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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 large followings, or sweet-talking a network of curators like old-school radio pluggers. We talk to FUGA, Idol, ONErpm and CD Baby about the new approaches distributors […]
After an introductory session offering views on Covid-19’s music impact around the world, Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit Global conference turned its attention to what happens next.
The online event’s ‘Future of Streaming Post-Covid’ strand began with some views from Chaz Jenkins, chief commercial officer at Chartmetric.
“If we’re to use one word to describe what we’ve seen happen in the marketplace this year, it would probably be ‘volatile’,” he said, adding that a number of trends that had been happening slowly suddenly went into overdrive during the pandemic.
“Where we listen to music, when we listen to music, why we listen to music, and crucially what we listen to has changed fundamentally over the course of the year,” he said.
Run The Jewels are no strangers to giving music away for free, to say the least: it, along with a well-managed mailing list, has been one of the key factors […]
It should come as no surprise that Run The Jewels are pretty good at this old-fashioned ‘selling music’ business: the hip-hop duo have made a habit of successful D2C campaigns fuelled by (not despite) their willingness to also make their music available for free to fans.
For their latest album, ‘Run The Jewels 4’, is coming out through BMG thanks to a recently-signed deal. “The truth of the matter is, [Run the Jewels] outgrew our capability to handle it correctly,” the group’s El-P told Billboard.
“We knew it was time to take a step up. We didn’t hit all of the marks that we set out to hit yet and we realised, at a certain point, you need that sort of muscle behind you,” added manager Amaechi Uziogwe.
In accidental timing, Chaka Zulu is taking up a new role as Spotify’s head of artist and talent relations just as Killer Mike – one half of rap duo Run […]
Amaechi Uzoigwe, manager of hip-hop stars Run The Jewels, thinks that artists can make their own luck in the streaming era, despite the challenges of breaking through the noise.
“Streaming is one of the greatest things to happen to music. Streaming media is one of the greatest things to happen to entertainment. And the accessibility of that is critical. Ubiquity, mobility, all of these things are changing our future,” he said.
“But if you want to impact, it really is as simple as this: build the right vehicle for yourself. Build the right spaceship. Find out what works for you, and then put that to work… In the world of streaming it is really easy to get lost, so make a gameplan and stick to it. Execute, make it happen.”
Artists criticising Spotify has been a feature of the streaming service’s first decade, although usually the focus is on its royalty payouts. El-P from rap duo Run The Jewels isn’t […]
In 2011, PIAS Group’s head of digital marketing Darren Hemmings left to set up his own consultancy, Motive Unknown.
Originally conceived as a solo freelance affair, seven years on the company has expanded to six people, working with a range of artist, label and non-music clients.
Hemmings talked to Music Ally about how music marketing has changed; why owning your data is ever-more important; how merchandising is the new frontier for digital marketing; and his concerns about Spotify’s instincts to control.
“Everybody feels they’re time-compressed. Whether we’re working directly with artists or with labels, a recurring factor is that people don’t have time to explore the options and to really ask if what they’re doing is right,” says Hemmings, on one of the trends driving Motive Unknown’s business.
From blockchain and bots to Run The Jewels and digital marketing trends, it’s been another busy day at the Midem conference in Cannes.
The secret to hip-hip duo Run The Jewels’ success? Their music, of course. But there has also been some canny marketing going on around the band’s rise to cultural prominence.
Today at Midem, manager Amaechi Uzoigwe and The Other Hand’s Zena White discussed how Run The Jewels have made the most of various marketing channels.
From The 1975 and Run the Jewels to Dot Blockchain and Dice, tonight’s Music Ally Digital Music Awards showcased some of the most inventive artists, startups and people in the digital world.
Our second awards were held at the Café de Paris in London, with a full house gathered to celebrate innovation in our industry.
A full list of winners is below from the awards, which had Google Play as our lead sponsor, as well as support from Vistex, Lewis Silkin, AIM, AudienceNet and ICE.
Lead: Documentaries used to be ponderous 90-minute affairs, but now they are part of the “exclusive content” arms race, with digital services bankrolling them and chopping them into web-friendly consumable chunks. We look at how this is changing the way streaming services position themselves and what this new wave of original video programming will mean. Campaigns: Andrés […]
