Sandbox Issue 234: The New Era Of Music Videos
August 8, 2019
Lead: In the 1970s, “pop promos” (as they were called) were the preserve of the mega-star act, but after the launch of MTV in 1981 they became standard practice across the industry. The arrival of YouTube in 2005 may...
Lead: Working with D2C experts is one part of the business, but changes in how social media sites are structuring themselves can offer acts new ways to sell products to fans of all stripes. We look at where social platforms...
Sandbox issue 232: Music Marketing in Trigger Cities
July 11, 2019
Lead: This issue we have a special extended feature looking into the phenomenon of Trigger Cities. These are places outside of the obvious music markets that are now – due to streaming and how algorithms are fed – playing...
Lead: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” is a quote commonly attributed to Philadelphian retailer John Wanamaker in the 1800s and it has haunted the advertising...
Lead: Email marketing is far from dead. We look at why it is still relevant, how email tools and platforms are getting smarter and where they are allowing users greater ways to target audiences, segment audiences and personalise...
Lead: Collaborations have long been a staple in the music industry, but something different is happening today as social media and analytics become key parts of marketing campaigns. In the “old days”, labels would trade...
Sandbox Issue 228: Marketing on a Budget
May 15, 2019
Lead: You can throw cash at a campaign and make headlines for how much you actually spent. But what about the other end of the spending spectrum where there is a tiny (or non-existent) budget? We look at some of the main...
Lead: TikTok is far more than a novelty app for people to whip up memes that have a shorter shelf life than a carton of milk. It is now breaking acts and songs in a way that other platforms cannot. We look at what the music...
Lead: what digital marketing trends are most underrated or simply misunderstood in 2019? That’s the question we put to the music marketing community and got them to hold forth on the subject. This resulted in a lot of ideas...
Sandbox Issue 225: Retargeting in an Age of Privacy
April 3, 2019
Lead: Tighter regulations around retargeting have made the job of digital marketing much trickier to navigate. What this has meant is that marketers have to get smarter. We speak to those working around these rules about...
Sandbox Issue 224: Up Hit Creek. THE DRY STREAMS PARADOX
March 20, 2019
Lead: The Dry Streams Paradox is when there is a huge gap between the number of streams an act gets and the number of fans they have or can reach. Just because someone plays one of your songs, it does not follow that they...
Lead: the days of throwing bales of cash at a mega-influencer to get a mention in one of their Instagram posts are thankfully in sharp decline (with the disastrous Fyre Festival accelerating this trend). But what is taking...
