We were hoping today’s post would be a tribute to England’s great triumph over Germany. We were prepared to scour YouTube for the best (or worst) English football chants we could find, like the controversial crowd favorites “Ten German Bombers” and “Two World Wars, One World Cup”. But not even a stadium full of rousing anti-Deutschland chants could save England during the match this past weekend.

Instead of dwelling on the past or arguing over missed goals, today’s post is dedicated to our German friends. It’s an inspiring story about a German pop song, a parody football song, and a few lucky university students who landed a record deal.

It all started back in May, when 19-year-old singer Lena Meyer-Landrut won the Eurovision Song Contest for Germany. With over 18 million YouTube hits, her song “Satellite” has become an über-hit:

Not long after the Lena phenomenon, some clever university students wrote new lyrics to the song in honor of the German football team, and recorded “Schland o Schland”:

Their music video went viral and was hastily removed by EMI, the rights holders of the original song. But it wasn’t long before Lena’s label, Universal Music, saw the potential for this song and struck a deal with this new “band”, Uwu Lena (after the German football star Uwu Seeler and Lena).

“Schland o Schland” has become a fresh new football anthem, but will the band’s fame last beyond 15 minutes? They’re probably just hoping Germany stays in this World Cup as long as possible…

Charlie McCarron
twitter.com/soundlounge

Special thanks to Spiegel Online for their coverage of this story.

German Football Fans Win a Record Deal is a post from: soundlounge

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A slightly different look at the value of sonic branding…I recently applied for tickets to see Aerosmith at O2 this summer. The face price was quoted at £140 and the lead singer Steve Tyler is not even in the line up! This whole business of the price of tickets seems to be following me around. My manicurist(!) a big gig fan challenged me the other day with ‘You are in the Music Business, why do we have to pay so much to see the bands nowadays?’ From my perspective that is an easy one to answer – if we are not paying anything or anywhere near enough for downloads (and please don’t get me started on THAT whole debate), then the bands have to make money somewhere for their art and the easiest place is live performance and merchandising.

So this morning whilst reading the paper and eating my breakfast, I was more than interested to spot the headline “Pink Floyd in Victory to stop EMI selling singles”. It would seem that PF have successfully won the argument that when they originally made their albums, they had a contract with EMI that specified which tracks could be released as singles.

‘The dispute centred on a line in the contract stating, “There are no rights to sell any or all of the records as single records, other than with [Pink Floyd’s] permission”. EMI claimed that this applied only to physical copies of songs, but the band argued successfully that it also applied to songs sold online. The judge said the purpose of a clause in the contract was to “preserve the artistic integrity of the albums”‘.
The Times 12^th March 2010

For what it’s worth, I have to say that I am fully in agreement with PF. The original albums were developed and released as a whole, with an idea being developed through out the 10-12 tracks that enabled fans to get an insight into where they were thinking, feeling or going as a band at the time of the release. Any singles would have been on the basis of the band having artistic control over what they wanted us to know about them or what they wanted to emotionally underline. Arbitrarily breaking an album is almost like taking a book of photographs, tearing out the pages and selling them separately, or editing an hour-long documentary and giving us 3 min sound bites. Yes, they make sense and can exist on their own, but they do not tell the whole story.

Pink Floyd are one of the superstar bands that have survived the test of time – a brand in their own right. They have sold more than 200 million albums during their career and have been one of the EMI’s most lucrative acts. How many other superstar artists from the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties will now be thinking the same thing: ‘Did I approve single tracks to be sold as single downloads?’ As I write this, I think I can hear the rustle of old contracts being hauled from storage and the sound of lawyers rubbing their hands. I actually have some sympathy for the record companies – we need to remember that they haven’t always been the bad guys and did a great job developing artists when we were all buying music. But it would seem they are now paying dearly for their short sightedness when Steve Jobs offered them ridiculously low royalty rates on each download as a way to take on piracy. At that moment in time they were holding all the cards i.e. all the content for a delivery platform that would have been obsolete before it began, no matter how beautiful the design. The repercussions of that decision are just beginning to reveal their hand. And as someone who avoids litigation at all costs, I have to say that I wish them luck. It’s about time someone stepped up to the plate and said NO, that’s enough.

Ruth Simmons, CEO
soundlounge

Another Brick in the Wall is a post from: soundlounge

Sound Branding, Brand Alliances With Music, or Branded Entertainment, call it what you like, these are effectively a form of advertising disguised as: a game, event, sponsorship or hospitality. Midem, the largest international music convention dedicated several sessions to that almost Holy Grail, ‘How Can Bands and Brands Work Together?’ So it is not surprising that some serious players from the brands were invited to take the stage, from Nokia to Coca-Cola (‘Top Brands talk Music Strategy’ and ‘Converse, Pepsi and Cornerstone talk Music Marketing’). Music and Brands are big business. According to the Association of National Advertisers, in 2006, the top 100 US advertisers splashed between $150 million and $2 billion just on sound-enabled media, such TV ads and the Internet. In the UK, it is estimated that in 2008 the production spend on acquiring copyright music for synchronization, that is the right to choose a well known track and use it in a commercial, hit £60m ($98.8 million). Current predictions are that in the next decade, advertisers will be looking to invest an eye-watering $240 billion on branded entertainment.

With marketers freely admitting that music makes up 50% of the total consumer experience, it may have been a little surprising for the Music Industry to learn from Emmanuel Seuge of The Coca-Cola Company “The music industry is much more open and willing to find new creative models in the way we interact with them…but at the same time it’s much more complex. The management of the artists are more smart marketeers than I am! They have a real vision of what they want to do with their artists, and the artists themselves have a point of view. Aligning everyone on a shared view is the challenge.”

This brave comment goes straight to the heart of the issue and it may be some consolation for Emmanuel to learn that he is no alone. Whilst 63% of Brand marketers use music, 56% have no idea how to measure the use of sound and music and 20% don’t even try (Resource Association of National Advertisers).

So having heard from the Brands – it was the turn of the Music Industry to take the stage. Management giants like Chris Morrison from CMO Management (Blur, Gorillaz, Grace Jones and many more) had some very important things to say about bands and brands. Morrison agreed that Brands will be involved in some of his artist projects with a word of warning: “You have to be very careful about branding – there’s a great danger of music being corporatised at this point, and I see things that certainly worry me considerably.” When asked what kind of things Morrison is seeing that he doesn’t like: “The Duffy Coca-Cola ad was abysmal, and Robbie Williams on T-Mobile was terrible…You have to be very very careful with how you associate with brands.”

One thing is for sure, simply slapping a brand logo on stages is very different to becoming true partners. And with an increasing number of events and artists now wanting to enter the dialogue and the projected figures brands are willing to invest, we have to be talking real music strategy rather than just brand involvement. We know that just like any relationship, it will need trust, honesty, shared values and vision and that will mean a shift to what can I do for you, from WIFM. Then Emmanuel, we can start to get real alliance round the table.

Ruth Simmons, CEO
soundlounge

Brands & Bands: Enough Dating – Let’s Have Some Commitment. is a post from: soundlounge

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Music is one of the most valuable tools at an advertiser’s disposal. In 2006, the top 100 US advertisers splashed between $150 million and $2 billion just on sound-enabled media, such TV ads and the Internet, according to the Association of National Advertisers. In the UK, it is estimated that in 2008 the spend on acquiring copyright music for synchronization hit £60m ($98.8 million).

But brands have worked to understand how a particular target group, with shared values and aspirations, forms a loyalty to a specific brand. They have figured out how to manage and measure how we respond to color, texture, lighting, and other apparently visceral stimuli. So is sound simply the next frontier?

For the full article, please click here.

What Every CMO Should Know About Music is a post from: soundlounge

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In September 1998, two young students from Stanford University registered a small, private company in a friend’s garage in California aimed at giving web users across the globe a more informed and wide-ranging choice when it came to searching the internet. Google fast became the perfect platform for businesses, organisations and individuals from all backgrounds and industries to promote, display and advertise their services. The search engine, with its simple interface and user-friendly design gave people, whether technically savvy or not, access to the world wide web – a place that for the last decade had been mainly the preserve of the geeks and hackers. The now multi-billion dollar brand began life giving a voice to the ‘everyman’, encouraging linking and communication, and helping to expose a fat cat culture now so heartily disliked.

So what happened to this refreshing young business whose very existence relied on creating a place of fairness, equality and inclusion? Well, put simply, it started to grow. In 2004, when Google was first floated on the stock market, the search engine was valued at a massive $23 billion. Its stock performance over the following years excelled with shares hitting $700 for the first time in October 2007. Today, Google continues to impress as one of the most powerful brands on the planet. But despite its ‘fun demeanour’ and unofficial company slogan of ‘don’t be evil’ a darker side to this seemingly unstoppable internet force has recently emerged. Over the years, Google has become embroiled in a series of controversies relating to the privacy of personal information, censorship and most significantly copyright.

In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired video sharing website YouTube for massive $1.65 billion and insisted that the move would “provide innovative and exciting services for our users that will add a new dimension to on-line media entertainment”. Speaking at the time, Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer at the company, said: “We look forward to working with content creators and owners large and small to harness the power of the internet to promote, distribute and monetize their content.”

So, three years on, is Google struggling to uphold this pledge to support these ‘content creators’, which include, of course, professional producers? It would seem so. Earlier this year YouTube, which remains the largest video sharing community on the internet, began to block user access to music videos from the UK. The site’s existing deal with the PRS (Performing Right Society) had come to an end and the pair had failed to reach an agreement on a new one. The decision by Google sent shockwaves though the music industry which accused the company of using bullying tactics to prevent producers – already struggling to find revenue streams to develop young and aspiring musicians – from earning their fair share.

And it seems that it’s not just the UK’s internet users that look set to feel the pinch of Google’s inflexibility. As from last week the search engine no longer allows users with German IP addresses to watch music videos on YouTube, after similar negotiations broke down there. In his recent blog for wired.com, technology journalist Eliot Van Buskirk summed up the situation by stating there was a “huge gulf between what GEMA (Germany’s music royalty organisation) wants, and what Google is willing to pay”. He added: “Google seems to think the music business needs YouTube more than YouTube needs the music business and so it would rather block music videos from Germany than pay GEMA’s proposed rate”.

So could this be possible? Has Google really become so all-powerful that music artists need it more that it needs them? And has the music industry, once the ultimate fat cat, been reduced to the new underdog? The latest figures suggest not. According to the YouTube Report 2009 a massive 61 per cent of internet users, including almost 80 per cent of males under 25, visit the video sharing website purely for ‘entertainment’ purposes. Further, if we look at YouTube’s All Time Most Viewed list music is the clear winner, reflecting 51 per cent of the top 70 most watched videos. Of those asked, 31 per cent of YouTube users visited the site to watch new music videos while 23 per cent wanted to see their favorite band. Another 15 per cent used the site to check whether a favorite band had uploaded videos. Few, including Google, can argue the significance of these figures. Without access to music videos, visitor numbers will start to plummet and without an audience, advertisers will be quick to jump ship.

Figures or no figures, it is difficult to ignore the changes, which Google as a brand has been through as its wealth and power have increased but how bad has it really got? Does its treatment of music artists put it on a par with corporations who pay mean wages to third world countries because they can and because the workforce in that country is reduced to a take it or leave it culture? Unlike most of the real world, the online community is generally one that supports fairness, with the web acting as a forum to rally against the fat cats. This online community in many ways owes its very existence to Google but now the boot seems to be on the other foot.

While we all love a bit of Google-bashing now and again it is perhaps easy to forget that that the company and the web in general has done wonderful things for the music industry. Although some music producers see the internet as a threat, we must remember what the development of modern technology has actually allowed us to do. Growth in audio technology means anyone with a laptop and connection can not only make their own music, but also to distribute across the globe in seconds, a feat that even a few years back would have been deemed impossible. What Google must keep in mind is that its value as a website is in the community it creates and that the loyalty of much of its YouTube audience is down to the talents of musicians.

Google is worth a massive £5.6 billion so to withhold even a small amount from the artists which have helped make the company one of the most successful on earth seems a little unreasonable to say the least. If Google’s own intellectual property rights were infringed upon or threatened in anyway it would take action without question. This is not a complicated area. Everyone is entitled to protect their intellectual property including young musicians and small bands. The web world is already aware of Google’s power as a brand but if it continues to exploit musicians YouTube looks set to quickly lose a large percentage of its audience. Google has the potential to do great things for music but fundamentally it needs to start by giving the artists what they deserve.

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Music Copyright In A Digital World is a post from: soundlounge

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Music production is evolving. Upcoming artists are turning from record companies to the Internet for financial support from investors. But what does this mean for music licensing and music copyright? soundlounge explores the changing world of making music.

It’s a lifestyle that millions aspire to. Private jets, five-star hotels, adoring fans and a top music production team. But it seems that for an increasing number of upcoming artists the reality of forging a career in the industry is far from the glamorous existence of times past. Like many other sectors, the music production industry is being forced to adapt to a changing economic and social climate. Gone are the days when a talent for singing or instrumental skills was enough to get a band noticed let alone to the top. Now artists are increasingly adopting a head for business and taking an entrepreneurial attitude towards their profession.

A recent article in The Times newspaper explores the impact of this growing structure within the music market citing the emergence of websites such as sellaband.com and slicethepie.com. Unveiled in 2006, sellaband.com supports upcoming bands by encouraging them to sell ’shares’ in their group to investors. Bands which successfully sell 5,000 parts are then rewarded with their own producer, studio time and support from industry experts to help them record an album. Similarly slicethepie.com allows bands to raise money directly from music fans and gives them the chance to be involved in the music production process. Fans who invest in their band or artist can earn money reviewing tracks as well as enjoy perks such as free album copies, their name on album sleeves and a share in the financial returns from record sales. Slicethepie.com has also essentially created a stock exchange of its own, allowing investors to trade shares of their music between other holders within the market domain.

Although slightly different in their processes, both websites hark the dawn of a new ‘free-market’ approach to music where fans have a different kind of control over the success of their favorite artists. Speaking to The Times, Martyn Shone, guitarist for UK band Honey Ryder revealed he and the band’s singer Lindsay O’Mahony had been selling shares for £3,500 each. “Shareholders receive a dividend on future profits on CDs, downloads and licensing deals,” he told the newspaper.
So what does the introduction of these new approaches mean for UK music as a whole? It may be wrong to claim they represent the development of a new platform within the music industry. Rather, they are almost like an online casino where venture capitalists can gamble over the possible success or failure of a particular band. Despite this, it would be a mistake to ignore the impact that this kind of music production will have in the future. Honey Ryder told The Times that much of their group’s revenue will come from songs being played on television and film soundtracks. But could selling off music rights on a shares basis complicate the business of music licensing and music copyright clearance?

Currently, the principle contractual rights owners of a song are the publishing companies who own the intellectual property rooted in the musical composition and whoever owns the master sound recordings – be it the record company, studio or musicians themselves. These new business models raise interesting questions regarding who would hold sway if a large number of people each owned a ’slice’ of a song. Could a situation arise whereby 100 stakeholders needed to be consulted on the terms of a deal or licensing agreement? And on whose shoulders should the final decision-making rest? Have we solved the problem of music investment only to be faced with another – namely one of who has ultimate control over a piece of music?

Whatever the future holds for the industry, it is important that artists continue to look carefully at their contracts to ensure they retain the moral right and absolute consent for any secondary clearance of rights, such as synchronisation for advertising or film. Without this, companies such as soundlounge that facilitate and place music in advertising may find it harder to reach a deal for a desired song – and bands could miss out on additional revenue streams and new platforms to make themselves heard by a wider audience.

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Music Production in a Changing World is a post from: soundlounge

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It’s a fact of life that businesses often receive more telephone calls than they can handle at the same time. But being put on hold remains a frustrating experience, writes Ruth Simmons, MD of music branding consultancy soundlounge.

A recent poll by The Consumer Association suggested that 48 per cent of the UK population object to hold music. People may have accepted call holding as a fact of life, but it seems that impersonal or inappropriate music can actually worsen their frustration.

Hold music tends to be sourced in one of five ways:

• Well-known tracks that have proven their popularity in the charts
• Library music written for general commercial use
• Music that is especially commissioned
• Music that is now out of copyright and in the public domain
• Music from radio stations

But with these options come problems. The music industry doesn’t make it easy, with five possible clearances required depending on the music source. Instead, many companies are opting for a one-stop company to handle all of the issues. This involves a blanket licence and an annual fee, which in itself will be the cheapest way to purchase the service. What it can’t do, however, is allow the business a real choice of bespoke music.
Other companies are simply plugging into the radio. While it has the advantage of being the simplest form of licensing, there are obvious downsides. The music is random, and DJs’ time checks will remind callers how long they have been waiting.

If we were to reframe the whole concept of call holding, not as a way to keep the caller at bay, but as a real customer touch-point, then we could start to look at how we might use it as an opportunity to build a relationship and engage with that person on an individual basis.

To do this, you’ll need to identify clearly why your customers are calling you. Someone who is calling to complain will not want hear an uplifting anthem; but on the other hand, New Age music may not have the pacifying effect that you intend. Customers are a savvy bunch and know enough about music to realise when they are being manipulated.

Secondly, the ability of music to connect at a profound emotional level should be considered, and exploited. Using a jingle that just passes the time is as wasteful as buying outdoor advertising and leaving the site blank.

When brands choose music that matches the customer’s profile and likely mood, they may take a step towards soothing the frustration normally associated with being put on hold. But when they choose music that reflects and reinforces all the perceptions the brand has worked hard to achieve, they may just find that they will connect at a whole different level and be forgiven for that one short period of holding.

Original text from growthbusiness.co.uk

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Don’t Leave Me Hanging On The Telephone is a post from: soundlounge