There are many examples of the benefits of
working in harmony with nature. When first venturing out beyond home a
child is taught to walk with traffic. A carpenter achieves a cleaner
result by going with the grain rather than against it. In sports a team
succeeds by taking advantage of what the defense gives them, and there
are countless other examples that express why it is better to work with
the flow rather than push against it. For the past ten years the
recorded music industry has ignored this strategy, and stubbornly clung
to a business model that is no longer in harmony with they way people
consume music by predominantly releasing albums in a single song
economy.
According to Nielsen Sound scan, in 2019
there were 1.374 billion digital transactions last year. Of those only
103 million or 7.5 % were for albums. This means that approximately 1
out of 14 times a consumer went to buy music online last year they were
purchased an album. First with Napster and MP3s, then iTunes and the
iPod, and now with streaming services like Spotify and Turntable.FM–the
music consumer has repeatedly demonstrated that they prefer single songs
to albums. Despite this fact, nearly 77,000 albums were released last
year.
Rather than change strategy to work with
this reality, most people in the industry just complained that it wasn't
fair, and continued the status quo. I believe there are several
reasons for this. The first reason is that labels believe they can make
more money selling albums. The second, is that marketing and sales
processes were built for the album system and that makes it difficult to
change. The last reason is because artists believe they are supposed to
make albums either as a musical statement or as validation of their
professional status.
This essay will attempt to prove that all
three of those reasons are not necessarily true, and that selling single
songs can be better promotion ally, artistically and financially for
artists and labels.
Layout of the Song Based Release Strategy
There are three key rules to the successful execution of the song based release strategy.
- Every song is given a reasonable amount of time to stand on its own.
- Every song receives its own unique marketing plan.
- No song is available before it is promoted.
After that there are limitless ways to
release the music. An artist can release a song every week, every month,
every day, or every third Monday. It doesn't even have to be uniform.
It really doesn't matter how the music is released, as long as the
philosophy that every song is important in its own way is embraced.
Why this strategy works promotion ally
Not only do consumers prefer music in a
single format, but the outlets for music promotion are all focused on
single songs as well. Some of these formats are:
Radio: The bread and butter of radio is singles. Album Oriented Radio died when radio started hiring consultants in the 1970’s.
Blogs: Blog
posts are usually about one or two songs. The biggest aggregator of
blogs, The Hype Machine, focuses on songs instead of albums.
Club Promotion: By
definition the DJ at a club or bar will provide a steady mix of songs.
It is quite the rarity to hear a whole album played in a club with the
exception of a listening party.
Syncs for Commercials and TV: For reasons of time, cost, and artistic expression, individual songs are usually featured as syncs rather than albums.
Music Videos: Music videos are primarily made for one song. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between.
The two promotional avenues that focus on
the whole album are preview streams, which have the drawback of lasting
for only one or two weeks, and album reviews. Album reviews have come to
mean less and less each year as newspapers and magazines cut space and
syndicated their copy. They have also lost their main purpose of
previewing an album when consumers can decide for themselves whether
they like an artists on streaming sites. The editor in chief of Spin
Magazine recently cited that exact sentiment as justification for why
Spin would be relegating the majority of their album reviews to
140-character tweets.
In addition to working in harmony with the
promotion outlets currently available for music, there are several
other benefits of the song-based release strategy in terms of marketing.
The first is always having new assets to
promote to the media. One thing that occurred because of the digital
age is content has a much shorter shelf life. The Internet is a
voracious beast and is always hungry for more content. Importance is
placed on newness and exclusivity. In a song-based system there is
always something new to engage the media. If an album of songs is
released you lose that newness factor when pitching for placement.
The second is that it creates a platform
to consistently engage fans. In the current media landscape, attention
is the most valuable commodity. By consistently releasing new material,
an artist has an opportunity to engage their fans much more often than
the year or more that commonly occurs between album releases.
The third is that it gives consumers a
chance to know what they are buying. This eliminates the feeling of
betrayal or trickery when buying an album based on a single song and
finding out the rest of the songs are either poor quality or just not
their cup of tea. The best analogy I can use to explain this is the DVD
compilation release of a TV show. Fans buy a DVD of a show after having
seen the complete season. If DVDs of television series were marketed the
way music albums were, a 12-episode season would have one show picked
to be played on television repeatedly in the hopes that it would drive
people to retail stores to purchase the whole series DVD. It is not an
exact comparison, because of the variety of differences in how the two
are monetized, but I still think it illustrates how bizarre the current
album-marketing paradigm is.
Why this strategy works artistically
First, I want to be clear that this method
doesn't mean that an artist can’t create a full album of songs, or even
a concept album. It only changes the order and format in which it is
released. This results in the album not being fully experienced until
all the songs are released and collected by a fan. The baseline
question that needs to be confronted when evaluating this method is “Is
it absolutely necessary that the first time a fan hears my album is in
its entirety?” If the answer is no, then a song based strategy can work
artistically.
After that hurdle is cleared — and there
should be very few bands that should answer the above question with a
yes — there are several reasons why this method can lead to better
artistic expression. First it forces artists to step up their game. This
method puts every song on a pedestal or under a microscope. The
temptation to phone it in on an “album track” is eliminated. It might be
a little hyperbolic but I hope that it could usher in a new golden age
of songwriting.
The next advantage is release flexibility
and the opportunity to be timely. Presently, there are a number of
obstacles to releasing a song about current events in the middle of an
album cycle. No matter how relevant or great the song is, there is a
tendency to not put full promotion behind it, because the song will not
drive album sales. With the song based method there is greater
flexibility to interrupt the release schedule with a timely or important
song, because there is less financial disincentive.
The last advantage is counter-intuitive in
that it allows great albums to stand out. The true concept albums
become something worth noting. If song based release strategy becomes
the dominant model, and some group has another Sgt. Pepper or The Wall in
them, then it will stand out. If they don’t, and have just another
average album, then they will have given up their shot at sustained
revenue.
Why this strategy works financially
This leads to the most important questions
for whoever has invested in the music. Is the sustained revenue of
singles equal to or greater than the lump sum of album shipments and
sales? In terms of pure revenue from recorded music there is a
relatively simple equation to determine how many singles an artist would
need to sell to equal the money generated from the current combination
of album shipments and individual track sales. This is:
(Album $ + Track $ ) / # Tracks ) /Single Wholesale = Average Sales Per Track)
Using hypothetical sales figures it would look like this:
Traditional album release A
10-track album
50,000 albums x $6.50 wholesale = $325,000
200,000 tracks x $.70 wholesale = $140,000
($325,000 + $140,000 ) /10 ) /$.70 = 66,428 average sales per track
Traditional album release B
12-track album
1000 albums x $6.50 wholesale cost = $6,500
13,000 tracks x. $70 wholesale cost = $9,100
($6,500 + $9,100) / 12) /$.70 = 1,857 average sales per track
After doing this initial equation for
either previous or projected album sales the next step is to look at how
the track sales were divided on previous releases to determine the
possibility of meeting or exceeding the target average sales per track.
As this is a subjective process there is no exact mathematical formula
that will work every time, but I have two formulas that will give a
rough idea of how a release will fare with this strategy.
Formula 1
(Sales of the promoted singles + average of all other singles) / promoted singles + 1
If that number is greater than the average sales per track needed, then a singles based release strategy is probably a safe bet.
Formula 2 (which is really not a formula and only for veteran artists)
Average first two week albums sales = core audience.
If the average of first two weeks of all
an artist’s album sales is greater than the average sales per track
needed then a singles based release strategy is likely worth pursuing.
This method does not work for artists with one album that experienced
great success after a slow build Ala Mumford and Sons.
If, after running the numbers, it is still
not clear what release strategy is best, there are two other financial
incentives to the song based release strategy to consider. First it
eliminates the phenomenon of putting all your eggs in one basket and in
turn spreads out risk when developing an artist. In this case the basket
is the single.
There is nothing worse than the process of
picking a single. In my experience it is usually a bunch of music
executives sitting in a conference room listening to two or three tracks
with their most intense faces, maybe with a couple of head bobs to let
you know that they really feel the music. It is very funny to watch
people try to indicate that their sense of hearing is working.
Then comes the debate. There is a
discussion of what is currently on the radio and how the potential songs
fits in with rest of the music landscape. There is sometimes research
brought in to show what test audiences have thought of the songs. After
that it is gut feel and a bit of magic to reach consensus and a single
is picked. That is it. A half hour in a conference room determines the
trajectory of an entire album campaign in both focus and budget
allocation.
If that single doesn’t work it doesn’t
matter how many people would have liked the other songs the artist
created: they will never get exposure, because of a lack of marketing
funds. The majority of the budget was devoted to creating awareness for
that one single, and this does not seem like a very efficient use of
resources.
The second benefit is for business
arrangements where there are income streams that are not directly
related to recorded music, namely touring. One of the big issues that
bands have is making sure there is something new to promote around a
tour. Song-based release strategy makes it possible to always have
something new for fans and to either be considered for tour packages or
have a story for promoters. By spreading out the release of new
material, the artist will increase the demand for their other revenue
streams.
The last benefit is better management of
manufacturing expenditures. For labels, one of the toughest costs to
predict is the amount of physical albums to manufacture and ship. For
developing artists, manufacturing their first run of CDs will usually
cost several thousand dollars. The song-based release strategy helps
determine what the demand is for the project and consequently physical
product.
Conclusion
This article shows that a song based
release strategy has promotional and artistic benefits, and that it is
feasible financially. There are many factors for why certain artists or
albums succeed and others fail. The release strategy is just one of
those factors and will never be fully responsible for either the success
or failure of an artist. There will be times when it won’t work out,
but the album release system doesn’t always work either. Nothing works
all the time, and nothing is the perfect solution for every situation.
The premise was that it can work, and I believe this shows how it can.
Of course, this can never truly be proven until artists and labels take
the plunge and start releasing their music as individual songs. I hope
they take that chance.
Common arguments against this theory and my responses
When writing this essay I floated the
concept out to many people both in and out of the music industry. I
received several common responses:
1. This will never make enough money if music moves to streaming as a dominant listening habit: If
streaming makes no money, then whether music is released as an album or
as individual songs will be irrelevant. At that point other revenue
streams become more important, and I would argue that the ancillary
benefits of always having something new to promote and to engage an
artists fans still makes the song based release strategy the more
attractive option.
2. It is easier to record as an album:
Agreed, but his strategy does not preclude an artist from recording a
whole album at once, which I know is a much more efficient and cost
effective way of creating music. It is focused on how that music is
released after it is recorded.
2a. But what if all the tracks leak?: This
is definitely the weak point of the strategy. A leak is much more
detrimental to song based released system as it effectively destroys the
advantages of letting each song stand on its own, and the newness
quality when promoting. The only counter I have is that music most
commonly leaks when it is submitted for manufacturing. As manufacturing
is delayed or eliminated in this model, perhaps it would curtail the
practice of music leaks. I am not certain of that though, and it is a
risk.
3. This would kill record stores: There
are many factors at work in the decline of physical music retail. Song
based release strategy is meant to work in harmony with the existing
trends, it did not initiate them. The one positive is that after a
little while record stores would have a lot more data available to gauge
demand. There are many instances of something that was available online
first finding a successful second life in music retail for latecomers
to the band. Radiohead’s album, In Rainbows, is
the best example. After the pay what you want experiment the band
released it in stores and still had a #1 album. This method could ensure
that only the albums with the most demand are in stores eliminating the
phenomenon of shipping platinum and returning gold.
4. This won’t work if you want to go to radio: The
question that needs to be answered here is whether the network effects
of radio play of one or two songs will result in enough artist affinity
to drive sales of the non-radio singles. When coupled with the other
promotional methods for those songs, I think they will. The other
possible benefit of this method would be that radio might go back to
playing a diverse group of songs, as singles will no longer be dictated
to them. Every song is promoted, and radio can once act as a filter
instead of a megaphone.
Pat Savage
http://www.savageroads.com
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