Author Archives: Chiara Michieletto
Posted inNews

China’s music potential: ‘We are finally getting there!’

by Chiara Michieletto

2017 was a big year for the music industry in China: according to the IFPI, last year it was one of the world’s 10 biggest recorded-music markets for the first time.

Excitement around the growth of the music-streaming services run by tech companies like Tencent and NetEase is palpable within the western industry, but a day’s worth of talks and panels at last week’s The Great Escape conference curated by Complete Music Update (CMU) provided more context for that enthusiasm.

The day started with the IFPI’s regional director for Asia, Ang Kwee Tiang (or KT Ang, as he’s often known), providing an excellent overview of what’s been happening in China.

He explained that in 2017, recorded-music revenues in China grew by 35.3% to $292.3m, and that within that, streaming revenues grew by 26.5% to $204.5m.

Posted inNews

Trap Nation founder Andre Benz talks expansion, labels and more

by Chiara Michieletto

Andre Benz is the founder of Trap Nation, a YouTube music channel that launched in 2012, and has since grown to 18.8 million subscribers, notching up 6.65bn views in the process.

Under the banner of The Nations, it has also led to spin-off channels including House Nation, Bass Nation, Chill Nation and Rap Nation, all with a similar curatorial focus for their genres.

Benz is a keynote speaker at Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit NYC conference in New York this April, and talked to us ahead of the event about how The Nations is evolving.

He says that the most exciting thing in the last year has been “watching the growth of a YouTube network transform into a recognisable brand throughout several different areas of music” – citing live, a record label and artist development in particular.

Posted inSandbox

2017 End of year Sandbox Issue

by Chiara Michieletto

Here it is – Sandbox’s massive run down of the best, most innovative and most exciting music marketing campaigns of the past 12 months. As usual, all campaigns are listed in non-partisan alphabetical order. But this year there is a twist. We have given campaigns that have impressed us special commendations for their use of […]

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Posted inSandbox

Sandbox 193: Playlisten without prejudice

by Chiara Michieletto

Lead: Labels and artists spent 2017 getting their heads around how playlists have created a new centre of gravity for the record business. The old ways of promoting a record (discounting at retail, plugging at radio, pitching to the specialist music press) have all gone and now playlists are the conundrum everyone wants – and […]

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Posted inSandbox

Sandbox Issue 190: Retarget practice

by Chiara Michieletto

Lead: Have you ever been hounded around the internet by an ad for a gas boiler or cheap flights? Of course you have. It’s 2017, after all. That is, as you’ll know, symptomatic of bad retargeting. But don’t mock too soon as the music industry is far from innocent here. We speak to marketing executives […]

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Posted inSandbox

Sandbox Issue 189: D2C gets cranked up

by Chiara Michieletto

Lead: D2C started to flex its muscles just as the decline in the traditional CD market began to really bite. Now it is more important that ever as both a revenue driver and a means of ensuring ongoing fan engagement. We look at five of the most interesting D2C offerings recently to understand what they […]

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Posted inReports

Report 409: AI-Composed Music Is Here, So What Does It Mean For You?

by Chiara Michieletto

Lead: Artificial intelligence is the next disruptive force to seriously hit the music business – but its disruption will be around music creation rather than distribution or pricing. There is already a huge panic about “the death of art”, but that is somewhat missing the point. In our special feature, we look at how far the […]

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Posted inReports

Report 408: Blind data, Music Managers’ Three biggest data challenges

by Chiara Michieletto

Lead: Managers have to be across every data source there is. On the one hand, it means they can be operating with greater confidence and clarity; on the other, they are at risk of data overload and missing both new opportunities and what the data is telling them. From overlooked affiliate income to tying up all […]

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Posted inSandbox

Sandbox Issue 188: Wham, Bam, Instagram

by Chiara Michieletto

Lead: Speak to any artist and ask them what social platform they prefer most and chances are they’ll say Instagram. Away from the trolling on Twitter and the sinkhole of posts on Facebook, Instagram offers a calmer place and an opportunity for the artists to express their own creativity. Plus, as a bonus, it is growing […]

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Posted inSandbox

Sandbox Issue 187: Live and Direct

by Chiara Michieletto

Our lead feature this week looks at some of the most inventive and successful recent campaigns using live video on Facebook – an increasingly prominent part of the social network’s featureset. Our Tools page looks at Synchtank, a company whose platform has expanded well beyond the sync market with ambitions to become a more general […]

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Posted inSandbox

Sandbox 186: Video killed the video star

by Chiara Michieletto

Lead: So long to big-budget videos? Taylor Swift’s new vid may be breaking YouTube records, but many major artists are starting to question the value of traditional music videos. Our lead feature looks at some of the reasons for this, but also at some of the newer ways artists are making use of video in […]

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