TLDR:
- Music Industry's Shift: The music industry has experienced a significant shift towards digital consumption and streaming, with traditional music sales declining. Constant monitoring of consumer habits and understanding the reasons behind changes in behavior are crucial for the industry.
- Tracking Consumer Behavior: Platforms like Absolute Radio and Spotify use data and customization to track user behaviors and preferences. This helps in shaping programs, adding value to segments, and delivering a seamless user experience.
- Understanding Audience and Trends: NME emphasizes the importance of understanding audience tastes and trends in real-time. A/B testing and balanced qualitative and quantitative data are necessary for creating engaging content and avoiding misleading interpretations.
- Challenges and Future Opportunities: The challenges faced by the industry include managing data, maintaining consumer engagement, and staying relevant in a fast-evolving landscape. Future opportunities lie in connected listening, contextual advertising, and integrating departments to deliver quality content and engage with consumers.
Overall, the focus is on adapting to digital consumption patterns, leveraging data for insights, and creating meaningful experiences for consumers in the music and advertising industries.
Advertising week happens to fall on one of the busiest weeks for myself, tomorrow morning meeting with a recruitment agency found through twitter more details here. Then a number of dissertation interviews at maxus including CEO Lindsay Pattison and then a interview at BBH in the evening. Wednesday more dissertation interviews at Mindshare then a job interview for PPC. Thursday live brief in the morning being as an account manager and then in the afternoon exam preparation. What a week ahead.
Advertising week for my started off in piccadilly in the googles underground cave of creative interior as seen front he picture below. The talk itself was how the music industry itself is ‘going through a dynamic of change’ The change in technology that has enabled the companies from below to start capitalising on their digital consumers:
Jackie Wilgar Exec VP Marketing , LIVE NATIONKrissi Murison Associate Editor The Sunday Times Magazine, THE SUNDAY TIMESMandy Plumb SVP Marketing , PARLOPHONE & WARNER BROS UKMike Williams Editor NME, IPCTony Moorey Content Director, ABSOLUTE RADIOWill Page Director of Economics, SPOTIFY
As sales in traditional music sales has dropped considerably and now today 77% of music content is Streaming and its increasing year on year. This has developed the music industry into the state of ‘Constant monitoring’ seeing where the spikes of change in consumer habits happens and why they happen.
The shift also towards digital and mobile readership with 38% traffic is mobile for NME. This means the journey for the consumer has changed, the way in which readers look for music news, its about being in the loop 24hours of the day.
Tony from Absolute radio mentioned the possibilities to track listeners across platforms to track behaviors, there are a number of developers that are customizing the platforms to find out when the user is hovering, changing the volume of a song to see these spikes in changes. Overlaying cookie data across network websites helps build a better picture. Britain still loves radio 97% listen around 48 million adults.
Shaping the programs will be key, this could be using simple A vs B/C studies to alter the program offering across segments. Simply to add value to segments. The industry doesn’t do enough of this.
Will at Spotify is first had with the the sales team and engineers and they both want very different things. For example developers wanted 28milli seconds, but why 28milli seconds? its the time that the human brain can’t tell delay. Data is one thing, but in the end convenience is sometimes more important for a seamless experience.
Working advance for Spotify is about getting the data realtime to show results straight away, the Lorde example of her being added to a playlist then becoming a super star within a year. Another example is when an album is realised Spotify can see a spike of listeners then other spikes like events to show when people listen o music, this can help for marketing communications across the board. The opportunities is understanding the access model and the spike in the data means long term, this could further commercialising the data.
Jackie at Live nation mentions we are only just scratching the surface
NME to understand what our audience want we have to understand the tastes and trends at the right time and place. Learning the consumer as they develop and use ours and other services. This could be through AB testing again to understand what develops real engagements. We can’t just follow the digital tools like SEO as it will mislead content, we would just have Justin Bieber and other topics that don’t relate to the brand. The likes of Google need to take a page out of the others book (BARB…), there needs to be balanced qual and quant data.
Time in Facebook usage is down, means people are using it less? No its Bad in interpretation of the data, that a perfect example of the above point, there could just be a shift of the type of Facebook consumption.
The future tends with record labels is the interaction that is needed with stakeholders, this might be from the fans themselves to the sponsors.. it needs to fit the image. How much time they need to spend on social media and interaction is important but not understood, how a fan can turn from a follower to an advocate of the artist.
Future opportunities for radio is about connected listening, understanding what they are doing when listening, this could be drinking coffee, checking email.. this then can then help to place more contextual advertising. All about reaching the right audience however their are challenges. The challenge of time the consumer is much busier then before, its now a fight for their time.
Jackie mentions that the definition of ‘Live’ and how this effects the experience of Live nations products offering like Festivals. Understanding the consumers leads, sometimes this can be as basic as making the festival aware for the consumer. Challenges of the this is the risk of Data, what are the effects of retargeting long term, does this activity become intrusive? Managing it to add value instead of infringement. Human lives evolve faster so keeping up is another issue.
Mike at NME wants to ensure that we use other parts of the business.. Integration of departments to deliver quality content that is free for everyone but also made with people outsourcing the content by joining the conversation. This doesn’t have to be Instagram photos but also ask consumers for data.
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” Albert Einstein
