Our Sandbox Guides explain how you can get started in innovative or notable marketing fields. We speak to the experts, who tell us how they are using new platforms, creating new strategies, or building new audiences. The Guides feature cutting-edge case studies, benchmark data and a series of actionable takeaways, so that you can get started immediately. Published every month as part of Sandbox.
The new and improved Sandbox Guide is here! This longer, extra-focussed “Guide” format is designed to be your essential companion in the ever-shifting challenge of successfully connecting with your audience. It has more practical skills, more expert recommendations, more vital takeaways, and more case studies to learn from. Our first Guide looks at Discord, the […]
Lead: After two excitable months, the wild, get-in-on-the-ground-floor hype around NFTs is starting to abate somewhat, and while interest – and cynicism – remains high, now is a good time to find out what we have learned so far. So here’s Music Ally’s analysis and guide to making and selling NFTs. What did people who made them find out? […]
Lead: Historically, DSPs – tech platforms with slightly younger, early-adopter user bases – were a place where electronic artists readily found success. So what are the best approaches to DSP marketing of electronic music in 2021? We speak to a host of big players, like Monstercat, Spinnin’ Records, Defected, AEI Group, Anjunabeats and Ninja Tune, to […]
Lead: Each DSP has a programme dedicated to supporting new artists: weaponising the platform by endorsing them to a large audience, and hopefully accelerating their careers. Places on these programmes are, of course, keenly sought after – so what is experienced by that lucky few? Is it really the win-win it seems? What do artists need […]
Lead: Which Twitch Mix Fits? – Music is essential to the Twitch experience, but Twitch’s formal relationship with music is still a little murky – albeit with the launch of the licensed Soundtrack by Twitch feature offering welcome progress. The power of Twitch as a marketing, communication, and community-building tool is also still open to debate […]
Lead: Always-on my mind: Artists have long accepted – sometimes reluctantly – that their role includes intimate direct-to-fan digital connectivity, usually via Social Media. Grinding out content on multiple platforms, each with unique creative, time, and emotional pressures, was a stressful enough existence before Coronavirus made the need to be always-online seem all the more urgent. […]
Lead: Indie-Visible – Marketing indie rock bands on streaming platforms can be tricky for a number of reasons: their traditionally album-based release cycle goes counter to the current approach of endless singles; their aesthetic, ethos and fandom require patience and context; and while their fanbase wants their favourite artists on streaming services, they also demand special physical products […]
Lead: YouTube Premiere Playbook – Youtube offers dizzying depth of content (500 hours of video uploaded each minute) and breadth of fan access (over half of music fans regularly watch music videos on the platform). It also means that uploading a great music video is not enough – artists must reach the fans that care and […]
Lead: 2021 – The Optimism Issue: Let’s not dwell any longer than necessary on the seemingly never-ending year of challenges that was 2020. In this issue we look forward with optimism and find many reasons to be cheerful in 2021. We asked our international panel of industry experts to explain what gave them hope in […]
It’s here: Sandbox’s shortlist of the best, most original, and most impactful music marketing campaigns of 2020 – a celebration of this year’s most remarkably innovative and creative work. There were a record-breaking number of entries this year, so in keeping with another notable seasonal deliverer of gifts, we made a list and checked it twice, to painstakingly […]
