Lead: Acts outside of the US/UK centre of pop gravity used to be the exception rather than the rule – the true outliers of music. Digital in general and social media in particular have changed that, letting them rewrite...
Sandbox Issue 182: Loose Lips Sync Hits
June 21, 2017
Lead: Musical.ly wasn’t the first lip syncing app, but it is comfortably the biggest. It now claims to have 200m users and offers a direct route to a young audience that sits outside of both traditional media and the...
Sandbox Issue 181: Rise of the Micro Influencers
June 7, 2017
Lead: There was a time when getting someone with a huge social media following to shill your product was all you needed to make a splash. But brands are now starting to question if biggest really is best; and thus we see...
Sandbox Issue 180 – WhatsApp Doc?
May 24, 2017
Lead: WhatsApp has 1.2bn monthly users. Amazing. But the music industry is barely using it as a marketing platform. Not amazing. So why not? There are (still) pragmatic issues such as as a cap on the number of users in a...
Lead: WhatsApp has 1.2bn monthly users. Amazing. But the music industry is barely using it as a marketing platform. Not amazing. So why not? There are (still) pragmatic issues such as as a cap on the number of users in a...
Lead: New Music Friday was designed as a way to synchronise global release days in an on-demand world, but the upshot is that now Friday groans under the weight of new release and marketing strategies. As a result some...
Sandbox 178: Mixed Up
April 26, 2017
Lead: mixtapes have long been used in hip-hop, often when acts are starting out and wanting to create a buzz around themselves. Now they are becoming more common as major acts use them as an embellishment to an existing...
Sandbox 177: One Congregation Under A Groove
April 12, 2017
Lead: Group listening is back for a second swing, with the likes of Stationhead, Vertigo and JQBX all hoping to learn from the shortcomings of Turntable.fm and Soundrop. We speak to those trying to carve out a space here...
Sandbox 176: All or Nothing
March 29, 2017
Lead: The gap between albums is getting shorter and the turnover time faster. Add into that the demand to feed multiple social media channels plus the fact that anything can be a single now – and worked simultaneously...
Sandbox 175: Music goes all-in on Snapchat
March 15, 2017
Lead: While everyone is currently flapping about Snapchat in terms of its jaw-dropping $28.3bn valuation after its IPO, it’s important to bring things back to what the app actually does and how its huge audience engages...
Sandbox 174: On Air, Video goes live
March 1, 2017
Lead: Native video was where creatives were being shunted last year, but this year it’s all about live video. With YouTube and Facebook Live promising greater promotional opportunities and reach, to Instagram, Periscope,...
Sandbox 173: The GIF that keeps on giving
February 15, 2017
Lead: GIFs might seem like a way of flooding the web with the most trivial of content, but they are a hugely important part of building fan communities around artists. While pop acts like Drake, Beyoncé, Little Mix and...
