Sandbox Issue 265: Distributors’ New Playlist Game-Plan
November 25, 2020
Lead: Distributors’ New Playlist Game-Plan: Distributors, keen to place songs onto powerful playlists, are becoming much more proactive in their approach – whether that means building standalone playlist brands with...
Lead: Lo-fi hip hop is no longer simply a crackly, jazzy sub-genre – it’s a huge business, with millions subscribing to multi-platform playlists and albums of atmospheric songs to relax, study, chill and sleep to....
Lead: Experiential brand activations in a non-live world – Creating effective brand activations has never been easy – but there was one basic starting point: find an event with lots of people, and connect with them....
Sandbox Issue 262: Key Lessons from Sandbox Summit Global
October 26, 2020
Lead: Sandbox Summit Global – Over five days at the end of September, we held our Sandbox Summit Global conference. For this Sandbox report, we’re digging into what we learned from the event and how it relates...
Sandbox Issue 261: The return of the fanclub? Crowdfunding in 2020
September 30, 2020
Lead: Crowdfunding in 2020 – Crowdfunding is not a new idea – but following the nosedive of recorded music sales in the early noughts, crowdfunding became a tantalising concept: fanbases could be leveraged into...
Sandbox Issue 260: Twitch for Artists
September 16, 2020
Lead: Twitch for artists – Artists were drifting towards livestreaming platform Twitch before COVID-19 hit, and Twitch has been making overtures to musicians for a while. But since live performance was halted, interest...
Sandbox Issue 259: Six Months On, What Next?
September 2, 2020
Lead: The effect of COVID-19, six months on. This Sandbox issue hosts the launch of a new Music Ally monthly feature: our Global Experts Panel. We’ve assembled a panel of industry leaders from around the world, from many...
Lead: we report back on our recent New Kids On The Block: Insight Into A New Generation online conference that we ran in conjunction with UK trade bodies the BPI and ERA, drawing out the 10 key lessons from the different...
Lead: Music-centric filters on social apps are designed to appeal not just to hardcore fans but also to get enough “shareability” to pull in potential new fans. They are also being used by labels themselves to create...
Lead: Livestreams have moved to try and fill the massive hole left by the total cancellation of tours and festivals around the world. As more acts do them, however, it becomes incrementally harder to stand out and draw...
Lead: K-pop is eating the world whole and is changing what marketing – especially superfan-centric marketing – can do. We speak to those working in and around the K-pop world to learn how the genre markets itself, where...
Sandbox Issue 254: The Rise of Music Podcasts
June 10, 2020
Lead: If you aren’t making or appearing on a podcast, do you actually exist? Even with DSPs and record labels investing in them heavily and building whole podcasting divisions, there is still the issue of licensing music...
