Your band can absolutely make it in the music industry. But things are much different as of even 5 years ago. Artists dreaming of being signed to a major record label might just need to reconsider. Just like CDs, this tradition is going away. It is an exciting time for any developing artist where your entire career is at your control!

Major Record Labels are a Myth of the Past

It is always interesting to hear folks still talking about the devilish major labels, hoarding profits from their recording artists. Digital music has absolutely leveled the major labels. Let’s take a look at the head count at the now four major labels (pending Universal’s aquisition of EMI) according to LinkedIn (as of 12.11.2011):

Universal Music Group Employee count:
2,765 employees globally
48% is General & Admin (interns are grouped here), 26% Research & Development, 23% Sales & Marketing, 3% Executive Leadership

Sony Music Entertainment
3,288 employees globally
48% General & Admin, 26 R&D, 23% Sales & Marketing, 5% Executive Leadership

Warner Music Group:
1,179 employees globally
55% General & Admin, 21% Sales & Marketing, 20% R&D, 4% Executive Leadership

EMI:
1,505 employees globally
45% General & Admin, 26% Sales & Marketing, 25% R&D, 4% Executive Leadership

These are the employee counts from the four major record labels, globally, as of December 11th 2011 on LinkedIn. There are of course a lot of variables here and this should be a rule of thumb measurement, but lets look.

- What if someone works in the music industry but isn’t on LinkedIn? I’d like to think that most everyone is tech savvy in the music industry and also would like to broadcast that they work at a sick label / distributor. Let’s add 5% to the total head count for those folks who are not LI.

- Someone was laid off without changing their profile. Absolutely, deducting 5% from total head count.

- The admin levels dominate each percentage, what’s the deal? Keep in mind that the General / Admin levels also include interns. There are a ton of interns in this category and again, who wouldn’t want to broadcast they are in the music industry, which is why I’m deducting 75% from this category.

There are 5,526 Major Record Label Employees Globally

These are major corporations and the labels releasing all of the records from American Idol, MTV, Starbucks exclusives, etc. These are the biggest companies in the music industry, but with such a small workforce.

The total job count is alarming. If you’re working at one of these labels right now, you’re going to be the smartest person in the room. Clearly it is a really small industry where only highly intelligent people are hired.

The Internet has Leveled the Playing Field

Artists, you will need to find your own way with SEO, Social Media, and Analytics. What an exciting time!

Now you own everything that you record, your ticket sales, practice times, what you play at shows, social media plans, T shirt & merch revenues, publishing rights & revenues, SEO plans, and the list goes on for everything that you do as an artist. Now you can communicate directly with your fans online and build a strong relationship that can lead to revenues.

You’ll have complete control over your career. With hard work and by engaging your fan base online you can grow. By publishing content on the WWW you have the same opportunity to get found online as any of any artist on a major label. Building a strong voice is important to making it in the music industry. This is a much smarter way of doing business by earning and growing your career without any middleman. How have you been successful in an age without major labels?

The digital music companies have a much different workforce that the physical / CD companies. What are the demands of these new digital jobs, and where do the old physical ones go?

Distribution centers would produce CDs based on initial demand. To get the CDs to the CD stores you had account mangers selling the CDs to music buyers. Truck drivers would drive the CDs to the record stores. Record labels would vie for those high trafficed end caps in all of the CD stores and purchase the space.

Reps would trek into the stores to ensure the CDs were positioned on the end caps. Print ads, radio, various online sites would send folks to pick up the record at the store. Analysts would analyze sell through at the store and anticipate reorders. There were a ton of smart folks working on this process. But it is so 2001. Some guy named PerezHilton suggests 2012 is the end of the compact disc.

Digital Music Industry Jobs

So what are today’s music companies looking for in their workforce? Engineers and developers. These are the folks that create the products, often really complex products. The founders of a company will dream up a new product and the developers will bring it to life. Reverbnation creates tools for artists to share there music online. Currently, Reverbnation is only hiring developers.

The streaming service Spotify is also hiring a ton of engineers. According to LinkedIn 39% of the 365 person company is dedicated to developers. Another music streaming company, Rdio, is also hiring a handful of developers. The Echo Nest is a music intelligence company based here in Boston transforming the way we interact with music. They recently inked a deal with EMI to bring its catalog to their vast network of developers; The Echo Nest is hiring developers.

Various levels of marketing folks and account managers are also needed. They’ll work with distributors, labels and content owners to carry their content, and position the best or most affordable content where it will sell, very similar to how the physical folks worked with the record stores. All of these positions must be in tune with how people want to consumer music and make that delivery happen.

Legal & content folks will bargain really complex copywrite and payment structures from either owning music like purchasing from iTunes, or streaming music from YouTube or Spotify.

Reporting and analysis are also components for content owners.

It seems like it takes a much smaller, and different skilled workforce to manage digital music than physical music. This is probably true for a lot of media industries in transition. The printing presses have halted for many local newspapers and been downsized for the major publication companies.

For those folks looking for work in the music industry there is plenty of competition for a highly skilled / technical workforce. The music industry is very, very tiny. And these great companies can afford to be selective and hire exactly what they are looking for in skill set & personality because there are a lot of intelligent folks looking for work, and who wouldn’t want to work for a company like Spotify!? But overall, old media is drying up. What new companies will influence the music industry?

Myspace put social media on the map. It was so important for artists, providing a new way to connect directly with fans, and fans a new way to access music. It was easy for many artists to invest all their time and marketing efforts into Myspace because of all of the hype and amount of users. It was easy to track plays and gauge the popularity of your band. But it’s clear that you can not put all of your time into social media; you need to be able to control your online presence by maintaining a website and using this as your home base.

Direct Fans to Your Website

Your home base is where you direct all of your traffic. This needs to be your website.

Much like social media, actively contributing content to your website including videos, tracks, blog posts, interviews, etc, you’ll earn the trust of new followers. The difference is you can control your website because you own the domain. Not only can you customize it the way you need, unlike social media sites, you won’t be at the mercy of social networks once the fad is over.

This way, when social networks fade, like Myspace, you’ll be able to protect your web presence and won’t be hit by declines in traffic to that social network. Not like Facebook or Twitter are going anywhere soon, but at one point we all thought the same about Myspace and that its reign would never end. Well, it has.

Myspace still commands a huge 27M unique monthly user base, but check out this sad, sad graph. Just like CD declines, there is no bottom in site for Myspace.

Due to the amount of links Myspace has acquired over the years, Myspace will continue to rank for your artists name in the search results. Myspace commands an incredible 6.10M links. Links can represent up to 44% of the reason that a site will outrank another. Many artists had directed all of their new fans to their Myspace page which helped tally more and more links, but these should have gone toward their individual webpages.

Social media is important for artist development and growing your fan base. Don’t get me wrong, artists NEED to continue connecting with fans on social media, but it shouldn’t be your home base, even though SM is fun, too.

Artists, get credit for your hard work and own / actively contribute to your website.

Technology has forever changed the way that artists connect with their fans. Consumers are searching for new bands and learning about music online. Now artists can build strong bonds with fans by communicating directly with them. This is why search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing and analyzing your online presence is so important.

Artists will develop their careers through effective online marketing. These are the new rules of artist development.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is optimizing your band’s web content so that you can get found online. At the root of SEO is creating content, then optimizing it. Many artists understand the value of producing and adding content to YouTube with show or music videos, photos to Flickr, MySpace and Facebook, as well as Tweets to earn new followers.

It is also important to optimize this content. Artists need to integrate keywords that they want to rank for into their photos and alt text, landing pages, social updates, anchor text. Google has a great research tool where you can see on average how often your band is searched for as well as target new search terms to rank for.

Landing pages should have 4 keywords per page. The title tag is most important, then h1, alt text and on page text. Targeting long tail searches is important These are more specific searches like “Jawbox Breathe MP3″ instead of “Jawbox” will yield better returns because this is further along in the buying cycle. Understandably, you’d want to rank for the term music, which gets x amount of searches / month. But up to 80% of your site traffic will typically be from these long tail searches. This is how consumers are searching online. Sometimes paragraphs are entered into the Google search bar!

In addition, directing traffic to a home base, your website, is key. MySpace has fallen from the top as the place to market your music. Many artists invested plenty of time and energy into their MySpace presence, but the web moves fast and new services have emerged. When you own a website you at least control it. This way, when social platforms you’ve invested time on ebb, you’re at ease because you spent more time on your home base.

Links from other important and authoritative sites are the most important ranking factor for your website to show in the search results. Links can represent up to 66% of the reason one site outranks another. You can see who is linking to your site with Open Site Explorer.

Social Media Marketing

Connect directly with your fans. No more label to build advertising strategies and you can control your brand and message. There’s no way that you can mess that up, right?

Artists produce a lot of content. From touring videos to Flickr photos to tracks on MySpace, it’s easy to think that you should blast out all of this and only this content as frequently as possible because you are promoting your band. Or, asking people to follow you page. Don’t. This will come across as an ad because you’re not offering an audience any value. This fills streams and you’ll get unfollowed because again there is no value here.

Artists need to earn the trust of new followers by publishing content that is valuable, and relevant. Post all of the things mention above but layer in other updates that empower fans, or, yes, even talk about a similar artist. Anything of value.

Analyzing Results

The music industry is filled with so many creatives making Amazing music. Analyzing the online presence can often get overlooked. After all, its up to an indie artist to manage every facet of their career. Things move quick.

Analytics should be the foundation of your brand. Artists need to look at what keywords fans are searching to reach their band’s website (keywords represent up to 15% of search rankings), what sites are linking to their site (up to 44% of search rankings), what content to publish on their social platforms to get the most engagement and reaction.

Measuring social media content is still in it’s infancy. Looking at frequency and timing tweets, influencers that spread messages, which days to post, mining through text to see if there are patterns that encourage more shares. Nerding out, really.

These, as well as a host of other metrics, can help artists figure out what is working. Recognizing where you can grow is how you will earn more fans.

When combined, SEO, social media, and anayltics are very powerful. These are the new rules of artist development.

You have your Tweeps (Twitter followers), your Likers (Facebook fans), your MySpace Friends, Diggs, Pings, Stumbles, Reddits, Delicious bookmarks, YouTube and Vevo views, etc., etc. All of this social media connecting is really awesome, but what does it mean for you as an artist?

Social media has earned a spot in all artists’ marketing campaigns because they can connect directly with fans, but the metrics to measure success are still in their infancy.

There a couple of different ways to look at analyzing social media; first, how it is building your overall brand, and second, the actual sales or conversions being generated. In this post we’ll explore both so you can see exactly what specific social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc., are doing to sell your stuff.

The first is a little abstract, but goes hand in hand with growing your fan base and converting new fans in purchasers. The branding element includes metrics like reach and sentiment. When more folks engage with and talk about your band, the more opportunities you will have to gain new followers.

10 Metrics to Measure your brand with Social Media

1. Authority: This measures the amount of times you’ve been retweeted, reblogged, reposted.

2. Frequency: How often do you message your audience? Timing your messaging is important. Do you get more engagement during the evening or in the morning?

3. Text patterns: Mine through the text of your social media updates. There might be patterns in the way you speak to your audience that trigger more reaction.

4. Reach: The reach identifies the total number of unique social media users who received your updates. You can analyze with free tools: tweetreach.com, backtype.com and youropenbook.org.

5. Influencers: These are the folks talking about your band. Looking at the follower count is a basic way to determine this.

6. Sentiment: Listen to positive, neutral, and negative comments. Address negative comments and engage the sender. Taking the time to interact can go a long way.

7. Total clicks: Content is often shared based on headlines; these influence clicks and analyzing can help build better titles. The URL shortener bit.ly has a great analytic platform.

8. Overall mentions: Record the number of times your act is mentioned online with the aim to grow these conversations by providing your fans with sharable content. More conversations means more viewers. Google Alerts and Twitter Search are great, free, real-time tools that enable you to listen to your audience.

9. Content, and competitive content analysis: What type of content gets the most engagement?  Is it YouTube videos or blog posts? Compare your content strategy with other like minded bands to see what is valuable to publish.

10. Influence: Your number of followers per social platform. This is mainly a trending metric to gauge popularity.

Analytics to Track Sales From Social Media

Artists might have sent a Facebook update about a new release to 15,000 fans and wondered how many of these folks picked up the album. Let’s look at a more scientific way that will tell you exactly what social media is doing to sell the stuff on your website. For this you’ll need to use your web analysis tool. Google Analytics (GA) was used in this example.

There are 3 things you’ll need to do to get set up: establish a goal, set up a funnel, then create a custom report. By following these steps you’ll be able to track what social media site a visitor came from, and if that visitor signed up for something like an email newsletter, or purchased an album or t-shirt.

1. Establish a Goal: A goal is a webpage that signals a conversion, an action taken on your website. It can be a visit to your “about us” page, a “thank you” pop-up page from an email newsletter sign up, or a “thank you” pop-up page from a t-shirt purchase. To set up the goal, go to your GA home page and hit “edit.” Next, under “Goals (set1)” click “+ Add Goal.” You’ll see a screen that looks like this:

Give your goal a name so you can find it easily in your reports. My example name is “Email Conversion.”
Leave the “Active Goal” on and “Goal Position” Set 1, Goal 1.

Under “Goal Type” choose “URL Destination.”

Under the “Match Type” choose “Exact Match”

Input your URL for the goal page without your domain into the “Goal URL” section. For example, for the goal page “http://www.mysite.com/thankyou.html” enter “/thankyou.html”

If you’d like, you can enter a Goal Value. I put $50 for the value of an email newsletter sign up, assuming fans will purchase this amount of merch as a result of signing up for the emails.

Click “Save Goal” at the bottom of the page.

2. Set up a Funnel: A funnel is the path that consumers need to take on your website to complete a goal. To get to an email newsletter sign up, for example, consumers might need to go through multiple pages. List those pages in the funnel, just below the “Goals” section. Again, the URLs should not contain the domain name.

In your GA dashboard you can click on “Goals” to see your conversions (data can take up to 24 hours to register). Now let’s make a custom report.

Almost done…promise!

3. Create a Custom Report: Under “Goals” in your GA dashboard there is “Custom Reporting.” Click that button, then “Manage Custom Reports.” Hit “Create new custom report.”

Under the blue “Metrics” tab drag and drop “Goal1 Completions” and “Goal 1 Conversion Rate” into the blue metric boxes on the right side of the page.

Then, under the green “Dimensions” tab drag and drop “Source” and “Referral Path” into the green dimensions boxes. This will define all traffic sources so you can see what social media sites sent traffic to your website and picked up your stuff.

Finally, click “Save Report.” You’re done.

To view your reports go to “Custom Reporting” on your GA dashboard and click on your report. Analyze daily to maximize

Now when you send out a Tweet to let fans know new T-shirts are available, you don’t have to wonder if Twitter helped sales; you can turn to your custom reports and find out for sure. Happy analyzing.

It’s over. The Rapture didn’t happen. Some folks are surprised, many more are not.

At the root of The Rapture was Harold Camping, an American Christian radio host on the Family Radio Worldwide. He predicted The Rapture would take place on May 21, 2011. This is the second time he used Biblical proofs to predict that the world would end.

During The Rapture God would elect a faithful 3% of the earth’s population that would enter heaven, leaving the rest of the world in a zombie drenched abyss on May 21 2011, followed by the end of the world 5 months later on October 21, 2011. Harold was incorrect, and has now revised the ultimate apocalypse to October 21, 2011. Yikes!

This first prediction got some folks to do some wacky things. On craigslist, one person offered to watch your pets for $50 (no refund if The Rapture doesn’t happen, of course).

How did all of this occur? What made this spread further than those other sensational stories? Harold sold his story. We all believed that Harold thought The Rapture would actually come true. The preposterousness of the idea tingles nerves, and amuses us in a way only some crazy dude can. Its got one of those freaky sci-fi names, too. Ultimately, an insane story like this is built to share.

How The Rapture Spread Online

Folks took to their social media profiles to share the good word. The Rapture spread online like wildfire. Harold’s website was tweeted an overwhelming 24,216 times since inception, according to backtype.com. Tweets of course peaked the week of 5.16 – 5.23 with 4,551 Tweets mentioning his website.

The search term “end of the world may 21st” reached the second position on Google on May 21st. As you’d expect, Harold Camping was in one of the top slots as well.

Family Radio is also ranking for popular search terms like “judgement day” and “end of the world.” These searches were especially popular around May 26, 2011.

Many of his YouTube videos have since been pulled. These received millions of views.

Harold earned 32,547 links from 1,355 unique domains to his website that looks like it was built in 1999 on GeoCities. From a search engine optimization perspective though, its huge.

This shows us that being sensational works. Folks love to share sensational stories. Artists can be sensational, reach new fans and integrate their music into online searches, similar to this Rapture phenomenon. It just takes that one spark. But, Harold is now regarded as a person that is “off” in a variety of ways. In addition not many trust him, even some devout followers. So, in your marketing efforts, be sensational on occasion, but you shouldn’t be obnoxious.

Zombie Repellent

For Harold and company talking about the next apocalypse, there is one true zombie repellent. The spray, the preparedness zombie kits, etc, might not have success. Virtually, Tomb Raider was on to something. Hopefully it never comes to this, but a handy sawed off 12 guage would likely have better results.

Music 2.0 is an annual event held at the Microsoft NERD where Boston operated business showcase emerging tools and technologies that can help artists and managers transform the music industry.

The second Music 2.0 was a great example of the Boston music community coming together to present their forward-thinking achievements. Music 2.0 was put together by the very talented Charlie McEnerney.

There were 16 companies that presented on April 20th. This is a quick Music 2.0 roundup, highlighting just few of the many important conversations. A full exploration can be found on Georgy Cohen’s blog.

MicControl

Co-founders Jon Ostrow and Chris Taylor noted that artists need to stand out in the right way. It isn’t about what tools you’re using but how you’re exercising them. These newer technologies do 3 key things, network, build relationships, and engage. It’s also important to keep a consistent branding message so new fans can identify you. The name empowers everyone in the music industry.

ZMX Music

Owner Eric Ziering said that the music industry as a whole is changing, but there are some areas that aren’t; one area is sheet music. ZMX Music is a direct to fan product where artists can integrate a widget on their social media platforms or websites. Before, artists would get low margins for their sheet music dealing with the larger publishing companies.

It was interesting to learn that sheet music is a $600 million dollar a year industry! Eric mentioned that the sheet music industry is in disaray. His company really is reinventing the sheet music industry.

Ryan’s Smashing Life

Ryan Spaulding helps bridge the gap between artists and their followers on his blog. He has been building relationships, and adds this is the most part for an artist, since 2005 when he started his music blog. Ryan closes by saying, “where other bands fail…that’s your opportunity.” Right on.

Moontoast

CTO and Co-Founder of Moontoast, Marcus Whitney works with great brands to monetize social. Moontoast helps artists set up a store in their social platforms to sell directly to fans. It offers an analytics platform that reports sales and store impressions, paving the way for artists to figure out what social media means for their brand. The like button has changed the way we interact on the web. Moontoast shares to 14 different social networks.

Mike King

The Director of Marketing at Berkleemusic is focused on direct to fan marketing, engagement, and acquisition. He talked about the Wu-Tang Clan and presented some great case studies where artists managed their own direct to fan marketing campaigns with measurable results.

One concern raised was artists using social media as a primary storefront over their website. I think there is more long term value using a website because great products will earn inbound links, which represent 66% of the reason one site outranks another online. Facebook has an incredible 4.2M inbound links, and will normally appear in the top 10 SERPs for an artist, but will only normally rank by searching for an artist’s name. In addition, it is nearly impossible to properly optimize an FB profile to increase conversions like you can with a landing page.

Nimbit

After presenting at the first Music 2.0 in Boston, CEO Bob Cramer and VP Carl Jacobson provided a 5 minute update on their status and continued growth and client roster. Nimbit is a direct to fan product that provides a way to easily manage a music career from one place.

A lot has changed since I first started in the music industry 6 years ago with Fontana Distribution (the indie arm of Universal Music Group). It is such a short period of time, but their have been so many disruptions to traditional music channels, followed by digital advances, including digital music consumption outpacing CD purchases in 2010.

I’m excited for what lies ahead and these companies are dedicated to figuring out what the new music industry will look like.

Charts are an important component of the music industry; there is a lot of fragmented data floating around. Record and ticket sales are no longer the only indicator as to how an artist is doing. What do all of those artist Tweets, Facebook Likes, and Vevo Plays mean?

There are some great companies dedicated to figuring out how all of the exposure translates into artist branding, and sales. The major recording artists often rule these graphs, but these music industry charts can be informational for developing artists to follow and try to mimic a success story.

4 Artist Trend Tools

1. Ultimate Chart -

The Ultimate Chart is the work of BigChampange, a media measurement company, that searches the web including Facebook, Pandora, iTunes, and offline sources like MTV and Clear Channel for data. Their complex algorithms sort through online and traditional channels. It is updated weekly to give music consumers and artists a great read on how an artist is engaged overall.

You can segment by Songs and Artists. Factors include Sales, Radio, Online Watching & Listening, Fans Friends & Followers. Each category is scored on a clean scale out of 100 points. An “Ultimate Score” is also assigned each week. The top 100 artists are ranked in the “Ultimate 100.” Believers in this great chart could live or die by their weekly scores.

The Ultimate Chart also records a Song’s or Artist’s chart over a 5 week period.

2. Next Big Sound -

An artist monitoring tool that lets you track fan engagement across a variety of sources, online + offline. There is a wealth of data in the free reports ranging from “New Fans” on social media, “New Plays,” “Views,” including Wiki views. This tool can help artists figure out what type of content to create to grow fans and followers.

Interestingly, NBS monitors new comments. Comments are important for artists to listen to and improve their brand, as well as search for text patterns to include in SEO strategies. Comments shows how consumers are thinking about and searching for your band online.

There are tons more options to segment data by, 7, 30, or 90 days, as well as comparative features with like minded artists. Register for alerts to have weekly reports sent to your email.

Next Big Sound also feeds their reporting to Billboard to produce Next Big Sound 25, a developing artist report based on accelerated social trends, and Social 50, the top 50 artists across social platforms.

3. Billboard Music Mobile App -

Billboard has developed a mobile chart accessable on the iPhone and Android device. It is a free download. Users are able to see the top 10 artists for a number of categories including “Hot 100,” “Billboard 200,” “Digital Songs,” “Tastemaker Albums,” and more. Beyond the top 10 requires a small monthly fee, with access to a few other categories.

Within the categories you can see “Last Week’s Position,” “Weeks on Chart,” and “Peaked.” In addition, you can sort from week to week. Its a nifty mobile trending tool.

4. The 100 Million Views Club -

This monthly chart is put together by Visible Measures, an online video measurement firm, composed of the most-watched viral videos of all time. Turns out, music videos often populate the chart. The analysis is supreme compared to YouTube or Vevo views.

Visible Gains is committed to figuring out what online and viral videos mean for businesses and brands. The True Reach measures original and fan created videos, views from both forms of content, as well as comment sentiment analysis. Another complex algorithm, this one helps analyze the value of online and shared video. The True Reach is included on each of the videos in this chart.

What trends are you following?