Tag: CD Baby
Posted inNews

Collabs, socials and more: international marketing for Chinese artists

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

The inaugural Music Ally China Digital Summit is taking place this week, and a panel session today focused on international marketing, with a particular focus on Chinese artists.

“Outside of China, the main Chinese music markets are Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao,” said Keith Tan, director, market development, APAC at CD Baby.

“But I think that the digital side of things has allowed Chinese music artists specifically to also play in a lot of the big cities like London, Sydney, San Francisco, Vancouver, this kind of thing. If you backtrack it to maybe even 10 to 15 years ago, I don’t think Chinese artists – or not that many – were touring to those markets.”

Posted inMarketing

The five E’s of fan engagement in music marketing (guest column)

Avatar photo by Music Ally

This is a guest post by Sandra Croft (Artist & Promotions Representative, UK & EU) and Henriette Heimdal (Market Development, UK & EU), of CD Baby. This is their five-point strategy for “transforming audiences into fans” – to go from “initial awareness to lifetime advocacy around artist brands in a hyper-competitive world. These qualities aspire to forget lasting bonds with your audience by serving your fans first before asking them to serve your artist brand.”

Note: there’s more high-level advice on making stand-out artist brands in a hyper-competitive world in our recent Global Experts panel.

1) ENTICE: meet audiences in their places and spaces, rather than asking them to make the first entry into your artist brand.

Before inviting new audiences to tune into your music, you first demonstrate real interest in tuning into their lives, joining contemporary conversations or adding something of high social or entertainment value. Entice your fans into your world by understanding the necessity of first stepping into theirs.

Posted inNews

Tommy Boy president: ‘YouTube could become our number one DSP’

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

Friday saw the first ever Music Ally TV weekly show, broadcast using video-conferencing platform Zoom. Our guests included Rosie Lopez, president of Tommy Boy, and the topic at hand was YouTube.

“We’re feeling very optimistic about YouTube. We’re projecting that YouTube could potentially become our number one DSP in the future,” said Lopez. “It’s a lot of work… but it is a platform where you literally get what you put in, back out, if you put time into it, [and] if you have a great team.”

Lopez went on to note that YouTube is more than just a “profit centre” for Tommy Boy: it’s also “a way to grow the family, the close-knit people that come in and check on us on a daily basis”. She added that its social features are key to that.

“On Spotify, we can’t comment back to people who love our music. On YouTube we can,” she said. “On YouTube you’re gonna hear what people like, you’re gonna hear what they don’t like, and if you learn to pay attention, you’re gonna learn a lot from your audience on YouTube!”

Posted inNews

Downtown Music Holdings’ latest acquisition is… FUGA

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

Downtown Music Holdings, the parent company of Downtown Music Publishing and Songtrust, is buying distributor and music/tech services company FUGA, for an undisclosed amount.

The deal comes just 10 months after Downtown made a splash with the acquisition of AVL Digital Group, whose subsidiaries included CD Baby, AdRev, DashGo and Soundrop.

AVL is the entity making the acquisition of FUGA, which means that the latter will now be a sister company of CD Baby under the AVL umbrella. Downtown says that FUGA will “continue to function as a standalone business” within the group.