It’s been a while since we’ve had one of our Bar Chloe meetups, and we’re going to try to make them a regularly scheduled event again. Plan is to post up at Bar Chloe 7-10pm the last Monday of each month, starting with this coming Monday the 29th of June.
Not only will there be music and drinks, but Bar Chloe has food and are extending happy hour to 8pm for us. Check the menus and come for dinner.
Come on out, and let’s talk about the future of music.
For those who don’t know, NARM is the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the trade group for music retailers which is increasingly seeing membership from companies like iTunes, Amazon, and Rhapsody, as well as mobile carriers and a few of us rag tag startups such as Topspin. The NARM Connects Conference 2009 was held last week in San Diego and it was Topspin’s first visit to the gathering.
But much better than my interview is Mike Masnick of Tech Dirt’s incredible presentation from earlier in the day. Mike is very kind to Topspin in his presentation and you should discount my opinion accordingly but this is, IMHO, a must-see. Please take a run through and send to everyone you know who cares about the future of media. Mike’s words may be a little hard to swallow but they’re based in reality and he offers not just commentary but a suggested solution (CwF + RtB = $$$), something few have the balls to do these days:
We also had the good fortune of receiving an award at Wednesday night’s awards ceremony. Somewhere between Norman Lear, Transworld’s Bob Higgins, all around rad dude Don Van Cleave, Ashford and Simpson, and Hall and Oats, Topspin was awarded a Business Innovation award from NARM. We were very proud to be nearly the only startup in a field of award winners such as Universal, Warner, and EMI. Thanks to all involved. It was truly an honor.
There were a lot of awards at the end of the presentation and they were discouraging speeches, so instead I stumbled up and nervously stammered a few mildly coherent words. Not sure what I actually said, but this is what I was trying to say:
“We’re a young company, less than two years old, and we certainly haven’t done anything worthy of an honor from you all just yet, though we hope to. I think the reason we’ve had a lot of attention in the past year plus is because we are actually very optimistic about the future of the music business, or at least about profitability for artists, which is the most important thing in the entire business. Thank you sincerely for this award, it’s truly an honor to be in the business of music.”
Thanks for watching and reading. Please RT, tell a friend, all that good stuff. And have a happy Father’s Day.
A few days ago, Hypebot published a piece about the Topspin approach to empowering artists with the tools to create high-margin, premium music offers for their fans. The story comes complete with “unboxing” videos of Metric, Beastie Boys, Byrne & Eno, and Beck Deluxe Editions hosted by our head honcho (and resident hand model) Ian Rogers. The only thing missing is a glimpse into the making, packing and shipping of these goods, so we thought we’d share a few words and behind-the-scenes photos of the Eminem “Relapse” Deluxe offering.
The key to a compelling and successful premium direct-to-fan product is to make it as unique and personal as possible. Simply bundling a CD and vinyl is easy to do and is different from what casual fans may find at retail. However, with a little extra effort and investment in items like hand-signed merch or custom packaging relevant to the theme of the record, you can offer your fans something of much greater value and price, and your true fans will jump on the offer. The Deluxe version of Eminem’s Relapse sells for $129.99 and includes a few collectible items like a high-quality 24×24 print of the “Relapse” cover art hand signed by Eminem (he signed 1,000 in one sitting), a Marshall Mathers prescription pill bottle, and CD and vinyl versions of the record. Fans can also upgrade their Relapse Deluxe purchase with one of five t-shirt and hoodie designs, including a limited-edition Eminem+Undefeated shirt.
Once you’ve assembled your premium offering, the next step is finding a fulfillment partner to ship the goods to your fans. In some cases, the manufacturer of the products can ship individual items direct, but with premium offerings containing items from multiple sources, you’ll want to partner with a fulfillment house that understands the logistics involved in assembling and shipping product to fans in a timely, cost-efficient manner. Eminem’s management is working with Topspin partner Kufala on fulfillment of Relapse physical products in the direct-to-fan channel. Kufala receives Relapse items from three different sources, assembles the items based on a list of 300 product configurations, and emails the customers when packages are leaving the warehouse. (Kufala also specializes in on-demand CD and DVD production for artists like Pearl Jam, Counting Crows, Phish and Smashing Pumpkins, to name a few)
Packaging for the Relapse Deluxe product (see above) is somewhat non-traditional in that the 24×24 high-quality print is shipped flat instead of in a tube. Kufala built a custom box to protect the print and house the rest of the Deluxe package items. Shipping the print with the rest of the Deluxe items is more cost effective than sending two different pieces separately and it makes for a much better out-of-box experience for the fan.
Relapse Deluxe packages began shipping today to Eminem fans. If you’re one of them, watch your mailbox. If you didn’t get one yet, there’s still a few left so drop by Eminem.com to pick one up. And, keep an eye out for the Relapse Deluxe unboxing from Ian’s picnic table in the coming weeks.
The future of the music industry is hard. No one does it for you. No limos, no fancy dinners, and (almost) no million dollar marketing budgets after a bidding war over your 3-song demo tape. So what next? Will Topspin ride into LA, London, Nashville, and New York to save this industry? No – we won’t, but some of you will. Topspin’s direct-to-fan marketing, management, and distribution technology just sits there until someone uses it. For the last year or so, the Topspin Artist Service team have been the expert pilots. As of Wednesday, June 3rd 2009, that begins to change after our first class of Topspin Certified marketers and web designers left the building after an intense residency with expert Topspin trainer Adam Bates (Thanks, Adam!).
So yes – the future is hard – but fortunately we are lucky enough to have some amazing (and hearty) managers, marketers, and web designers helping us all grind our way forward. Our goal is to find and train as many of you as we can both via our residency programs and through the Berklee.com certification course“Marketing your Music with Topspin” starting 9/28/2009. As the first crew of Topspin certified users trained last week will tell you, 75% of our training had nothing to do with using the app. It’s marketing in this new world that is hard. Topspin’s app simply makes executing easy and efficient. So many thanks to all of you early believers. We will keep writing code, testing new ways to create demand for your music, and educating in every way we can. You need to do the rest or, if you need help with marketing or web development, hire one of the Topspin’s certified marketers and developers.
The Topspin Class of June 2009 is (Top Row Left to Right) Justin Travis, Topspin Intern from Berklee College of Music, Marketer
Patrick Woodward, Topspin Intern from Pepperdine MBA Program, Marketer Bob Cahill, Partner, Bigger Picture Group Nashville, Management Parker Todd Brooks, Principal, We Are Everywhere LA, Web Developer Jay Coyle, Principal, Music Geek Management Nashville, Marketer Kami Knake, Topspin Artist Relations Nashville, Marketer
“La Professora” Adam Bates phD2F, Director, Topspin Artist Services NY (Bottom Row Left to Right) James Lamberti, Vice President, Topspin Artist Services San Francisco Nicole Fields,Topspin Artist Relations Boston/NYC, Marketer Jason Feinberg, President, On Target Media Group LA, Marketer Mike Nelson, Two Minutes for Music Toronto, Management
Hello London! We’re headed your way next week for a few meetings and a couple of runs around Princess Di Park. If you’d like to say hello, please come to the meetup we’re hosting with our friends at Songkick (in order to keep the intercontinental Ian balance Ian Hogarth will be in the US while I’m in London, but his co-founder Pete will be hosting from the Songkick side).
We’ll be at Electricity Showrooms from 7:30pm onward Wednesday evening for some serious music startup geek action. Come on through, and spread the word.
I first heard Eminem on The Wake Up Show long before he had been produced by Dr. Dre. I was blown away and bought the EP mail order from SandboxAutomatic.com (their site hasn’t changed much since). A lot has changed for Em since then but one thing has not: Eminem is one of the most talented MCs in the history of rap. Love him or hate him, it’s hard to deny his skills (or Dre’s beats (or Beats — that one’s for you, Jimmy)). They’ve done it again and it’s a blast to help them with their direct-to-fan campaign. Come on over to Eminem.com for a soon-to-be-rare limited edition package including Eminem’s John Hancock, a commemorative pill bottle (!), vinyl, hoodies, and optionally an Undefeated t-shirt made in a limited run of only 313. Maybe someday it’ll be worth what this Nike from Eminem’s last record is going for on Ebay.
On a slightly different note, this month has seen the launch of not one but three different projects where the music sold raises money for charity:
ps - I’m just realizing that the Byrne/Eno record came with a little pill, the Em record comes with a pill bottle, and Josh Freese was offering “take shrooms and drive around in Danny from Tool’s Lamborghini”. Coincidence or inadvertent direct-to-fan theme?
A few weeks ago I spoke on a panel at Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville and was asked, “So you’re saying that email marketing is still more important than, say, Twitter or Facebook?” I responded, “Yes. Quantifiably.” I went on to say that in the campaigns Topspin has run so far we’re seeing Facebook represents 2-4% of first-week sales and Twitter 1-2%.
In the first day of release, Twitter lead the traffic drivers to the Jimmy Eat World site, with more than 22% of all traffic coming straight outta Twitterland. Twitter was third as a driver of revenue, though, driving just over 20% of all sales. Still, with the large number of people reached, and email a smaller percentage of total sales in this campaign than we see on average, it’s very reasonable to conclude that Twitter was a meaningful driver of incremental revenue in this case, and there’s no question they proved you can do much better with Twitter than I led the crowd in Nashville to believe just a couple weeks previous.
What’s interesting is this single event added meaningful incremental sales to the project, many months after the original release. The behavior mirrored that of a “Slashdot Effect”, large volume and low conversion (conversion to sale was less than half a percent, compared with 11% for the email campaign), but an impressive and needle-moving revenue number simply from one person giving a less-than-140-character endorsement.
Also interesting are the tools we are able to use to track this sort of thing. Note Trent re-Tweet’d the shortened URL I Tweet’d originally, http://awe.sm/2q5. This was made with a URL shortening service Awe.sm (full disclosure: this is my good friend Jonathan Strauss’ company and I’m involved on an advisory basis) and as a result I can easily track the click-throughs on the URL. Between Twitter Search, TweetReach, Awe.sm (or other great services like bit.ly), Google Analytics, and the Topspin sales data one can pull together (and cross-check) some pretty interesting data on reach and conversion down the path to purchase. One interesting finding: 25% of the clicks on the URL came from OUTSIDE the Web, that is, mobile and AIR/desktop clients.
What to conclude from all this? That Twitter is the marketing machinery of the future? Naw. This isn’t about “the next big thing”. It’s about how little we know about how marketing will work and how transactions (not just purchases, but any kind of value exchange) will be earned (and I do mean earned) in the future. Success is highly variable. Execution matters (as James said). Unexpected events can make an impact. People are powerful marketers. But not only are the drivers for traffic evolving, the tools we use to measure the attention economy are going through a really interesting growth phase. It’s hard not to be excited by seeing some of these tools work in ways that are more than just novel, they’re shuffling meaningful amounts of attention around and making real money for artists. Exciting times indeed.
It’s hard to believe I am only 100 days into my gig at Topspin.When I mentioned that anniversary to Ian Rogers recently and told him it felt more like 3 years, he replied “Good, that means we’re getting our money’s worth.”We’re both getting our money’s worth actually.I have the best job on the planet (or to borrow some legalese from entertainment lawyers circa 1991, the best job “in the universe”).After gathering data from 100,000+ transactions across 50 artists big and small, brilliant marketers, analysts, and web designers like Gary Brotman, Adam Bates, and Peter Brambl (in marketing, analyst and web designer order) on the Topspin Artist Service team have actually applied that learning in real time to bands like Beck, Jimmy Eat World, Metric and Beastie Boys.In just 100 days, the Topspin Artist service team has learned and applied an incredible amount of knowledge about marketing music in the 21st century for artists of all sizes.To estimate the difference between best practices execution on the Topspin platform and simply slapping buy buttons on your web site, enter your data below.We can’t name names, but we’ve seen artists either totally ignore or totally embrace best practices.The difference in revenue is ridiculous and we have hard data to back it up.Check it out and share it with your music industry friends.
Here’s the embed code!
I realize this bold opening paragraph begs many questions.Two that come to mind are “who are these Artist Service people?” and “what exactly did they learn?”Fair enough.We owe you more than the hollow hyperbole that often fills the blogosphere.So before you call bullshit- an oath.I hereby solemnly swear to add a second loud Topspin voice to the music community to answer and expand on these questions (and others) over time.My voice will be different mind you. (Not to mention any names, but the world of music doesn’t need another irreverent, punk rock loving, skate boarding, CEO of a much hyped music start-up adding to the chorus.)My voice will be filled with data.Lots and lots of data.It’s flowing in people and we need somewhere to put it.Why not in the hands of artists and their managers, labels, marketers, and web designers?
So who are these Topspin Artist Services folks anyway?Many theories are out there, most are incorrect.Allow me to clarify.We’re here to discover new ways to create demand for our artists, immortalize this knowledge in the Topspin app, then educate and train our partners on how to apply it.One theory I want to dismiss quickly.We are not a marketing services company.In fact, the word “partners” in the previous sentence encompasses marketers of all flavors – independents and in-house teams with managers and labels.We want to train you on our software and ideate with you on how to kill it in the direct-to-fan space.Said another way, we are not your competition.‘Nuff said.
I will end my virgin Topspin blog with one challenge and one promise.The challenge - we all need to help our artists execute with excellence in the direct-to-fan space.The business of music is much better for fans and artists when we are thoughtful and focused in this channel.The promise – we will share more data on best practices over the coming months and years via this blog and the Topspin Green Room.Join us there please and join the conversation.
Sorry there haven’t been more posts on this blog this week. We’ve been busy working on the next version of the Topspin platform and releasing tons of music. Things are boiling over today, though, so I wanted to take a moment to drop a few links into this blog post…
Our friend Josh Freese is having quite a run with his “Since 1972″ release. If you haven’t already heard about this madness, check out the packages on JoshFreese.com, or these Wired interviews with Josh here and here. I love seeing that Josh is SOLD OUT of many of the high-end packages but what makes me even happier is watching the Twitter chatter and seeing that not only do people think the packages are funny they also LIKE THE ALBUM and are telling their friends to buy the music. It’s working, yo. I actually had the good fortune of meeting the purchaser of the $20K package on Sunday night and he’s a super cool guy who said he was having a ton of fun with Josh. Josh took him to a Vandals show on Sunday, then for pizza at Mark Mothersbaugh’s house (with a crazy view), then to the Puscifer show downtown. All of this before he even started on the promised package!
Metric’s new album, Fantasies, finally dropped last week, along with a stunning video for “Gimme Sympathy” which is getting play everywhere I turn (in my house, at least — my two year old wants it on repeat). I can’t tell you what a joy it’s been to work with such a forward-thinking band and management team on an extremely well-run campaign. Their digital, CD, and vinyl offerings are amazing and the pre-sale was a success (sold out of the deluxe packages in less than two weeks). It’s incredibly rewarding to work with bands people are passionate about, and to say Metric is such a band is an understatement. Stream the video and entire album above. They are the future in so many ways. We love you, too, Metric.
I have to say I’m really impressed with how Riverboat Gamblers manage their Web site and MySpace. Great design, and great use of the Topspin tools. Thanks much, y’all.
ps - I’m speaking at Dave Hyman’s Music Technomica in San Francisco tonight (Tuesday, April 7th). It’s invite-only but if you’d like an invite Tweet to @iancr and I’ll send you the info.
As such, I wanted to expand on a couple of points I heard on the panel. First Walter said step one to being successful is simply being a great live band. Second, Storm and Jim both talked about establishing a direct relationship with fans rather than treating them strictly as “consumers” (Jim hypothesized “the feminization of marketing” which I couldn’t do justice to — maybe he’ll blog about it if you’re curious). Personally I think both of these things are true but how you do each is just as important, not trivial, and being re-pioneered and re-defined. I bumped into two artists this weekend who are using their opening tour slots to build new relationships with fans and wanted to tell their tale as an addendum to our panel on Friday.
[Topspin doesn't work with either artist, yet]
I met a band called Halestorm through the magix of the Interwebz. They were in LA making their record with Howard Benson when they saw word of one of the Topspin meetups on Twitter. They came out, introduced themselves, and we talked the future of music a bit. Turns out they’re on Atlantic and touring with Shinedown. Luck would have it they were playing Boston the same weekend I was there for the conference and visiting my eldest daughter Zoe (who’s in college at MIT). After securing some heavy duty earplugs for my two year-old we rolled out to the new House of Blues across the street from Fenway to check out the show.
Halestorm knows what to do with an opening slot like the one they have now with Shinedown. They get 30 minutes every night in front of a crowd of people, most of whom have never heard of them, and they convert as many of them as possible to fans. I stood in the balcony and watched it happen. Here’s what I saw:
Lzzy starts solo with a guitar around her neck and a mic, just singing acapella. Long notes, killer voice. She has people cheering for her before the rest of the band even walks out on stage. Before her voice gets hidden behind the rock, she lets ‘em know she can sing and you can see people are impressed straight away.
The rest of the band appears and they tear through a few songs. It’s straight-ahead rock, on the heavy side but ready for pop radio. Everyone in the band is high-energy and engaging, even Lzzy’s brother Arejay on drums is standing up for parts of the songs and just generally being a showman.
Mid-way through the set Lzzy announces they have a new record coming out in a few weeks but you can buy a pre-release of it now for $5 at the merch stand.
There’s a drum solo-y part that doesn’t go on long and ends with the entire band at the front of the stage playing drums and the crowd cheering as they go crazy with it.
During the last song Lzzy reminds them that they have their own merch stand upstairs and CDs for only $5. She also says the whole band is going to be up there after their set and that she wants to meet everyone.
I head over to the merch stand after the show and watch their tour manager relieve the woman who runs the merch table so she can disappear into the crowd below with a box of CDs with “Halestorm CDs $5” written on it.
The merch stand is mobbed. It’s surrounded by people and they are selling merch literally as fast as their tour manager can manage.
The band appears (after breaking down their own stage setup) and meets and talks to as many people as possible, while helping to sell their merch.
Free stickers list their MySpace page, etc.
Very very well done. I’m not worried about these guys at all. Even if the record doesn’t work at radio (it may) they’re going to do just fine building their audience one show at a time.
The next day I heard from another artist who found me on the Internet after one of my public speaking to blog post translations: D.A. from the Harvard-educated and on Pharrell’s label Chester French. Chester French has an opening slot on the Lady Ga Ga tour and it turns out D.A. was not only in the same town as us for a Monday night show his tour bus was parked at the same hotel we were staying at.
D.A. is one savvy guy, far from your average bear, and runs his own Salesforce.com setup to manage his band relationships with everyone from press to fans. He hands out cards every night with his URL, TellMe number, Twitter URL, and an email address that automatically adds people to his Salesforce setup.
Not only that, but he hustles on the street selling CDs after every show. People who saw them play, people who didn’t, passerbys, anyone who will give him $5 in exchange for a CD.
So yes, I encourage you to support these artists: follow Halestorm or D.A. on Twitter, pre-order Halestorm or Chester French’s upcoming releases. But also, watch and learn. These artists aren’t waiting for someone at the label to make them a priority (though I think both are priorities for their respective labels). They’re using the tools, doing the work, connecting directly and building real relationships with fans. That’s as close to a silver bullet as you’re going to get.
ps - I am posting this mid-flight, BOS to LAX, Virgin American Air. Wifi and laptop power in the sky! I’d like to say it feels futuristic, but really it just makes the past feel primitive. For anyone who is curious what the bandwidth is like, here’s the result of a speed test.
