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BalconyTV is 10 years old and in that time has grown from a small-scale operation in Dublin to now being in 65 cities around the world.
The company was bought by The Orchard in 2014 and now finds itself headquartered in New York and setting up its own label. All this, from an idea that started as a hangover.
“My friends and I were living in an apartment in Dublin which had a small balcony that we would never use – and we usually threw our rubbish onto it,” explains co-founder Stephen O’Regan.
The debate over whether regulators should crack down on the safe-harbour status of YouTube and other user-generated content (UGC) platforms has been running for a long time now.
Could the European Commission be tilting towards music rightsholders’ opinions? Reuters has seen a draft paper from the EC that leaves plenty more room for argument.
By itself, the stat that live-video views on YouTube grew by 80% in the last year doesn’t say that much: it may not have been that popular (compared to other content, at least) at the start of that period.
Even so, YouTube’s announcement of the figure to the Financial Times emphasises its desire not to be forgotten amid the buzz around live video on Facebook, as well as Amazon-owned Twitch.
Social has been a problematic area for YouTube, from its often-toxic comments section to its controversial integration of the Google+ platform.
Now, though, the video service appears to be gearing up for another, much more interesting take on social. VentureBeat reports that YouTube is developing a feature with the working title of ‘Backstage’, which will enable creators to “share photos, polls, links, text posts, and videos with their subscribers” when it launches this year.
For most Brits, Aurora would have first appeared on their radar with her cover of Oasis’ ‘Half The World Away’ for the John Lewis Christmas 2015 ad. But she had been building steadily long before that marketing coup.
British singer-songwriter Paul Carrack has been a member of several bands, notably Mike & The Mechanics, but has been putting out solo albums since 1980. Soul Shadows is his eighteenth solo album and got to #25 on the UK chart on its release in January this year, his highest solo chart placing to date. Ben Bowdler, digital sales & online manager at Proper, explains how they moved into online advertising for this campaign, where YouTube cards were deployed, why windowing around streams is important for an artist whose sales are predominately physical and how a suspicious over- indexing of fans in Turkey had to be filtered out.
The music and gaming love-in continues apace. This time it’s Kygo, the Norwegian EDM superstar, who has chosen to tease his new single ‘Fiction’ (featuring Tom Odell) in a new trailer for mobile game SimCity Buildit.
The trailer was released on YouTube on 31st March and has gathered over 5,650 views on the platform so far which, looking across Kygo’s socials, is rather underwhelming.
Google Play is launching an original series in partnership with New York studio Milk. The show will be focused on emerging artists, starting with singer-songwriter Empress Of and the resulting footage will include both audio and video performances.
In what is arguably the least surprising move ever, the content will be available on Google Play Music, YouTube and Vevo. It’s a move designed to focus attention on new acts rather than piggybacking on established ones. Getting acts on board early on will, of course, hopefully result in the long-term loyalty of those future stars, much like the reciprocal relationship YouTube has established with its YouTubers.
Jack Garratt released his debut album, Phase, in February but had already been named as the winner of both the Brits Critics’ Choice award and the BBC Sound Of 2016 poll. Guillermo Ramos, senior marketing manager, Island Records UK, outlines how he had been in stealth development for 18 months before that, building a substantial live following and releasing a series of EPs and connecting strongly at radio.
While the IFPI and RIAA might have pointed to YouTube as the cause of many of the record industry’s recent revenue woes, its marketing power remains undimmed. Plus, as Swedish band The Royal Concept have found, it can be used to make traditional media sit up and pay attention. Tove Blum, promotion manager (local) at Sony Music Entertainment Sweden, explains why the band worked with a Swedish YouTuber and how the impact of this meant they were able to get on TV shows and news outlets that were previously inaccessible. In a market where many presume Spotify is the only game in town, especially for young listeners, YouTube is proving incredibly powerful in giving campaigns real momentum.
So Radiohead finally dropped their album, A Moon Shaped Pool, five years after their last album release, The King Of Limbs. Did you hear about it? Of course you did. […]
In what could be bullishness or total denial, the ad industry is suggesting that use of ad-blocking software has hit a plateau in the UK.
