YouTube views for local acts totted up, ranked and compared with the February numbers. There's some surprises...
Who the hell are are these guys? Read on...
Six months ago, just out of curiosity, I researched local acts on video, ranking by most-viewed. It was an interesting exercise, showing how different genres pull in some terrific figures. Six months on, here's a slightly refined repeat exercise.
No such chart is perfect. With apologies to those artists I missed out on six months ago, I've cast the net wider, although this makes ranking some stuff difficult - do Rap Battles count? I've excluded these - but they might make an interesting sub-chart in their own right. I've also charted the increase in views over the past six months, which gives a rough indication of how an act may be progressing. In one case this has led to a spectacular andprobably unrepeatable increase in viewing numbers. The new chart is after the jump.
It set me thinking. It would be lovely to be able to draw up some sort of ‘success index’ that suits and reflects the web-based environment bands work in these days: a concrete way to show the creative and economic potential of our local music scene. Some sort of yardstick would be very useful. But, this being the web, there’s no structure, and there are tons of places to track, legal and otherwise. I’m sure something reasonably effective could be cooked up though, and if anyone’s up for developing it with me, let’s talk.
Back on topic. In the spring, I dug into YouTube views for a while. Strange patterns: some wonderful bands, who I have all the time in the world for, have racked up relatively small numbers, while others, like George Barnett, can boast six-figure views for their material from a standing start this year.
Clearly some people are doing something right. But what, exactly, are they doing to get these results? I got in touch with Matthew Bennett, who leads The Musgraves, and manager Eamonn England of Redhouse Management. I also talked with Rich Shakespeare, who has managed George Barnett And The Ninth Wave for less than a year, to see what buttons they pushed. Two different approaches, both with measurable success. Of course The Musgraves are a little further down the road...
Some common threads emerged, despite the fact that both bands operate very differently. There’s evident determination and focus. There’s a sense of detachment and strategy, and an informed take on how the music industry works. And BBC Introducing has played a significant role in both bands’ progress.
You’ve scored a lot of very gratifying national airplay action recently. How? Did you use a plugger, or just send your stuff in? Or are there any direct contacts you have?
Matthew Bennett, The Musgraves: It’s taken a long time to get to that stage. I suppose the first thing we did, after doing demos, was to get a management company on board. Our drummer sent a CD off to some industry people in London, and after a few weeks we got a call back.
Eamonn England, The Musgraves Management : The Musgraves sent us a demo CD. It was pretty raw but there were some good ideas and we felt that with development we could achieve something together.
A very early 2011 The Musgraves home-produced video
Matthew Bennett: The company got involved and helped us develop our sound and live show and we began to get gigs before going back in to the studio to start work on an album. Via our management we signed our publishing to Imagem Music on the back of the songs we recorded towards our album. Through this deal we were able to fund an EP release and get a marketing team on board. Initially it was a regional focus and we managed to step up a level before going national. Tom Robinson on 6Music gave us some BBC Introducingspot plays and we then began working with a national marketing team and released an independent single through Lookout Mountain Records. It went crazy then!
Rich Shakespeare: We didn’t use a plugger. One has, very kindly, offered to work for us for free, temporarily, but it’s us (myself and George) who spend most of our day researching people to contact, and making that contact. It’s all about linking up with people. Lots of research. I went to a BBC Introducing live night in Hereford -they had recorded George at a festival in Worcester, and updated Andrew Marston. He put one of George’s songs forward for Radio 1. It went to a committee, and they picked it ahead of many others. We’ve also had a lot of help and advice from a major label, who seem to want to nurture us and show some early commitment.
It’s great to get that sort of reaction. Some people seem to get it effortlessly, while others plug away for years and years.
MB: We managed to secure a great national radio plugger and Graham Norton got behind us and began playing our single on Radio 2.
The video of the single that went national...
We were then invited on to his BBC 1 show, the first unsigned band to do so. Then we got on the Radio 2 playlist. Really happy now it’s all happening. We’re playing bigger shows now, we have more radio play, and more TV is coming together. It’s difficult but we want music to be our full time job and we’re getting closer.
RS. It’s all about effort. You have to be really focused. Everything you do has to push it forward.
What about novelty value? Lots of media people like to be the first to spot something – which is of course terribly unfair, but it is human nature…
MB: You’re only going to be new once. You’ve got to keep it fresh from there on, almost re-inventing yourself. It’s up to the artist to develop, to produce new stuff.
RS: Not a problem. George is pretty much a chameleon. He changes. If you look at the artists who’ve lasted a long time, they change and evolve.
and he’s still only 18...
RS: Yes. I’m also using my experience of seeing people I’ve worked with in the past. The best survive, adapt and grow. That’s my model, I guess.
What is fascinating to me, Rich, is that this is your first managerial role...
RS: But I’ve done tour managing, and been around the industry, so that’s given me a grounding. George asked me to be his manager.
What about building a fanbase? What sort of tricks would you recommend?
MB: Twitter, YouTube and Facebook really do work. Before, you could play a show and not be able to follow it up. Now, all the fans are there at your fingertips; you can interact with them, and it makes that relationship go further. They feel more involved; we can get information out quicker. Everyone in the band interacts with the fans online and we make a real effort to be as personal as possible, to keep it ‘real’. When a band starts out, the internet is a really good tool for promo and interaction. We make our own videos and really get the fans involved in what we do.
RS: Difficult. So many ways. We decided we were going to build ours online, at least at first. That’s why the videos are of decent quality. The idea is to keep it fresh and keep it interesting, so that more people watch these videos. Lone Rose was the first one – it’s only been out for months and it’s got 120,000 views on YouTube. If you compare that to other bands on the same level, we’re doing well.
Huge viewing figures...after using Pirate Bay
Interestingly, when you go to that Youtube page and scroll down the comments, free downloads via the Pirate Bay get a mention. A strategic decision? I saw you plugged this offer on Facebook as well.
RS: The Pirate Bay offered a great promo opportunity after liking ‘College Kids’. We had a 3 day front page promo there that went worldwide. Then we decided to allow free downloads. In return many people decided to go back and pay for the album via iTunes/Amazon or Bandcamp, which worked out perfectly for us. The fans talk to us through all the usual social media sites. We talk right back, but with respect. It’s about perception.
Can we talk finances? Are you making any money? Did you expect to?
MB: We’re making a little money. Not too much. We’re in the middle stage, where we know things are growing. We sold 3500 copies of our debut single but that doesn’t really equate to income, what with recoupment etc. Our management and publisher have been very supportive and there is a third party financer involved too now.
How does that work?
Eamonn England: There are lots of 'new model' deals going on within the music industry at the moment. Through our production company, which The Musgraves are signed to, we have managed to secure a marketing and distribution deal which lets us release The Musgraves debut album on our own label. This enables us to keep everything in house and provide them with a far better and fairer return from sales than a major record deal would.
RS: We’re not making any money at the moment. George has sold a little over 1000 albums in a few months. We only had 100 cds made up - we’ve ordered a thousand now. The others were online, so we haven’t had to do too much. He’s used that money to reinvest in better equipment. It’s probably costing us more than we’re getting.
Is there a grand plan? What is your timescale to push on further?
MB: All we’re focused on is the album right now – it should be out in September along with another single and the promo campaign is starting to kick in now. We’re planning a few videos and cover videos too to keep things moving online. We’re touring the UK in October, and then another single in 2013.
RS: 2013 is starting to be mapped out. We’re probably planning on getting another album out by March. The plan is to make sure there’s enough material to do another album six months after the last one. George is constantly writing. We’re planning on a video every two to three months, so that keeps going. We’re also doing 30 second video adverts for major gigs…and that helps the sales.
It looks like you’ve had a charmed life…
MB: (Laughs) We’ve done gigs where there’s no-one there; 400 miles and nobody’s at the gig…Three or four years of that….
RS: I think it’s just… knowledge. As a photographer, you pick up all this knowledge. You’re studying and watching all the time, and you meet so many people. You link with more people as a photographer than you do as a musician, and you move through more genres of music..
Who has/have been particularly helpful?
MB: Arthur Tapp from The Catapult Club who promotes at the Birmingham Ballroom. It’s important to get a promoter that believes in you at the start, and he’s been there right from the beginning. When you’re just starting, mostly they (the promoters) are bothered about are how many people you’re going to bring to a show but with Arthur, it’s more about building something. Graham Norton has also made a huge difference.
Goodnight Lenin on a jetty; Old Dance School on the run
The web has rewritten the
way we hunt out new music, not always for the better. For a start, there's no road-map. Of course, that could be a good thing.
Old-school record shops have been crushed and swept away; their online replacements throw 'priority' acts at you. You have to step past that, and that is where I particularly miss the old way of doing things.
But instead we now have the power to
endorse and recommend, and this works in a lot of different ways. It’s changed things. Online momentum can build worldwide for any act that is able to reach an audience. Ironically, one of the music
genres that have gained most from this is one of the oldest: folk music. There’s been a huge
resurgence in folk and folk-associated forms in the past ten years.
Singer-songwriters are coming to the fore again; new bands are enjoying success
to rival the 70s veterans.
And this is, I think, down
to three factors.
Marketing: Bands build
great, direct, online relationships with their followers through the web. It’s
powerful and personal, and especially suits music people can get passionate
about.
Technology: Equipment has
never been cheaper, and, especially with acoustic instruments, musicians have far
more scope to record and distribute their own music in their own way. So,
creatively, that frees musicians to do what they feel is right, rather than
what a record company exec thinks is right.
The electronic oral
tradition: Folk and world music has always spread by the passing on of songs from
person to person, down the generations and across borders. That process used to
take years; now it happens in a heartbeat.
Robin Beatty and Laura
Carter are founder members of the Old Dance School,
who mix things up with a vengeance. The new album, their third, 'Chasing the Light', is just
out. The first album worked in some distinctly non-trade grooves in with the
guitars, fiddles, recorders and percussion.
Laura: "The first album
('Based on a True Story', 2008) had one piece we called the drum and bass section. We’ve moved away from that. Now we’re focussing on all the
instruments, rather than the rhythm section. "
Robin: "All folk music is
very modal – it’s all open positions of the fiddle, whistles in D. But we’ve
got a trumpet in B flat, and a bagful of whistles and recorders. We’ve had
loads of fun moving through different keys in different sections of a song.
It’s been really interesting."
Three albums in,
where you find yourselves? Is it progressing the way you think it should be
progressing?
Laura: "In some ways it’s been a
lot harder for us, because we’ve come from nothing. You start off doing gigs
for not much money, and then you have to work on your own profile. Maybe it’s
gone a bit slower than I anticipated. We’ve been together for five years now.
But in the last two years we’ve been pushing ahead. "
One of the reasons we’re
talking is to follow up on a post from the beginning of April, which noted how
much radio play West Midlands bands were getting, especially
on Radio 2.
Laura: "We’re doing really well
with radio plays on the new album. We’ve gotten a lot more interest from festivals… "
Robin: "We seem to have a good
loyal fan base now, which is nice. But we may even have missed out on one or
two things this year because we’ve been so – focussed – on our music and the
album."
Discussion shifts to the web, the power of the Facebook share, and on Spotify and Last-FM, the user playlists and the prompts from the programmes themselves.
Robin:" Having all this stuff
recommended to you… the discoveries that are fed to you on the internet… You do
come across some great things. I just hope that it doesn’t extinguish that
hunger for exploration that you have for music. That is one of the biggest joys
on music. Being oversaturated and overfed with all these recommendations – I
wonder if it extinguishes your desire to explore. "
That’s more than fair, and
something I hope to dig in to in a later post. But back in the present, Old Dance School have
further fish to fry. Now, they’re also doing a festival. Robin Beatty comes from
high in the peak district, where the Edale Festival will take place. Delivering
this has meant years of discussions with the council, clearance for campsites,
staging, power and more, wrangling for support funding and so on. But, weather
permitting – Robin admits to being a bit ‘gripped’ by all this – Edale gets
underway halfway through the month (18th to 20th May),
with a very strong West Midlands presence, including the Destroyers, Joe Broughton’s Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, Abie's Miracle Tonic, and of course the Old Dance School.
Setting this up is the
indefatigable John Fell from Goodnight Lenin, who also play.
Why is Moseley Folk doing
this, given that the organisation already has two very successful but
labour-intensive operations going in the city already?
John Fell: The only thing that
Moseley Folk doesn’t have is camping! Obviously we don’t want to make it
exactly the same as Moseley Folk, but we do want to keep the same sort of
friendly vibe, but to bring that camping element in as well, so it becomes a
little bit more of a holiday, than just a day-by day set of shows.
But it’s tiny this first year,
right?
"It would be interesting
to find out if it is the smallest festival in the UK! It’s got a capacity of 500 each
day. So yes, it is minute. We wanted to start in a small way, and grow from
there."
But you’ve got room to
expand?
"Oh yes. The fields round
the site are vast… "
If I wanted to run a
festival, I think I’d be declared insane. You’re already in the business, so that
doesn’t apply. But how, exactly, do you go about it? Where do find a friendly
farmer, for a start?
"You need the right venue.
That’s key. You need a reason to do it. You can’t just say ‘I’m going to run a
festival to make money’… "
Because several festivals
have cancelled this year already…
"You can understand it.
There are so many festivals that are the same, that offer the same, on the
same weekends. "
And prices aren’t going
down.
"No, they’re not. That’s one
of the issues we want to address. With Moseley, we try to keep it at around £79
for three days, which is fair. Tanworth is going to cost £65 for four days
music – you can camp for five days if you want! "
But with only 500 paying
customers a day, you’ll be very lucky to break even…
"We’ve worked it to break
even. This is to try running a new event. We got offered a nice venue, which
was perfect for our interests, where we could try something new. "
For our interests…?
"It’s where Nick Drake spent most of his life, and where he is buried, two minutes down the road from the festival site. This is what I mean about not doing a festival for money, but doing it for an idea. A beautiful plot of land, and the associations with Nick Drake – and it all clicked. Over the last twenty years or so, he’s become more and more iconic."
Now that’s interesting. Back in the day, Nick Drake was not exactly a huge commercial success. Island Records certainly believed in him. Old hippies like me have memories of rootling around in the bins in record shops – remember them? – and coming across Bryter Later and Five Leaves Left. But, to me, the buzz wasn’t – really - there at the time. Now, it certainly is. And I think that credit has to go to the Moseley Folk organisers for riskily putting their money where their personal interests lie. The bill is pretty impressive too, and most of
the acts will be performing at least one Nick Drake song.
So give me a quick update
on Goodnight Lenin?
"We’re still recording, at Highbury Studio, where we were always meant to be. It’s great. To record analogue tape live is fantastic. I’m a song writer – I’m not technical. I write the song, bang it out, it’s done. So the delicate intricacies of digital – it’s very unreal for me. To just walk in the room, crank up the amp and play the song… it’s the way I want to record. We’re never going to go back (to digital). You lose a lot of warmth. You lose a performance."
Hmm. Now there’s an idea
for a future blog piece…. But that sort of brings me, full circle, back to the
start of this post. It’s ironic that folk, the most basic and direct form of
music has flourished because of digital and web technologies. The Goodnight Lenin video above has jumped into people’s awareness… and that could not have happened ten
years ago. But they still want to record their music the old way. Band Links Old Dance School Goodnight Lenin
I’ve been monitoring usage with Google Analytics. It’s telling us all sorts of stuff about where people are tapping into the site from. But the nice story I have to tell today is that, placed at the very bottom of the Advisors page, accessed off the About page, is a small paragraph thanking some of the people who went above and beyond the call of duty in offering comments and advice. You kind of have to dig to get down to this section. But people have been digging.
Mike Davies is a long-standing West Midlands Music journalist. He was down to be an advisor, but had to withdraw from our first shot for personal reasons. But happily, towards the end of our first curatorial period, he was showering us with ideas, which were most welcome. Yesterday Mike dropped me a note, because a band he worked with back in the day had been digging deep into the site, and turned his name up way down at the bottom of the Advisors page. And emailed him.
Not what I planned. But very nice to hear about. It shows how something like the Pilot Project , which is pretty damn well connected up, due to its fab team of advisors, can turn up even more connections. We saw a lot of synergies on launch night, and there have been more since then.
Another piece of news smacked me round the head this morning. I’d been double checking a couple of details on the site, and found out that the really excellent Senses, from Coventry, have called it quits. Sad for their followers, and it represents another tiny milestone for the Project.
Any site that takes a snapshot of 'now' is going to have to deal with change. Our approach this time around? We note that fact that with regret, the Senses are no more… and keep their music online for the time being. If there is any justice, the talented individuals from that band will go on to do other things, and if and when they achieve some success, it’s a nice to think that some of their earlier excellent work will have been archived for posterity. In a way that is the whole point of the Pilot Project. In the meantime, I’m racking up more feedback to evaluate as the Pilot Project progresses…
I mentioned some stats, didn’t I? Well, now...
We have an average of well overfour minutes on site per visitor. That means a helluva lot of people are sticking around for rather longer. Even at average durations, that means more than one track being checked out by each visitor. Not at all bad in these days of dysfunctional site surfing.
Most popular page once you get past the home page? Well, it’s the Artists page. But the next most visited page is a surprise: it's the About page, which covers the whys and wherefores of the whole project.
At the start of the site’s life, two thirds of visitors were from the West Midlands. Now it’s about 50%, which tells us that the site is rippling out across the world wide web rather nicely. And initially, most of the traffic came from Facebook and Twitter and blog plugs. Now we can see a small but growing slice of interest directly from Search Engines.
The Pilot Project site is streaming. And it's the morning after - one of those post-launch days.
I've felt this way before, mostly when getting radio stations on the air. It's that succession of increasingly long and frantic days, making sure that all the bits come together, with adrenalin taking over to a ridiculous extent. Anybody who has worked in radio will know what I am talking about. But this was, if anything, more diverse, using a wider ranges of skills and disciplines. No matter: the West Midlands Pilot Project is now streaming live. If you want the background and the context of the site, it's detailed on this blog on the post immediately below this one, or you could go to the About pages on the site itself and check out the brilliant team that I am privileged to work with. But, really, what I'd love anyone reading this blog page to do is... to crawl all over the site, and then feed back to us, via this blog if you like. In fact, please do do this: let's make this a very public discussion.
We have plans to develop from this most promising of starts; I hope to be able to realise these plans. The bottom line always was, and is now, that this site, and. hopefully in time, sister sites across the country will cherish and celebrate the talent that now emerges online, and feed this into the British Library New Music Network, stored permanently, for posterity.
Yes, the site undoubtedly has the potential to expose and promote our magnificent local talent, and, yes, it is a sign of the times that websites like this are now able to take on more of a role in exposing and championing this talent. And I do mourn the fact that most local radio has abandoned any sense of responsibility for taking this role on. But now that it is live, the changes and developments will be gradual, as we evaluate how we're doing so far. Remember, this is still an experiment and a test bed. We've just gone from phase two to phase three.
What's now? Play with this site. Enjoy. Talk it up. Tweet it, Facebook it. If you're a musician on it, let us know if it makes any difference.
It's worth noting that in our first six hours of live streaming, 36 % of visitors came from OUTSIDE the West Midlands. 25% from the UK, 11% from North America. So, hey, there is a minor promotional effect already. But I stress that this site is not built to directly promote new talent: it is meant to both record it and - especially locally, with the help of my magnificent team of curators - to celebrate it. No reason why those aims can't go hand in hand, though.
In 2010, we took a first step to curating a national archive of new independent music. There's a long way to ago...
On Thursday 18th November 2010, at 7pm, I was a happy man, if slightly apprehensive. That’s when the Pilot Project website went live. Before then it was an idea and a holding screen. Now, it’s something else altogether. Over a thirty month spell of planning, cajoling and nagging, The Pilot Project has gone from a rough concept to a really solid website, packed with good stuff. It’s done so with considerable help from some truly great people, and a very welcome grant from Digital Content Development at the Arts Council. And it’s given me craft satisfaction, the likes of which I haven’t felt for ten years. Then it was a huge classical database, built from scratch for lovely RTE lyric fm. That was great fun and very worthwhile.
This is too, and it could turn out to be even better.
Stop press - this post seems to have gone modestly viral. BIG response. I'm pleased.
I was the keynote speaker at Creative Networks last night. Brilliant, interested audience of students and practitioners. I gave a seemingly bleak overview of the state of UK radio and the shrinking opportunities for creative work, as cuts continue to bite at the BBC, and the commercial sector continues to strip jobs out, and ramps up automation and networking. All is not lost, however – in fact, all is never lost, if you approach things the right way.
How am I doing? Ya really wanna know? Well, I guess I'm doing fine.... There's a prize for the first person to spot the song AND the classic 60s singer whose version I'm thinking of, by the way. My apologies for the dearth of posts at the end of last year. The fact is, I was NOT doing at all fine a month or two back.... Not at all. But now I am. So here's a first post for 2010, to tell you about a bright new and ever-so-slightly-viral-marketing style initiative from the wonderful Jo Hamilton, which you really should take advantage of.
Jo will present to you - if you go through the right motions - a free concert, online, live and direct from Artisan studios, on January 30th. An e-concert, if you will, at 7.00pm GMT. All the details are on Jo Hamilton's facebook page, or if you are so over the Social Media thing, look at this specific page on her site.
Bottom line? Jo is asking you to post a review on the Amazon page for her album Gown. That spreads the word on Amazon. And it gets you into the e-gig. It's not much to ask for something as intimate and engaging as this will be. I know of what I speak, as I attended one such similar event, but in person, when we worked together on a podcast in Spring 2009 . You should never pass up an opportunity to see an artist like Jo at work, especially in as close and intimate a setting as this. Go get those e-tickets!
I read a book review last week of a work covering the spectacular, ego-driven, cocaine-fuelled, decline and fall of the record industry. As I was prepping this post, I checked on Amazon on to be sure I had the title right, looking for books on the Record Industry, decline and fall of. Blimey, there's dozens of them. Talk about Hollywood Babylon revisited.
Record industry depravity aside, the review sparked a notion for this post. Some years back, a very savvy and smooth operator, Tim Blackmore, was in charge of the Radio Academy. This is a UK industry talking shop, and I was, and still am, a member. If you care about broadcasting in the UK, you should be a member too. Tim set up a meeting which brought together music radio types and some senior music producers - respected players in the then ego-driven, cocaine-fuelled, etc, etc, record industry - to discuss common ground. You know, all music lovers together, that sort of thing.
Only trouble was... there really wasn't any common ground. Early on, I wittered on worthily about radio's need to relate to its audiences first and foremost, and if that meant radio could support record industry priorities, that was fine and dandy; but that we could not honestly be expected to place their priorities above our own. Blissfully unaware of their reactions, I ploughed on about it was now difficult to trust the chart as a barometer of public taste, and how it made sense to do some research into local sales patterns.
Well, that went down like a lead balloon with the producers. And when the producers in turn talked approvingly about hyping sales to put records into the charts so that radio would be forced to play their product, that went down like a lead balloon with me and not a few others.
Of course, that was in the days of serious audience figures for Top Of The Pops, when Radio 1 was the biggest station in the UK, and Radio 2 was definitely... not. Since that time, record sales have largely tanked, the chart has lost all credibility as a programming tool, and a lot of radio has programmed increasingly conservatively using in-house research. What we didn't expect then was the web: This punched a dirty great hole through all our cosy assumptions. I'm not unhappy at the changes: I'm hearing so much great music from the web - stuff that doesn't fit the financial model the record industry grew fat on. And, as I have already said, I'm not at all unhappy that thousands of new players are experimenting with radio, also on the web.
What I would like to see is some way that the new cream can rise to the top. We're not there yet. But I'm happy to wait. In the meantime, I would love to see a companion Radio Babylon-style book or two about the ego-driven cocaine-fuelled big beasts... of radio... back in the day.
