Lead: In the good old days, you could just employ a plugger to get your songs played on radio (or, if you had deep pockets and shallow morals, you could engage in some light payola). Today what “radio” actually is has...
Lead: what exactly is a single in 2018? When any song can technically take on a life of its own now, there is a dizzying diversification in what could count as a single. We work through the main 14 (14!) types of “single”...
Sandbox Issue 212: Packaged Goods. Bulking Up The Music Bundle
September 19, 2018
Lead: the recent spat between Nicki Minaj and Travis Scott over who should have been number 1 in the US is arguably less about ego (although there was some of that at stake) and more about the role bundling plays in boosting...
Lead: Songs can spike for a multitude of reasons – and often the spike is part of the marketing plan and therefore anticipated (or at least hoped for). But songs can also spike for esoteric reasons or just through sheer...
Lead: Affiliate marketing in music used to mean taking a few pennies from download sales that you drove on iTunes or CDs that you pushed on Amazon. But with Apple Music offering significant bounties for driving subscriptions...
Lead: There are 400m people using Instagram Stories every day and musicians are among the heaviest lifters here. Until recently, however, it was a curiously music-free set up; but new licensing deals with parent company...
Sandbox Issue 208: Making Micro Waves
July 11, 2018
Lead: In an age of constant digital distractions, sometimes it is better to play the short game. We trace the rise of the micro ad and how it is being tailored to stand out when users are rapidly hopping and grazing across...
Sandbox Issue 207: God Save The Streams
June 28, 2018
Lead: Just 18 months ago, pre-saves were a breath of fresh air for marketers struggling to stand above the cattle run of global releases on a Friday. But as they become ubiquitous, it is almost back to square one with everyone...
Sandbox Issue 206: Appetite for Consumption
June 13, 2018
Lead: The album exclusive is pretty much dead. But in its place has come the growing demand from DSPs for bespoke and unique content. They all want to be serviced with something their rivals don’t have – but this is a...
Sandbox Issue 205: Merchandising and Swift Sales
May 30, 2018
Lead: In part two of our online and social media merchandise special, we go beyond Instagram to look at the wide variety of tools and platforms opening up here, how to best deploy them and where they can be used to make artist/fan...
Sandbox Issue 204: INSTAGRA-Merch
May 21, 2018
Lead: Instagram has over 800m monthly active users and is the preferred social platform for most artists – mainly because Twitter is becoming an ideological cesspit and organic reach (not to mention privacy) on Facebook...
Sandbox Issue 203: The Pause Clause
May 2, 2018
Lead: The music industry has long had a “work hard, play hard” philosophy, but finally this is being seriously questioned in a brutal always-on culture where marketers are supposed to work around the clock. The work/life...
