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SandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxIssue 98 | 4th December 2013

MUSIC MARKETING FOR THE DIGITAL ERA

Sweden and Norway are bucking the trend by dramatically growing their recorded music incomes and by doing so through streaming. In countries where downloading is now a digital niche, this has enormous implications for how music will be marketed. It is no longer about focusing eff orts for a few weeks either side of a release but rather playing the long game and seeing promotion as something that must remain constant rather than lurch in peaks and troughs. The Nordics are showing not just where digital marketing has had to change but also why other countries need to be paying very close attention.

INSIDE…

Sweden and Norway are bucking

Nordic lights: digital marketing in the streaming ageCampaign FocusPAGE 5 : Interactive video special >>CampaignsPAGE 6 : The latest projects from the digital marketing arena >>ToolsPAGE 7: RebelMouse >>Behind the CampaignPAGES 8 - 10: Primal Scream >>ChartsPAGE 11: Digital charts >>

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 2

continued…

In 2013, alongside ABBA, black metal and flatpack furniture, Sweden is now also known internationally for music streaming. It’s not just that Spotify is headquartered in Stockholm; streaming has also famously turned around the fortunes of the Swedish recorded music industry. In the first half of 2013, recorded music revenue in Sweden grew 12% year-on-year to SEK 499.4m (£46.5m), with digital accounting for 75% of total revenue and streaming accounting for 94% of digital revenues.

This is a trend that Sweden shares with Scandinavian neighbour Norway, which itself saw a 17% rise in recorded music revenues in the first half of this year, with streaming accounting for 66% of all revenue.

“Streaming in Norway and Sweden is now over 70% of music revenues and the total market is increasing for the first time in a decade,” says Kjartan Slette, head of strategy at Norwegian streaming service WiMP. “Our projections show that the total music market is likely to get back to the all-time-high levels we saw in 1999/2000 – before Napster launched – by 2020 or sooner.”

Andreas Ahlenius, commercial director of Universal Music Sweden, adds, “[In Sweden] streaming is no longer a question of, ‘Will this be good for us in the future?’ It’s what finances our investment in new talent. Most artists in Sweden sell very few CDs, but that’s

CEO of Sweden’s X5 Music Group, explains. “The marketing is substantially di� erent as you get paid when people listen, not when they buy. You get as much money when people listen the second time as you do the first time, so there is a huge benefit in promoting your albums constantly. The launch date is less important now. The activation is equally important.”

This, he believes, may be key to artists getting a reasonable return from streaming services. “Many artists in the business say, ‘I don’t get enough money from Spotify’,” Lagerlöf says. “I normally then ask two things: ‘What have you done today to make people listen to your tracks?’ Normally the answer is a bunch of questions: ‘What do you mean? Why? What shall I do?’ And the answer is: ‘You or your record company shall activate them and remind them to listen again.’”

The playlist is now one of the strongest weapons in the arsenal

The knock-on e� ect of this battle for streams is that playlists have become ever-more important, especially as labels recognise their importance in driving streaming plays.

OK; they still get gold- and platinum-certified singles and albums based on streaming revenues [adjusted].”

Streaming is changing entirely the marketing narrative

As you might imagine, these two Scandinavian countries have seen envious glances from many international music businesses, not least the UK where streaming has yet to make up for falling music sales. But Sweden and Norway don’t just o� er a possible future for the wider music industry: the fact that streaming is so advanced in these two countries means that it has become part of record company marketing plans there in a way that the UK and US can only dream of. There is a lot to learn, then, from what Sweden and Norway have done.

On a very basic level, the rise of streaming in Norway and Sweden has helped to break the music industry cycle of falling revenue and falling investment, as Slette explains. “First of all the increase in sales and the following positivity has lead the labels to increase their marketing and investments in new talent,” he says. “Going to work today I often see billboards and outdoor ads with music releases in the prime locations. That was not the case just two years ago.”

Naturally, this shift has also significantly impacted marketing plans as Johan Lagerlöf,

Kieron Donoghue, founder of Playlists.net, a playlist-focused music discovery service for Spotify, says this has led to the rather bizarre experience of seeing Spotify playlists for Swedish hip-hop advertised on the Stockholm Metro.

“Record companies in Sweden are pushing streaming in above-the-line advertising, on billboards, on the Metro, bus stations even TV advertising,” he adds. “Universal Music’s [fan-facing music playlist service] Digster service has been advertising on TV in Sweden, advertising it as a hub to find curated playlists. What it builds on is the fact that record labels are making good money from streaming so they can a� ord to go and get more users to their playlists.”

But labels in Sweden and Norway aren’t just putting money into above-the-line advertising for streaming: they are also

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 3

putting significant resources into their own playlist services. “For the cleverer labels – mainly Sony and Universal – when you look at their profiles on Spotify, they are really prolific curators of playlists,” says Donoghue. “Sony Sweden has half a million followers on Spotify. That is bigger than a lot of artists. They are using playlists as a tool. They typically have 80% to 100% of their own artists on there.”

The contrast with British labels is marked: Digster Sweden’s ‘Fresh’ playlist has 109,000 followers, while the UK Digster ‘Hits’ playlist has 4,000 and Virgin EMI’s ‘Music On Monday’ just 29. “They have a long way to go,” says Donoghue of British labels. “But playlists are a new format and a new currency – and the Nordics realise this. Over here [the UK] it doesn’t really happen.”

These marketing tricks are now being exported…

This is not to say that the British music industry isn’t learning. Playlists.net recently did a competition with Kobalt Label Services for the Pet Shops Boys’ single ‘Thursday’, which invited users to compile a seven-song playlist on Spotify – one for each day of the week, including PSB’s ‘Thursday’ – for the chance to win Spotify Premium subscriptions and assorted Pet Shop Boys gear. The competition received close to 200 entries,

with ‘Thursday’ going to the top of the Playlists.net top 100 chart of most playlisted songs on the week of the competition. More importantly, perhaps, the label saw a 60% uplift in streams of ‘Thursday’ because of the competition.

Beyond playlists and above-the-line advertising, labels in Norway and Sweden are also advertising within streaming services and working with these services on ways to boost streams. WiMP, for example, worked with Sony’s Thomas Dybdahl – “one of the bigger Norwegian artists” – to release a special version of his ‘What’s Left Is Forever’ album for lossless streaming service WiMP HiFi, including commentary and unmixed sound.

This interaction between labels and streaming services also extends to sharing data on how consumers are listening to music. Labels can then use this to improve

their marketing, according to Sony Music Norway commercial director Aslak Bendtsen.

“As a streaming service can o� er us more detailed data on how the music is consumed, we can set up more accurate marketing activities with regards to the di� erent segments based on age, gender and media consumption,” he explains. “With the consumer most likely being online already, the road into consuming music on a streaming service is completely changed from a marketing perspective compared to previous visiting record store habits.”

The buoyancy of the music industries in Sweden and Norway is hard evidence that this progressive attitude towards streaming is paying dividends in a cold, northern corner of Europe. Slette says he now sees evidence that Denmark may be the next market to follow.

“I see it now beginning in Denmark as it is catching up fast revenue-wise on streaming,”

he says. “Other territories are still finding their footing, and with substantial physical sales in many markets still, like Germany, I understand why they are moving more slowly. That said, the ones that get this first will have a huge advantage over the others.”

Ahlenius, meanwhile, believes that all music businesses will eventually

putting significant resources into their own playlist services. “For the cleverer labels –

with ‘Thursday’ going to the top of the Playlists.net top 100 chart of most playlisted

continued…

go through the same transformation as in Sweden and Norway, albeit at di� erent speeds. “I think next year will be the year when more countries and territories will really see massive growth in streaming,” he says. “This will make the entire market grow, just as we have seen in Sweden and Norway.”

… but natural adoption barriers remain

The question remains, however, whether this success can be replicated in bigger and arguably less technologically advanced music markets, such as the UK and the US. And if so, what should labels do to bring this about?

The key, according to Slette, is for labels to bring streaming to the forefront of their thinking. “Don’t treat the streaming services as an afterthought but as an integral part of your communication and plans,” he says. “And, remember, all services are slightly di� erent. Get to know the strengths and weaknesses of the local players and act accordingly.”

Lagerlöf concludes, “Think ‘plays’ instead of ‘sells’. It is not about the first week any more. You need a more long-term plan, but when it works your revenues will go on for a very long time. The entry level to listen to something is lower than to buy something, so it activates users to listen. All they need to do is to click. Get that click.”

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 4

continued…

Music Ally has been harvesting and analysing the data for the Top 50 weekly charts published throughout the year by Spotify. With regards to Scandinavia, it is interesting to see a few trends emerging for the overall volume of streams that make it to the charts. For instance, despite the di� erences in the scale that the service has achieved in each country, we can see a consistent drop in the total number of Top

Playlists.net’s guide to popular Spotify playlists

The “Artist – Best Of” playlist – e.g. • ‘The Best of The Stone Roses’.

The “Genre” playlist – e.g. ‘RnB Party • Playlist’ from Sony Music Sweden. This is updated weekly with new releases and has more than 114,000 subscribers.

The “New A• rtists/Releases” playlist – e.g. ‘The Artists To Watch’ playlist from Sony Music Sweden, which contains tracks from their new and priority artists and is updated regularly.

The “Chart”• playlist: Now That’s What I Call Music releases a weekly playlist containing the hottest 20 tracks at the moment. Topsify publishes charts from the UK, US and Sweden in playlist format. Their ‘UK Top 40’ playlist has 420,000 subscribers.

The “Recor• d Label” playlist – e.g. Ed Banger, Blue Note Legends Of Jazz.

The “TV/Mo• vie Soundtrack” playlist – e.g. ‘Mad Men: Music From Seasons 1, 2 & 3’.

The “New A• rtist” playlist. “Playlists are a great way to introduce a new band to our audience,” says Donoghue. “The reasoning being that if the artist creates a playlist of their influences then people who enjoy those influences will probably like the new artist.” He adds, “A great

50 streams between mid June and early August, with an average decline of 11%. This picks up again between mid August and late September, climbing an average of 24%. Although this data only corresponds to the tracks that make it to the charts, we assume that it is an indicator of an overall decline in Spotify consumption during the summer holidays.

example of this is the monthly playlist that indie folk group The Daydream Club produce. Each month they publish a playlist of tracks and artists that they like. They now have a small but growing fanbase who watch out for their playlists each month.”

“Established arti• sts such as Rihanna and Robert Plant can also use playlists to introduce new artists or to increase streams of labelmates by producing playlists and then waiting for the fanbase to engage and listen,” Donoghue explains.

The “Occasi• on” playlist – e.g. ‘Now That’s What I Call NYE’.

The “Top….” play• list. The ‘Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time’ playlist and the ‘Xfm Top 1,000 Tunes Of All Time’ playlists have more than 95,000 and 84,000 subscribers, respectively.

Playlists.net B• randed playlists – e.g. the ‘Weekly Top 100 Tracks’ playlist, which is updated each Monday with the most popular tracks from all playlists over the last seven days. It has 55,000 subscribers.

Playlists.net als• o has new release playlists for most territories.

Find out more about our Spotify analysis on http://smarturl.it/MusicAllySpotify50

Cumulative Top 50 Spotify streams per week, 2013

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Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 5

CAMPAIGN FOCUS: Interactive video special

Interactive music videos have certainly been in vogue this past month, with releases from Bob Dylan, Pharrell Williams and Bombay Bicycle Club all grabbing our attention. Interlude is the team behind Bob Dylan’s latest interactive video for the track ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, originally released in 1965. (An interactive version of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ in 2010 was customisable and shareable on Facebook.) The video, released on 20th November, allows fans to play an active role in the video as they have the power to flip through 16 di� erent TV channels while the various people and celebrities in the di� erent formats all lip sync the lyrics of the track. This makes the experience individual for every viewer.

The video coincides with the release of Dylan’s Complete Album Collection: Volume 1 boxset, with a limited edition version coming in the form of a harmonica-shaped USB stick. It is a very well executed video that makes the passive act of flipping through TV channels (which fewer of us are actually doing) engaging for the viewer.

Just a few days after the Dylan video was released, Pharrell Williams launched his own interactive video – billed as the first 24-hour music video. The video is for ‘Happy’, a track featured in the Despicable Me 2 movie and it features ‘civilians’ as well as celebrities such as Magic Johnson, Steve Carell and Jamie Foxx dancing along the streets of LA. Pharrell himself appears in the video every hour. The viewer can choose to pause the video or move it to any time of day, while the music keeps playing. They can then share the video on social media sites as well as buy the track via the iTunes link featured on the website.

The site’s comment section collates all the social shares so that other viewers can see the posts. The site has currently (as of 3rd December) had just over 4.6m views in just over a week, which is an impressive number, even for Pharrell. The video is a simple concept but shows how simple sometimes is just enough. The viewers can hunt for celebrities in the video or take on the challenge of watching the whole 24 hours. This helps make it a creative way of attracting fans as well as keeping them interested in one track over a longer period of time.

Finally, Bombay Bicycle Club and Powster have collaborated on an interactive video for the band’s first single, ‘Carry Me’, from their forthcoming album (set for release in February). The viewer can act as a director and control the band’s movements in the video by swiping the mouse to the right or left in order to make the people on

screen (either the band or the dancers) perform di� erent actions. The video is, in some ways, reminiscent of the Subservient Chicken ad made by Burger King way back in 2004 where users could type in di� erent commands to make a man in a chicken suit perform those actions.

Guillermo Ramos from Island Records talked to us about the campaign. “It’s been a huge success,” he said. “In two weeks we’ve had 250k unique views and a dwell time of 8.25 minutes – equivalent to almost two full video views per visit.” He added, “Having spoken to creatives across a range of fields outside of music, I know this has reached their radar, even if they weren’t previously aware of the band. Always a great sign.”

Videos where bands engage and encourage fans to take charge aren’t uncommon. Earlier this year, Keane, Bastille and Sigur Rós all did similar things with their crowd-sourced videos compiled from fan photos,

annotations or video clips. It has been popular for bands to create interactive videos for a number of years, but will the wow factor decrease as the number of videos increase?

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 6

CAMPAIGNS: The latest projects from the digital marketing arena

Sinfi ni Music advent calendarSinfi ni Music has created a Christmas countdown calendar celebrating its best releases from the past year alongside off ering prizes for everyone participating. The calendar is created by Bristol-based digital agency Prettygood and is available through the Sinfi ni Music website. Sarah Roberts, spokesperson for Sinfi ni Music, told us that Mark Lewis, marketing manager for the company, wanted to create a digital tool using the run up to Christmas to increase awareness of Sinfi ni Music among new and existing classical music fans.

The calendar was promoted via subscriber emails as well as through Facebook and Twitter, where participants could also share their entries. This is something Sinfini Music expects to be used as participants spread the word about the features, prizes and opportunities. The competition is easy to enter as the contestants are only required to fill out their contact details to have a chance to win.

The prizes include Spotify Premium subscriptions, a Sonos system and other exclusive features like the latest composer animation in the ‘Lives In Miniature’ series. This opens up the competition to both classical music lovers as well as others new to the genre. When signing up, the contestants are also agreeing to be signed up for regular email updates from Sinfini Music.

Roberts told us, “It is an opportunity to showcase the benefits of signing up to the eCRM database through exclusive o� ers and competitions.” The advent calendar is a timely way to raise awareness of Sinfini Music and classical music. It also may be a necessary step in the move to digital as the advent calendar encourages people to interact with classical music online and not just by purchasing physical CDs. The e� ectiveness of the campaign remains to be seen as it’s not certain how many of these sign-ups will stay throughout next year.

Robbie Williams Swinglist competitionRobbie Williams’ new album, ‘Swings Both Ways’, was released on 18th November and Playlists.net launched a competition asking fans to put together swing playlists in order to win a six-month Spotify Premium subscription, alongside assorted Robbie Williams prizes such as signed DVDs, albums and other merchandise.

The playlists have to be created on Spotify and must include at least one song from the new album. They can then be submitted via Playlists.net using the ‘Robbie Williams Competition’ genre. The winner will be chosen directly by Robbie Williams himself. The competition was promoted via Robbie Williams’ social media sites as well as the Playlists.net newsletter.

The company has previously been successful with these types of competitions, having launched a Pet Shop Boys campaign recently. The purpose of that campaign was

to raise awareness and streams of the Pet Shop Boys track ‘Thursday’ and that resulted in a 60% increase of streams over the competition period.

Playlists.net founder Kieron Donoghue informed us last week that the Robbie Williams competition had about 68 entries (out of around 1m active users on the service) in its first three days. “It is a good number considering the users have to put in quite an e� ort creating the playlist via Spotify and then upload it to Playlists.net,” he said. The competition ends on 15th December.

Two months ago Sandbox wrote about Veronica Maggio’s Spotify campaign that resulted in a new wave of plays (39% increase) of her old single on Vevo. Playlists can be a way of gaining fan attention as well as using the newer streaming models to generate more revenue for artists, especially in the Nordic countries where it dominates digital revenues (see cover feature for more on this).

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 7

TOOLSRebelMouse

This fortnight we look at social media aggregator RebelMouse, founded in January 2012 by former Huffi ngton Post CTO Paul Berry.RebelMouse aggregates users’ profiles across major social networks (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, etc.) into a neat, dynamic page. The resulting mash-up has a rather sleek design and works across all major browsers, tablets and phones. Although some layouts resemble Pinterest, pages can be designed to match any website’s look and feel. The company does not seek to compete against established social networks, but instead focuses on pulling content from all of them, minimising work and recycling social output e� orts.

Unlike any old social aggregator, RebelMouse allows users to move or freeze bits of content around – so for instance you can pick a specific Tumblr post to stay at the top of your RebelMouse page. The company o� ers di� erent themes and also allows users to embed their page on any website, as well as power a domain of their choice. The interface also includes a sign-up box for viewers to enter their e-mail addresses in order to receive a daily newsletter with the top aggregated social content.

One of RebelMouse’s most prominent clients in the music industry is DJ Paul Oakenfold, whose o� icial website features his aggregated social output in the homepage. The startup can also be used on the side for special events and one-o� campaigns. For example, the Wall Street Journal set up a RebelMouse embed dedicated exclusively to Fashion Week on the publication’s

own domain. Aggregating hashtagged tweets by specific reporters, the resulting page featured an attractive and image-heavy look (and one which demanded far less work than clipping tweets into Storify). Other companies and big brands using RebelMouse include Fox, GE, NBC and Patagonia.

UK-based band The Hoosiers recently integrated RebelMouse into TheNewsFromSomewhere.com, a separate domain from their o� icial website which ties into their latest release, ‘The News From Nowhere’. In talks with Music Ally, The Hoosiers’ manager Erik Nielsen stated: “what I like about RebelMouse is that it’s really intuitive, straight forward, easy to setup and works well. It does so much more than anything out there – I once looked for something similar and ended up being quoted something like £5,000 to have it developed”.

In its free tier, RebelMouse provides users

with a URL on the company’s domain, as well as the possibility to embed the front page into their own domains – albeit with RebelMouse branding. USD $9.99/month gets you unbranded embeds in addition to more advanced controls and CSS customisations. The company provides basic analytics and arguably there is not much need for more, as users can already tap into the data of their respective social profiles. RebelMouse quotes enterprise clients on a case-by-case basis, o� ering further editing and design customisation, social graph data, native advertising campaign creation, API access and high-end support amongst other features.

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 8

BEHIND THE CAMPAIGN Primal Scream

More Light was Primal Scream’s fi rst album in fi ve years and also the fi rst since they left B-Unique Records/Atlantic Records. Released as a JV with Ignition Records, the band had to start much of their digital marketing from scratch, building an email database and a Facebook presence, as well as an offi cial site, from the ground up. Nick Moxham, digital manager at Ignition Records, explains how remix premieres and live shows were key to data capture and why a partnership with Tumblr off ered far more than breathing space until the offi cial site went live.

This was the fi rst album that the band, in a career stretching back almost 30 years, put out by themselves

The band had left a major [Atlantic/Warner for the Beautiful Future album] and had done a big campaign around ‘Screamadelica’ for its 20th anniversary in 2011 [with Sony]. They wanted to take back creative control and put something out on their own label. It worked for them to partner with us. We do a partnership whereby we give them all the functionality of a label and they license it to us – but actually it comes out on their own label and they have quite a lot of control over the creative, the assets and the approach.

What we did to begin with, in terms of the schedule, was the single ‘2013’, which we took to radio in February. That was a nine-minute epic tune. The video for ‘2013’ was directed by Rei Nadal and based around seven di� erent short films. We created loads of content from those seven short films and focused on Tumblr as the hub for that.

The campaign started without an offi cial site for the band so Tumblr was used as the hub

They had a very simple website for the Screamadelica campaign but there was no o� icial band website. We were on the back foot in trying to get one sorted, so they decided that Tumblr was a good idea and

that was a hub for the content while the website was being launched. We had a very simple holding page with the ‘2013’ video on it and put up loads of stills and short animated GIFs which Tumblr was very keen on. They helped us significantly on that and helped to launch the feature on their music.tumblr blog and they featured some of the content in their music discovery page.

The first single was in March and the album came out in May. The track ‘It’s Alright, It’s OK’ led into the album and had a radio premiere on the Chris Evans breakfast

show on Radio 2. We coincided that with an online premiere of the audio and we worked with Tumblr on that. Because they had got involved with us right from the beginning of the campaign, this was our moment with them.

There is a feature on the Tumblr dashboard called Radar. It opens a great little creative panel on the bottom so everyone who goes on Tumblr sees that feature on that day. It gets between 6m and 8m impressions. They premiered the audio on that section online and that gave us huge reach. We had around

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 9

150,000 plays within the first 48 hours. That used the SoundCloud API. We not only reached a lot of people but we also managed to get that stat right up which helped with taking it into other media platforms.

Working with Facebook to convert legacy ‘likes’ to the offi cial band page

We inherited their Facebook page and it had around 40,000 fans. If you had previously liked the band on your [Facebook] profile, it automatically set up a page and made you like it; that was when they first started bringing in Pages. We were able to work with Facebook and get them to convert all the likes from that legacy page onto the o� icial page. It was around three times the number of likes that brought us up to roughly 135,000 fans. We had to work with that audience to improve engagement. As there were these seven di� erent short videos within the ‘2013’ video, there was a lot of varied content that was good to seed.

Building up a new email database that the band will own

The other thing that was a challenge for us was that when we started working with the band they had no email database whatsoever. Sony had a list of around 7,000 names that we could access but couldn’t really control. They wouldn’t give us the data

but we were able to send a couple of emails to that database. From the beginning we started to generate that data.

We had an Andrew Weatherall remix of the single and he is an important part of the band’s history – so there was a lot of interest in that from the fanbase. We o� ered anyone who signed up to the list a first listen to the remix. We were able to then get people to sign up via social media and the website. We mailed the Sony list, asking people to sign up to the o� icial list, telling them they would get the first exclusive play of the Weatherall remix.

Because we were starting from scratch we were able to get high quality data. We got emails, first name and location so we were able to personalise the mailer somewhat. We were also able to use dynamic tools in the mailers to segment them and make them much more relevant to people. Say, for example, a piece of video content wasn’t available in Germany, we would be able to send the same mailer but with that element removed or changed. With the messaging around the pre-order of the album, we were able to send tailored messages depending on where they were just by using MailChimp.

You don’t want to bombard people with sales messages so we made sure with every sales message there were three or four bits of content on there. Because the list is new and we’ve been able to work it properly – i.e. not bombarding fans with sales messages, premiering new content, targeting content by location to keep it relevant etc. – we see an average open rate of 51.2% and a click-through rate of 17.1%, which are both massive.

Using live to drive email sign-ups and steer the social media conversation

To continue to grow the email database we had a number of initiatives. There were guestlist competitions so fans could get on the iTunes Festival guestlist [when the band played in September] as well as a Benicassim guestlist. There is a lot of demand for when they play live so we used that demand to help us generate data.

The other key thing we did was work with CrowdSurge on a great ticketing lottery tool where people who signed up get first information on the tickets and then we could pick the winners at random. That was very e� ective.

They weren’t touring but they did a lot of festivals over the summer. It was a bit of a problem as they weren’t really playing around the album release. There was talk of doing a one-o� show but it never happened.

150,000 plays within the first 48 hours. That used the SoundCloud API. We not only

but we were able to send a couple of emails to that database. From the beginning we

continued…

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 10

backstage photos and four tour videos. Nokia Lumia is providing the hardware [Nokia Lumia 1020 Windows Phones] and resources to enable it, as well as additional reach via their own channels.

We also did a Gold Pack partnership with Spotify, where we provided them with a track-by-track audio commentary – which was taken from an interview with the band – and playlists from the band. In return they enabled a series of push notifications about the new music via their mobile app, which is an excellent and highly visible way to reach fans via mobile, their desktop app homepage and coverage on their mailers.

partnership in the bag but it unravelled very shortly before we were going to do it. There were di� erent options of giving exclusives to people and di� erent people had di� erent priorities in terms of it being available in di� erent countries. So we decided to go with YouTube just because of the availability of it and the fact that it has 1bn active users a month. We also were able to control our messaging around that.

We did four di� erent videos – one for each side of the double-vinyl release of the album – and we got someone to make a video of the actual vinyl going round. They animated it and you could skip between the tracks using video annotations. We released those once every 12 hours over two days. That gave us the opportunity to go back to our audiences and make a splash and that helped to improve the reach. We were able to get fans to embed that all over the internet and then take it down the day after the album came out.

Partnerships with NME, Nokia and Spotify extend the reach of the campaign

NME are following the band on the road during their UK tour and the Xfm Winter Wonderland show in December. They’re creating a series of content pieces around the tour – such as a pre-tour photo shoot and interview, an on-the-road feature, live and

Later… With Jools Holland. It was really using digital marketing to drive the conversation around that.

We did a Teenage Cancer Trust gig at the Albert Hall in March. We used that as a great way to generate content. As Noel Gallagher was curating that show, we were able to share content between the two artists’ forums. That was useful for both parties.

YouTube became the focal point when a pre-stream partnership fell through

We were thinking of doing a pre-stream of the album up front and we had a big

They did the BBC Big Day Out in June, which is Radio 5 Live’s big event at the Liverpool Echo Arena. They headlined that and the whole show was played out on 6 Music and 5 Live. They also trailed that across all BBC platforms prior to the event.

The other one was Glastonbury where they played just before The Rolling Stones. We used the announcement of them playing Glastonbury to get in among the discussion. When the announcement was made we did a promoted tweet and a promoted Facebook post to make sure their name surfaced among those online discussions. The other live stu� was The Jonathan Ross Show and

Later… With Jools Holland. It was really using digital marketing to drive the conversation

They did the BBC Big Day Out in June, which is Radio 5 Live’s big event at the Liverpool

continued…

Issue 98 | 4th December 2013 | Page 11

MUSIC CHARTSOnline in numbers

AC/DC ‘Highway To Hell’With the news that the X Factor winner’s song is once again in the running for the Christmas #1, the internet is awash with scheming to derail it and “do a Rage Against The Machine” by trying to hype a rival track up the charts. This year, AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’ is the one being put forward. The tie-in Facebook campaign began in the first week of November. Total plays on Last.fm,

Robbie WilliamsThe release of his latest album, Swings Both Ways, and a series of high-profile interviews (Q cover feature, The Graham Norton Show) coincided with the race to have the 1,000th #1 album on the OCC’s chart. His biggest spike in Wikipedia was on 10th November – midway between his swing show at the London Palladium and an appearance at the Hammersmith Apollo

All data is taken from Musicmetric: www.musicmetric.com

YouTube, Vevo and Myspace stood at 184k on 30th October but accelerated to 686k on 7th November, holding around that average for five days. It’s biggest spike was 773k on 13th November but thereafter it’s fallen (albeit with a few minor spikes) suggesting that the campaign has perhaps peaked too early to be a serious challenger in the race to #1 for Christmas.

as part of Children In Need Rocks. There was another spike a few days after that and then another on 24th November, the day his album went to #1 and became the o� icial 1,000th chart topper in the OCC’s history, a rare incident that obviously cannot be planned for in the marketing but, because of its sheer serendipity, gives the campaign an unexpected boost.

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