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 MUSIC MARKETING TIPS, MUST-KNOW SKILLS & ESSENTIAL NEWS
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Hi <<First Name>>, and welcome to The Knowledge – Music Ally's weekly rummage around the bric-a-brac of the modern music industry. This is the newsletter that sang "one pound fish!" all day after watching this mashup of a fish-seller's sales patter. Below are highlights of the news, analysis and learning that make up our industry-standard subscriber services

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This week's Knowledge – in-depth and at-a-glance:


📬 BULLETIN NEWS: Roblox is sued in $200m copyright infringement lawsuit
💡MARKETING: YouTube Premiere Playbook
👩‍🎓 LEARNING HUB: Social Commerce– Selling on active fan channels
🌍 GLOBAL EXPERTS: making stand-out artist brands in a hyper-competitive world
🤔 A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA... Our favourite unusual stuff found online this week
 
Note:  Ⓜ️ = link to Music Ally subscriber content
📬 BULLETIN NEWS: Roblox is sued in $200m copyright infringement lawsuit

Games platform Roblox has millions of enthusiastic users, and hosted a number of high-profile album launches. But now the company is facing a battle with music publishers over licensing, with some big implications for how music is used in creative platforms like Roblox.
 
🎧 TL;DR? Listen to Music Ally journalists Stu and Joe discuss this Roblox suit and how music is being used in modern platforms in the Music Ally Focus Podcast.
  • The US National Music Publishers Association sued Roblox on behalf of a group of publishers, seeking at least $200m in damages for “Roblox’s unabashed exploitation of music without proper licences”.
  • This is generally about user-generated content (UGC) – not artist performances or album launch parties on Roblox – but rather the games being created by the Roblox community.
  • Users upload ‘custom audio’ to their games pay a fee and Roblox claim that mods review every sound file.
  • Roblox pushed back strongly: "We do not tolerate copyright infringement ... we use industry-leading, advanced filtering technology to detect and prohibit unauthorised recordings."
  • Roblox appears to have two options: step up its music monitoring and fight the lawsuit, or agree a deal with the NMPA. The history of such disputes suggests a deal is the likeliest outcome.
A more complex and nuanced agreement may be needed for platforms like Roblox in the future: users expect to be able to seamlessly piece together games using pre-fabricated 3D objects – and will want licensed music to be part of this virtual toolkit.

👉 Music Ally archive: Roblox and NMPA
🎧 TL; DR? Listen to Stuart Dredge and Joe Sparrow give brief, deep analysis of important music business stuff in the Music Ally Focus Podcast

🚀 Each episode is as long as it takes a rocket to reach space (about 15 mins): it's the perfect podcast for space cadets who like music biz analysis!
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💡MARKETING: YouTube Premiere Playbook

Youtube offers dizzying depth of content (500 hours of video uploaded each minute) and breadth of fan access (over half of music fans regularly watch music videos on the platform). It also means that uploading a great music video is not enough – artists must reach the fans that care and build excitement too.

YouTube now offers extra video Premiere tools to whip up hype, pull fans in, and cement artist-fan relationships. Below are some basic takeaways on how to do it – and in Sandbox issue 268 Ⓜ️, we explain how to get the most out of Premieres:

  • Give fans exactly what they crave: artists have an opportunity to easily create a special “communal moment” with fans using a YouTube Premiere
  • Have something to sell: show off new merchandise during video premieres and sell it immediately through the platform
  • Build buzz: use YouTube’s Live Redirect feature before a Premiere to build excitement and create a more lasting experience
  • You don’t have to do Premieres on your own channel: media partners are very useful collaborators for premieres – for the right kind of music and audience.

👉 Read the full Sandbox guide to getting the best out of Youtube Premieres here Ⓜ️ 

🥇Hey! Help us get better: would you like The Knowledge to be different?🥇
 Longer – More sections, with more topics 
 Shorter – fewer sections in each email 
 More news – and more analysis of the news 
 Actually, it's fine as it is, don't change! 
🌍 GLOBAL EXPERTS: making stand-out artist brands in a hyper-competitive world

Music Ally’s Global Experts Panel is an international group of industry leaders, and each month we ask them a vital question – and what should happen next.

In 2021, an artist's brand is more important than ever. There are more artists competing for fans’ attention and more music too – Spotify say that 60k tracks are uploaded every day. Good songs will always be the vital starting point, but what else do you need to do to cut through?

So what do our experts say? Well, here's one insightful response, from Sandra Croft and Henriette Heimdal of CD Baby – and then read all of the Experts' answers here

💬 "Instead of using your artist brand as the primary influence to engage with your audience, recognise that your audience must be influential in their own right. Celebrate your fans as their own influencers of your artist brand, and engage in external initiatives [...] get to know your fans, encourage your fans to better get to know each other, and provide spaces where a community of your fans can form. When you lead by serving fans, you don’t limit their influence, you empower it."

👉 Our other info-packed Expert Panels are here.

Learn with us: For over a decade, Music Ally has upskilled people in all levels of the music industry: from major label teams, to Indies, managers, and DIY artists. Our Learning Hub is designed so that everyone – from students to CEOs – can get the edge they need. Always up-to-date with the newest digital marketing knowledge and future-facing strategies: Music Ally trains the best to be the best.
👩‍🎓 LEARNING HUB: Social Commerce– Selling on active fan channels

Shopping habits are changing. Social commerce – selling stuff via Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok – is a $89.4 billion market that is expected to grow to $604.5 billion before 2030. Our Social Commerce module shows you how to best sell physical and virtual products on these platforms.

Why should you even care about Social Commerce?

  • Meet your customers where they are: music fans spend a lot of their time on social media, so it makes sense to sell an artist’s products there.
  • Social commerce reduces friction in the path to purchase, with the whole shopping experience inside the app – from product discovery to checkout,
  • All the big digital platforms are pushing this: Instagram included a "shop" button into its home screen when they redesigned the app's interface.
  • For Gen Z and Millennials buying products on Instagram is normal. It's a natural fit to discover products because of its highly visual nature – and the shopping experience on Instagram is effortless and seamless.
👉 The Knowledge subscribers get a jaw-dropping 50% DISCOUNT on our Social Commerce module. It walks you through setting up shopping on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, with examples of artists who have used social commerce creatively – so you'll maximise your D2C business.
🤔 A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA...

And finally… our daily Bulletin newsletter is loved by subscribers for its instant industry analysis - but secretly, the part they like most is the ‘A Little Something Extra’ section at the bottom of the email. Here's a few of the best recent links and a couple of Knowledge extras:
🌎 Key alternative platforms for global music marketing  🌎 
 
To unlock international or niche audiences, you'll need to engage with platforms that you may never have used before. If you want to ride the short-form video craze in India, you’ll need to get to grips with Moj, not TikTok; and to build a fanbase in Russia, artists need to grow a genuine presence on VKontakte and Yandex.

In this new Learn Live session, Music Ally will teach you everything you need to know – It's ideal if you or your team need to engage effectively with unfamiliar – but huge – apps, platforms and audiences. It's a paid webinar on Wednesday 21st July 2021 at 5pm BST / 12pm ET / 9am PT.

👉 For pricing, booking and group discounts please contact Anthony.
🆓 GET COMPLIMENTARY ACCESS TO MUSIC ALLY: sponsored subscriptions – giving full access to our news, reporting and analysis – are available to people who work for independent labels, artist management, or music publishing companies. To find out if you qualify, please contact rocio@musically.com.
Music Ally is a knowledge company for the global music business. See our recently launched Learning Hub which contains over 30 videos of up to date and fully certified content. We also offer in-house learning and development as well as marketing strategy and implementation for labels, managers, artists and publishers. Talk to Anthony to find out more or set up a call.
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