolutely no explanation as to what they were. But the fans notice everything.

We put the track titles from the album in pictures. They were really, really hidden. It took the fans two days [to work it out], but they observe everything.

Everyone started using the QR code. It took them to a website. We hadn’t announced at that point that the album was going to drop or that it was coming. It was a real mystery but that started the chatter going and we started getting trending hashtags for the album.

9 Twitter as his main platform and setting him up on TikTok

Twitter is his biggest platform [with 35.7 million followers]. What’s really interesting about that is that it’s super conversational, and you can see what they’re doing – as opposed to other platforms like Instagram and Facebook. He’s probably one of the only artists that still uses it as their primary platform.

He is really active on Twitter. He will go through bouts where he doesn’t post but then he’ll go on a reply rampage. He just replies randomly to people and does 40 in an hour. The fans go absolutely wild. Twitter was our key platform for launching initiatives and activations

There is a HQ account on TikTok and it crashed part of TikTok when it launched. Management love knowing that they crash things. We “crashed” our D2C site within minutes. There was a queue of 200,000 people in the D2C store at one point within the first hour of launching.

We didn’t technically crash the D2C store but, because of the size of the queue, it shut the storefront down which is what it does, and then forms a queue so that it doesn’t crash. We went on there and could see there were 200,000 people queuing.

10 Chart battle with Bruce Springsteen and the power of in-stores

I don’t think he ever thought he wasn’t getting a number 1 album. We beat Bruce Springsteen, we did it in Q4 and we doubled the numbers that Sony did week one last time [on Walls].

When we were in week one, and we were battling out with Bruce Springsteen, we said that there were an easy 3,000 units there if we put on four Banquet Records shows [at Pryzm in West London] and bundle the album with the tickets.

Every time they put a show on sale, you could see the numbers on the webpage. There were 200,000 people on there, even people who were not in the UK. They were ridiculous numbers.

It was more than Banquet has ever done. We sold out three shows in under a minute.

That was on release week. We had a really solid release week strategy so we knew that we had three shows in the pocket with Banquet.

We had two tracks that had not been released at that point, that weren’t on the album, that weren’t on the deluxe and that hadn’t been released as singles. We created a £4.99 digital album that had another two brand new tracks on it. You could only buy it as an album product and it was a D2C download.

We sold 15,000 of those globally in week one. We sold 6,000 in the UK. We did 3,000 extra records with Banquet in week one via the shows. We did an additional 3,000 with signed product that we put on sale in week one, because there were no other signed products in the market.

The digital super deluxe did 6,000 units. We ran multiple competitions. We gave away a signed guitar with HMV. We did a golden ticket to the tour with Crash Records.

We did a two-day pop up in Camden [North London] and Amazon contributed with signage. We did a one-day one in New York as well. We sold pop-up exclusive merch and we re-sleeved splatter vinyl with a London pop-up sleeve. We did around 2,000 of those. We did the same with the CDs and re-sleeved some CDs with the London pop-up. They were unique and fans could not get it again so they flew out the door. We had 3,000 people show up for it. That was full capacity.

We premiered the video for ‘Silver Tongues’, the second single, at the pop-up. That was the weekend of release but the single, which came out earlier that week, the video dropped on the Saturday.

11 Stationhead and Tim’s Twitter Listening Party

Stationhead is an interesting concept and we’ve done it a few times now. It’s linked to streaming, so every time you play a track within the show, it’s technically streamed by the amount of people that are listening to the show. Louis did one of those and, in terms of Stationhead’s history, it was pretty successful.

We got an email from Tim Burgess’s team saying they wanted to do a Tim’s Twitter Listening Party with Louis. They had such a good rapport and the fans were asking for it.

Beyond the chart units from the streams, it is the noise that it creates online that is more important to us.

It was one of their biggest re-listening streams, which is amazing when you think about the demographic that they have.

12 Fan-made Spotify Canvases

Across socials, we asked people to rework the ‘Bigger Than Me’ artwork. As a way of getting people to go and stream the track, we would change the Canvas semi-regularly so there was a reason for people to go and play it to see if their Canvas was one of the ones that had been selected.

The only downside is Canvases are only seven-seconds long. So if you go and you watch for seven seconds, it’s not your artwork and you come off, it can affect your average listening rate.

We were mindful of that. Our strategy was to do that post-pitching for any real major lists so that they weren’t looking at the data.

He has got really good listening data. It’s around 15 plays per listener which is way over the average. The save rate to libraries is huge and shows that he has really got a good lean-in listenership.

13 Documentary and the next steps

He’s going back on tour. He is back on another world tour from April starting in Asia and then he goes to North America. Then he comes back to Europe, culminating in an O2 show in London this time around in November. He previously did Wembley Arena.

The documentary [All Of Those Voices] premiered on 16th March and then went to worldwide cinemas on 22nd March for a week.

Charlie Lightening made it and went on tour with Louis. He had previously made the Liam Gallagher documentary [As It Was]. Historically he’s done most of Louis’ music videos as well. It was only this time around that we wanted to branch out and see if we could do something a little bit different.

It goes from the band through to his personal life and where he is now. There is a massive focus on the tour. It will blow people away to see what the Louis franchise looks like. This kid has an amazing franchise and most people just don’t have any clue about it.

The recordings business is such a small part of what he does. Obviously it helps to have records out to sell merch and to go on tour. That’s where he really excels.

I’ve never worked on a project where the fans are like they are. You get to see your visions immediately. You get to see the reactions immediately. You get to see the activation work immediately. That is such a buzz.

On most other projects, you launch something and then you have to market it and push it. This was more about pre-strategy, because you know that when you launch something, if you get it right, it’s going to work and you’ll get to see that reaction immediately. That was so much fun. Campaigns like that are rare.

#BMG #FITF promo #or more accurately. the lack of it

60 notes · View notes

pinchinschlimbah · 5 months

Text

Looking things up for the previous post made me realize that sometime very recently- definitely in the last few months, possibly within the last few weeks, the Spotify (and iTunes/Apple Music) profile that hosts the song "You Can't Handcuff the Wind" from the movie "Mindhorn" has gone from being listed as "Richard Thorncroft" (the character Julian plays in the film, whom the song is performed by in-universe) to "Julian Barratt", while a new "Richard Thorncroft" profile with nothing on it has been made to forward to the renamed existing page This song was released in 2017, and hasn't gotten much promotion or renewed attention since its initial release. On Spotify it has received about 120k total plays over the course of the past 6.5 years and currently sits at a little under 300 monthly listeners. So my question is....why change it? Especially why change it NOW? A few theories: -It's a royalties/rights thing, in which he found out that it needed to be registered under his actual name in order to receive compensation (unlikely seeing as he's an established artist with a team of people to help with stuff like that and I'd be surprised if this had slipped through the cracks from its period of peak success until now) -He wants more people who are familiar with him but perhaps not with Mindhorn or this song (which was released to promote the film but not actually featured in it, and up until recently was solely credited as being by Richard Thorncroft) to be able to find the song (again though....why now?) -He's planning on releasing new music soon and structuring his streaming platform presence accordingly, better to be able to put new work on an already established profile with a built-in listener count and other media to consume rather than start from scratch with a new empty page ....so anyway here's how the Boosh album finally being released for the 20th anniversary can still win

#julian barratt #shouts into void #here I go truthing again #though even if it ends up not being the boosh album I'd still be hyped for him to release more music

14 notes · View notes

randomvarious · 11 months

Audio

1990s IDM Playlist

Alright! Now we’re finally getting somewhere with this 1990s IDM playlist! Not so much on the Spotify end of things, because their IDM selection isn’t very good at all, but with YouTube, I was able to add a handful of some really great and extremely slept-on songs.

But first, Spotify: with this update, I added one song, and it comes courtesy of a guy from Manchester, UK called Jega, who made his debut in 1996 with an EP called Phlax. And that release’s title track, which also appeared on a 1997 compilation from Skam Records that was simply called Skampler, is fantastic. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles and bleeps and bloops that IDM tracks typically have, but it’s this piece of sci-fi-futuristic electro-intensity that comes with warped and reverberating layers of strings and a sharp and crisp drumbeat. It’s one of Jega’s most popular songs too, having netted over 108K plays on Spotify.

Jega - “Phlax”

And now, YouTube: I ended up adding seven different songs to this thing, all of which aren’t on Spotify at all, and five of them are made by who I consider to be quite possibly the most underrated IDM producer of all time, London’s Simon Pyke, better known as Freeform, but also known as Nudge. Pyke’s released a bunch of stuff on different stalwart IDM labels throughout his career, including Warp, Skam, Quatermass, Sub Rosa, Worm Interface, and Sprawl Imprint, but he’s also contributed a bunch of complete stunners to compilations as well. And the YouTube play counts for the ones I added today happen to be appallingly low, with “Dice” being the highest at 55 plays, and “Duplo” being the lowest at just 10 plays. It’s hard to pick an absolute favorite out of all of these Pyke adds too, but “Duplo” just might be the one. He really has a tendency to make some of the wildest, most innovative, densest, and uniquely breathtaking IDM that you’ll ever hear in your life. I swear on it. Bear witness to this absolute genius 🤯.

The other two YouTube adds come from a pair of other IDM entities: The Black Dog, who remix German duo Alter Ego’s “Tanks Ahead”—a hypnotically enthralling song with just a little over 4,600 plays that first appeared on Frankfurt label Harthouse’s Dark Hearts - Volume 1 compilation in 1995—and nebulous Autechre side project Gescom’s “Keynell 1,″ which has a number of uploads on YouTube, but only one as it appears exactly on that aforementioned Skampler album.

Alter Ego - “Tanks Ahead (Black Dog Mix)” Gescom - “Keynell 1″ Freeform - “Dice” Freeform - “Fyonk” Freeform - “Flumps” Nudge - “Skewer (You’re So Human)” Nudge - “Duplo”

This playlist is also on YouTube Music.

So, while I understand people’s preference for Spotify, because it’s a way more convenient platform for streaming music, know that if you choose that one, you really will be missing out on some of the greatest IDM that’s ever been made, because I don’t have a single Freeform or Nudge track on it. They’re all over on YouTube. The Spotify playlist is at 14 songs and 75 minutes, but the YouTube one is at 34 songs and 3 and a half hours! That’s more than double!

Enjoy!

More to come, eventually. Stay tuned!

Like what you hear? Follow me on Spotify and YouTube for more cool playlists and uploads!

#idm #intelligent dance music #electronic #electronic music #music #90s #90s music #90's #90's music

42 notes · View notes

artificelux · 5 months

Text

colorofamirror.net

Color of a Mirror is my cyberpunk novel centered around a musician who wants to be a rockstar. Written, designed, and published by me, it’s not bombastic or action-heavy, but rather is driven by character and personal, human issues. It gets into ideas of the subconscious and the lies we tell ourselves. If you like the dark futures of William Gibson, I think you’ll find something to like in this book.

•

I love different forms of communication, anything really that codes words behind beautiful design rather than actual letters. The above design motif is on the cover of the forthcoming deluxe hardcover novel, and is a stylized version of the American braille for “Color of a Mirror” (beginning at bottom left).

•

Tomorrow is Cyber Monday. This is everything I’ve ever wanted a cerebral, cyberpunk novel to be, so what better day to check it out than tomorrow!

Available exclusively from my website, each copy will come signed by me, and will start shipping on or around Dec. 1.

(And if you want a taste of this world, check out the cinematic dark ambient soundtrack of the same name, now streaming on Spotify and other streaming platforms!)

17 notes · View notes

firjii · 5 months

Note

I just saw the Spotify might change their royalties model and that it would hit indie artists hardest. Are you posting your music elsewhere? I follow you on Spotify but now I'm looking into other places for music and want to continue supporting your awesome music!!

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I love you and thanks for asking.

Except for a few covers that are limited by licensing restrictions, my stuff is on all major and some minor platforms (I do sometimes lag in putting things on Bandcamp because lazy). I'm not monetized on Soundcloud because that system is somewhat different and IIRC not as welcoming of truly small artists, so any of my tracks that you find there are either on my "just for fun" accounts or are someone's illegal reupload.

Reminder to the new folks: I'm Firjii everywhere but also started another artist pseudonym as Kathy Warnecke (which should also be on all the same platforms by now).

Tidal and Apple usually have the best royalty payout rates and Spotify is among the worst (but no platform has a guaranteed fixed rate). Youtube is all over the place but usually on the low end. Downloads always pay better than streams, but I know some people can't do this or prefer to continually support with streams over time instead of paying once.

I'm also gonna take a minute to FUCKING RANT explain things to the uninitiated since virtually all my listeners on tungles are freemium Spotify users. From what I understand, this change has been finalized and it's not speculation at this point.

The deal is they'll withhold royalties from a song in a given calendar year unless it's streamed at least 1,000 times ANNUALLY (not lifetime).

Although the change will only consider per-track stats (not social media-like numbers such as followers/listeners or a measurement of how established the artist's presence is), in practice, this will specifically demonetize small/niche artists and have little or no impact on medium and big names. It will also affect the payouts small artists get from distributors because many of those have their own minimum payout thresholds.

I need people to understand just how shitty this is.

Say you're a prolific creator or recorded some live shows from a tour and you released 150 tracks in a year. If each track only got streamed on Spotify 999 times that year, they're pretty much saying you'd get paid for.......yup, exactly zero Spotify streams, not the 149,850 you're otherwise owed. I have no idea if this will impact PRO (performance rights organization) payouts, but I refuse to believe it would be legal to also withhold that share of royalties.

In the Spotify world, 1k streams is a tiny achievement (and still translates to a very small payout, so the concern is: what's to stop them from raising that minimum even more in the future?). But especially when the hurdle is per song per year, this can be a tough goal for indie or specialty genre artists to reach or maintain, including me.

I have a long history of disliking Spotify in particular for many reasons, but I upload there because it's the only way some people will listen. I strongly encourage anyone who is able to use other platforms to explore their options.

I know a lot of folks are too broke to pay for music and Spotify is a notable example of a freemium option, but this change is so, so, SO bad for SO many artists.

#hey maybe I need to start a tag for my music industry rants lol #how about #music industry tomfuckery #yes good let's go with that #nerkierants

10 notes · View notes

sageistrii · 1 month

Note

I can’t believe I have to defend Taehyung of all people but I’m pretty sure he has better Spotify numbers than Hybe’s nepo girls who get lots and lots of playlisting(OMG was on TTP over a year) with the money BTS made while every BTS member who isn’t Jk doesn’t get shit in terms of promo

Nj might be top in Sk (I’ll give them 2 more years max until the gp moves to a new group) but they are not more popular than Tae Internetionally or overall

They're not as popular as any BTS member and a BTS members solo fanbase is bigger than new jeans' whole fanbase but their music seems to be more popular. Honestly new jeans does not have a big fanbase, I think le sserafim has a more dedicated and bigger fanbase but new jeans has a lot of casual listeners and even people who don't listen to kpop listens to their music.

Tae will have better first day numbers on all major platforms except melon, but new jeans performs better in the long run which means they end up having bigger numbers after a few months.

New jeans is a wild card, I get this feeling that they gained popularity way too fast that it's going to fizzle out before their peers, but at the same time they could end up being another blackpink, a group with instant success but also with longevity. But I think even if they don't fizzle out, in no time there's going to be some other 4th gen group that will catch up with them internationally and their success will not seem so special anymore.

And groups like g-idle and Ive are actually on par with new jeans in Korea, some might even argue that Ive is bigger than new jeans in Korea but the success they got in the US makes everyone think they're the most successful 4th gen girlgroup in Korea when it's actually Ive.

New jeans already has competition in SK, the competition they need is another 4th gen girlgroup that consistently charts on Spotify global with an average of 3m streams. They had competition in fifty fifty but we know how that turned out and the only other girlgroup that seems to do great internationally right now is le sserafim but they're not quite new jeans level yet, and it seems to be a slow but steady climb for them.

4 notes · View notes

twopoppies · 5 months

Note

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.billboard.com/business/streaming/taylor-swift-spotify-streams-how-much-worth-1235524477/amp/

After seeing your post about Snoop not even making 45k for a billion streams, it reminded me of this article. It was written on December 1st, and at that time, T*ylor had 26.1 billion streams, which would amount to around $97 million in music royalties, according to Billboard. Billboard then estimated that by the end of the year, she would most likely reach around 27.2 billion streams, which amounts to around $101 million in music royalties. The article then says that if you add in the publishing revenue, her music will make around $131 million in royalties. Now I know Snoop is only around 1 billion streams compared to T*ylor's estimated $27.2 billion, but the math isn't mathing for me (unless I'm just actually too stupid to figure this out). So, what is going on? And like you said, where is the money going?

And are they giving certain artists special treatment? Like you put your music back on Spotify, which T*ylor took off in 2014 because they weren't valuing her art aka paying her enough money and is a fair complaint/criticism of streaming, and we'll pay you more than we pay other artists. Wouldn't be surprising because of how popular she's always been, even with her "cancellation." Plus, Idk how it works with big artists and streaming services but if they negotiate with big artists like her, someone who had already taken her music off the platform before, it wouldn't surprise me if they do pay her more especially as her popularity and success has reached the highest it's ever been.

I also saw another article. Maybe you or someone else has seen it as well, but isn't Spotify implementing a policy that an artist has to meet certain requirements before they can even get paid? Which is fucking insane.

Yeah, all of that is super fishy to me. And I honestly would not be surprised if they pay some artists more than others. But as you say, “the math isn’t mathing” if you compare what he’s saying versus what they’re saying about her. It’s been clear for a long time that artists don’t make their money off of streaming. but there are tons of people paying for premium subscriptions, and there are tons of advertisers on Spotify… from the calculators below it looks as though when you reach a certain number of streams the percentage of what you earn is a lot greater. 27×5000 isn’t 130 million. But also, it’s not $45K (as Snoop said).

The amount calculated will represent a blended rate of all the tiers offered by the services. So, in the case of Spotify, the rate shown is a blend of its paid tier rate, its ad-supported tier rate, and other tiers; while the Apple rate is also a blend of its various tiers.

The payout totals are based on the subscriber and advertisement fees that Spotify and Apple collect each month and the number of plays. Because those numbers fluctuate, the calculator will be updated on a monthly basis, but usually with a three-month lag, due to when the services information becomes available. Currently, the rates shown are based on reported data from June.

Obviously, Snoop Dogg earns lots of money in many different ways, but if you think about your average artist whose music plays on Spotify, the amount they make is pitiful.

Also, as a caveat, math and business dealings are not my forte by a long shot. So if anyone has better info here, please add on.

In reference to this

#Spotify #snoop dog #royalties #Music industry #swiftie

7 notes · View notes

louisupdates · 1 year

Text

BEHIND THE CAMPAIGN: LOUIS TOMLINSON

MUSICALLY | 19 APRIL 2023

Lisa Wilkinson, director of UK marketing (new recordings) at BMG, explains how they looked to reposition him in the market, what learnings were coming from his live success as well as his own festival, and more.

[The article will be broken into sections, linked below.]

1. Coming to BMG for his second solo album

2. The centrality of merchandise

3. The radio conundrum

4. Targeting a male audience

5. Building his songwriting profile

6. Targeting the press

7. Boosting the digital strategy

8. QR code and interactive community map at his Away From Home festival

9. Twitter as his main platform and setting him up on TikTok

10. Chart battle with Bruce Springsteen and the power of in-stores

11. Stationhead and Tim’s Twitter Listening Party

12. Fan-made Spotify Canvases

13. Documentary and the next steps

☆彡

1. COMING TO BMG FOR HIS SECOND SOLO ALBUM

This is his first album with BMG. His debut album, Walls in 2020, was with Syco Music [via Sony]. That was off the back of X Factor with Simon Cowell.

You can see from his live business and his merchandise business – and every other thing that Louis does – that there is an incredible fanbase there for him.

When they [Syco] released Walls, they achieved 14,000 units in week one and got to number 4 in Q1 in January 2020. We thought that just didn’t feel reflective of what was happening [around him].

We went and saw him at various venues on his world tour. We went to New York and saw those two shows and we went to Italy and watched his Milan stadium show in front of 30,000 people.

You’re looking and you’re thinking, “Those numbers don’t make any sense. How on Earth did you fumble that?” We were confident that we could do better than that.

He had a signing dinner in October 2021 and then his world tour started in February 2000, which was the delayed tour [due to the pandemic]. It went all the way through to September, pretty much nonstop.

They sold half a million tickets that year. All the while he’s on tour, he’s still making the album.

He wanted to make an album for live. It was a totally different experience for him. Covid hit just a few months after Walls dropped so the tour was out of the question.

Considering this is someone who hasn’t had real radio support or is seen in celebrity magazines or on social posts, this is a huge phenomenon.

That continued into the tour.

#louis tomlinson #lisa wilkinson #louis press #bmg marketing #19.4.23 #musically #louis masterpost

34 notes · View notes