Music Ally is many things to many people. Some know us only for the free articles we post on this website; others for our subscription-based bulletin and reports; and others for our training, events, consultancy and/or marketing work with artists.
We thought now would be a good time to put those pieces together and explain how we’ve grown as a business, and what our plans and ambitions are for the future. Starting with the growth so far, in the last year and a half we…
…Expanded our audience
Music Ally’s editorial service is what we’re most known for: it’s been going since 2002. Our premium daily news bulletin and longer-form reports have expanded their audience considerably in the last 12 months.
We’ve always been proud of having subscribers from all the major music companies globally – labels, publishers and digital services included. But over the last year or so we have added nearly 4,000 artist managers, independent labels and publishers to our premium subscription with support from various partners (including Spotify, FUGA, Pandora, AWAL, SOCAN and Armonia) to help to make this happen.
We also signed deals with lots of new universities and colleges through our Academic Offering. We’re thus now reaching an even-wider audience, now including many more labels and managers who are at the sharp end of the music world’s evolution, as well as the next generation of executives studying to join our industry.
Meanwhile, the free element of our editorial – the articles we post on this website – also thrived. We’ve been averaging more than 100,000 unique monthly visitors in recent months.
At the end of 2018, we also soft-launched our Sandbox Campaigns Database. It’s part of our subscription service: a database of the most inventive, effective digital music-marketing campaigns that we’ve written about, easily searchable for anyone looking for ideas and inspiration for their own projects.
Currently in beta, we are aiming to build this into an unrivalled repository of the most cutting edge music campaigns covering everything from DIY to frontline, classical to grime in every global region, only available for our subscribers.
To sign up for a 14-day free trial subscription to Music Ally’s editorial service click or tap here.
…Built up our training business
Training is the fastest-growing part of Music Ally’s business: we’ve been running online courses for marketing execs, managers and artists for some time now, focusing particularly on digital music marketing.
In 2018, we developed a new suite of 25 certified training modules, which have already been getting a great response from the first people to take the courses. These cover intermediate and advanced digital-marketing skills, forming the most comprehensive learning and development programme of its kind. Find out more about those here.
In 2018, we also delivered in-person training for several major labels, with our staff travelling to local offices in Berlin, Stockholm, New York and Copenhagen amongst other places to give presentations and workshops.
We have also partnered with prestigious new Norwegian music school, Lillehammer Institute of Music Production and Industries (LIMPI), to provide music business curriculum and digital marketing training to a select group of talented young music producers, songwriters, and artists from around the world.
We’re also excited about our new partnership with UK based Big Creative Education to offer digital-marketing apprenticeships to the music business.
…Grew our events business
Music Ally has always run events and conferences, but in 2018 and 2019 we have stepped it up a notch. January saw the third year of the NY:LON Connect conference that we co-run with Music Biz, returning to London – it alternates between London and New York. We’re grateful to AdRev, MQA and Reed Smith – our primary sponsors for this year’s event.
We also held two Sandbox Summit conferences last year focusing on digital marketing: one in New York in April and another in London in October, with the next set for New York in May 2019. We have also teamed up with AWAL to hold a series of Sandbox Social meetups in the company’s London office, bringing together the music-marketing community for chat, drinks and live artists.
Plus we ran our usual digital sessions at the by:Larm conference in Oslo this year; hosted a pair of panels at SXSW; as well as popping up at a number of other conferences around the world programming, moderating and speaking on panels about the industry.
…Worked directly with labels and artists
The last year has also seen Music Ally launch its digital strategy and marketing services division, headed by Patrick Ross: working directly with labels, promoters, managers and artists to help them make the most of digital. We feel its essential in today’s market to practice what we preach, and to make sure that we understand and educate the market on best practice in platforms, tools and trends work by actually working with them ourselves.
That includes a wide variety of services from overall digital strategy, specific release campaigns, tour support marketing, and our best in class ‘Digital Health Checks’. Find out more here.
Clients we have worked with include:
FKP Scorpio / BBC on the Blue Planet II Live Tour
Chrysalis Records
Blue Raincoat Music (Infinity Ink, Phoebe Bridgers, Cigarettes After Sex, and more.)
Tommy Boy Entertainment (De La Soul, Coolio, House of Pain, and many more)
The Script
K CAMP
And now some plans for the future
It’s been an exciting period for Music Ally, but we’ve got ambitions to make the next 12-18 months even better.
For starters, we’ve launched an office in Tokyo, and now have over 600 subscribers to Music Ally Japan, a fully-localised version of our editorial service. We’ll also be providing our marketing and training services to help Japanese music companies and artists reach international audiences through digital platforms.
The launch is being supported by our industry partners FMPJ and IMCJ, representing managers and labels in Japan, while our sponsor partner is MQA. You can find out more about Music Ally Japan here.
We’re also exploring partnership opportunities to launch Music Ally Africa later this year too, while on the editorial side, we’re upping our investment in freelance writers in Africa, India, China and Latin America, to better cover the innovation that’s happening in these territories.
And as well as our offices in London and Tokyo, we are also building our commercial capacity in Latin America through a full-time office in Medellin, Colombia.
Do get in touch…
For anything Editorial contact Stuart Dredge and Eamonn Forde
For anything Commercial including Subscriptions and Training, contact Anthony Churchman
For anything Marketing related contact Patrick Ross
And for a chat with the founders contact Paul Brindley and Steve Mayall
We’re also proud as punch of the current Music Ally team: Kushal Patel, Isabelle Ljungqvist, Marlen Huellbrock, Rocio Sanchez and Ben Cardew, who work across the various aspects of our business.
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