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Make sure to watch Lady Gaga Bad Romance!

PopScores informs us about the strength of appeal of the artist and as such is a vital part of the brand mosaic. Crucial in helping generate that brand value and then exploit it is internet presence. With Google’s focus on Universal Search, (namely dynamic properties and content such as music, blogs, images and videos) music has got to be visible; a digital oxymoron if ever there was one.

If you’re looking for a mortgage in Google you will find smart companies like Halifax on the front page. If you Google “hip hop music” not a single artist is featured apart from a couple of YouTube video inclusions. The same happens with “heavy metal” and so on. Apparently there were 74,000 searches last month for hip hop in the UK alone.

There’s no difference for artists. You should want your official property appearing on the first page of Google, not some backstreet page trying to make money using your brand. Take Snow Patrol for instance - this month’s second most popular artist in PopScores. If you Google Snow Patrol in the UK you will find the link for Snow Patrol’s homepage ranked nr 1 and 2, followed by Wikipedia, Myspace, Last Fm, a lyrics site, NME and an Amazon page to Eyes Open. One would consider that an excellent result if there was also a link to their catalogue.

Obviously, it helps to have a unique name, something that is not competing for visibility with other brands. Good examples include Coldplay and Sterophonics. Even if you don’t possess a unique name there is a way to dominate your chosen pages on Google. See for example The Priests for whom we helped secure 90% of the first page for a search term that generated 74,000 searches last month alone.

I’ve taken the Top 10 most popular artists from PopScores and Googled their name to see what share they own on the first page of results.

The Beatles 100%

Snow Patrol: 90%

Red Hot Chili Peppers 80%

REM 40%

Kaiser Chiefs 90%

Stereophonics 100%

Coldplay 100%

The Killers 50%

Kings of Leon 100%

Bon Jovi 100%

Apart from REM and The Killers that’s a pretty good result but it is somewhat misleading since these acts have all been around for sufficient time to build a reputation.

This is far from the only search traffic worth capturing. Let’s say one is looking for the song “Use Somebody”, not knowing it’s by the Kings of Leon. Last month there were 206,000 such searches. An actual search returns a page full of relevant links for the band but here comes the problem: The Kings of Leon homepage is nowhere to be found. There are three links to a video, two for videos that aren’t available in the UK and the other is a still image with the song playing. There are no links to Amazon, Play or HMV or any other purchase link. All in all a job no more than half done.

Another popular keyphrase is “Use Somebody lyrics” and for that keyphrase you will find 80% spammy lyrics site. Just like ringtones in the early days, it’s the “entrepreneurs” who are now making money with lyrics.

Searching for Kings off Leon Lyrics doesn’t help. The top 10 links comprise undesirable sites like Lyricsmania.com which load your system with popups that somebody is paying for. Not one official result. Kings of Leon is the norm, not the exception. If I google “yellow” which as a single word is Googled about half a million times a month, I find 2 Coldplay videos hosted by YouTube but no further sign of it in the top 10.

Search, if done properly, can lead to revenue and brand enhancement. Contact us if you would like to know more.

Brand new Live Sites: JLS

VV Brown

Despite much editorial about the right business model of the future there are still some artists who appear to generate some serious revenue. That’s not fundamentally the result of clever marketing or new business models. It’s down to old-fashioned consumer love for an artist that translates into purchase activity.

If you subscribe to PopScores you can see this firsthand. Most of the artists tracked by PopScores manage to score a purchase propensity of only 5% ie just one in twenty people who are familiar with these artists are inclined to buy new music by them. The average varies across demographics but the highest purchase propensity rate is with teenagers (7%) and it then declines to 3% amongst 50-59 year olds. So the consumer segment that has the strongest passion for artists and seemingly the highest stated purchase intention is also the one most likely to help itself to free music through social networking and file sharing bit torrent sites.

Now, what PopScores reveals is an exceptionally strong purchase propensity for some artists and these are typically artists who sell well in the adult segments despite that market’s relatively low inclination to buy music. Take That for example have a purchase propensity which is x 5 the average in the oldest segment (and amongst women). It’s no surprise therefore that they continue to sell music at a prodigious rate.

Listed below are the twenty acts with the highest purchase propensity. Obviously being in this position is no guarantee of success if the album is poorly received but what it does provide is the lifeline to come back with something that delivers what consumers want.

Let’s focus upon Kings Of Leon. Here is an act whose Informed Awareness is only 75% which places them in 90^th position. However, their purchase propensity score is an overall 16% across all demographics and that puts them in 3^rd position. What is remarkable is that although Kinds Of Leon are an act with its primary market in the 13-29 year old segments they manage to score x4 the average purchase propensity with the 30-49 year old demographics and over twice the average in the 50+ year old segment.

Not only do Kings Of Leon currently command more purchase intention than the vast majority of more familiar artists, it’s highly likely that with increasing familiarity they will become one of the biggest selling artists in the UK. Only The Killers are in their company with a 79% informed awareness and a 15% purchase propensity.

At music conferences all over the world you’ll hear the mantra that every artist is a brand. In truth, everyone is a brand but only a few are strong brands. Ask yourself who are the most successful music brands and you’ll probably come up with the same list as us: Madonna, U2, The Beatles, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones and so on.

Whilst it’s eminently possible to deconstruct a brand into its components eg image, music, credibility etc there’s only one thing that matters and that’s the amount of Love consumers have for the artist. To be liked is a good start but it won’t monetize a brand. Love is the only currency of value. Whilst love for a song starts the process of building emotional connection, what drives it is the level of love that connects artist and consumer. PopScores monitors exactly this

The two artists with currently the strongest growth in emotional connection are Lily Allen and The Kings Of Leon.  Lily’s new album is helping her recover from the decline in emotional connection she suffered towards the end of last year. Her PopScore is now back at an all-time peak of 24 and her negative score is at an all time low at 21%

The Kings Of Leon continue to enjoy an extraordinary growth in emotional connection as their familiarity rises. In just over a year the band’s purchase propensity has almost tripled from 5% to a remarkable 14%. This places them 4^th in the purchase propensity tables ranked together with Snow Patrol and The Killers.

Kings Of Leon

Emotional connection can all too easily drain away. Take Chris Brown for example; his behaviour has cost him dearly. Driven by the quality of his music Chris Brown has been a rising star since early 2008. His PopScore chart above shows a consistently improving Score up from 10 to 16 over 10 months. It then took only one month to drop back to 14. The biggest set-back has been with his core fan base of 13-19 year old females who knocked 4 love points off an outstanding connection of 28%. We expect to report a further decline in the May results.

Chris Brown

  Amy Winehouse is another artist whose brand has been stronger. In 2007/08 she was one of the artists with greatest brand building potential but over the last year the opposite has happened. In just 12 months Amy’s PopScore has dropped from an impressive 28 down to a more modest17. This decline is largely driven by an increase in negative perception. Dislike for Amy increased from 29% in March 08 to 36% this month. On top of this, her purchase propensity has dropped by over 30% in just over a year, from 13 down to 9.

Obviously, building an emotional connection with consumers depends significantly on the artist’s musical output. However, the industry persists with the old school release pattern of an album once every 1- 3 years. This makes it difficult to maintain brand momentum. It would be far better to release product when it’s ready and retain brand visibility.

This would be consistent with purchase patterns in the digital world in which consumers like to buy single tracks. There’s always time to bundle an album and release a physical product at some point. Aside from the release of songs artists can continue to communicate with consumers through blogs & diaries and social networks; something which still happens only inconsistently.

 Coldplay are ahead of the pack. Their Twitter following now exceeds 400,000. The benefit from having that number of people simultaneously listening to what they have to say can be immense.

 In the digital world, Out of Sight equals Out of Money.

Universal and YouTube have been in the press again. This time it’s about the possibility of a stand-alone music video site using a YouTube API to monetize music. The central premise is that music is a powerful generator of traffic.

The reality is thatincome comes courtesy of the blockbuster artists, not the long tail. This is not unlike TV where the biggest shows generate the highest ad revenue. With YouTube it’s not the site itself that’s buzzing but the hot properties within.

Take for instance the Universal Music channel. It holds 9,315 videos and has about 630,000 subscribers making it the most popular channel. Its most viewed video has generated 84 million views and the runner-up about 40 million views. Roughly 800 videos have more the 1million views. The typical “favourite” score for a video around 1m is 6,000. The remaining 8,000 or so clips are either new or in the long tail.

So, there are 1,000 clips that work well but of them only a few hundred are a daily attraction. Whilst these figures look large they are relatively small in context.

Take radio for instance. Music radio lives through the attraction of music and artists but its numbers are far bigger. When Chris Moyles plays a tune on his breakfast show he’s pushing the track to 6 million people at once. A few more spins during the week and a track will have enjoyed an exposure to 25 million people in a matter of days. Equally, commercial radio through its generally high rotation policy achieves similar numbers.

There is little doubt that eventually online broadcasters like YouTube will make serious money for themselves and labels will share in their good fortune but that will require more time and innovation.

What the industry needs in the meantime are more blockbuster artists. A look at this month’s PopScores compared to 18 months ago shows how dependent the industry is becoming upon a relatively small number of artists. Only a few still have the capacity to attract and maintain a level of emotional connection sufficient to generate a prodigious financial return. Pink, Take That, Kings Of Leon, The Killers, Rihanna and Leona Lewis are some of those that can, being truly in the hearts and minds of consumers.

Propensity to purchase new music by Males (%) March 09

If we go deeper and look at purchase propensity we find that there are currently only 9 artists that have a new music purchase intention score above the mass market benchmark of 20%. What’s more, 5 of those artists are in the 13-19 year old age group which is obviously a low purchasing segment. Only Oasis, Kings of Leon, Michael Jackson and U2 seemingly have mass market appeal with males 20 years old+. There are no artists in the 40+ age groups that score 20%.

Amongst females, the situation is even more heavily skewed towards teenagers - of the 10 artists that currently have purchase propensity scores of 20% and above, 8 appeal exclusively to 13-19 year olds. Only 2 artists – Take That and Pink – achieve above benchmark in the older age groups.

Propensity to purchase new music by Females (%) March 09

Propensity to purchase new music by Males (%) Sept 07

Propensity to purchase new music by Females (%) Sept 07

Where is the market for your new artist? Identifying target segments can sometimes turn out to be an intuition-based strategy. The basic premise is that an older ie more complex or harmonious sound works better with an older audience whilst greater rhythmic emphasis works better with teens.

This approach succeeds some of the time but an analytical perspective reveals that there is another more powerful way of looking at it. Commercial success, in the short term is dependent upon building a strong emotional connection in the teenage segment. It is also a pre-condition for enduring long-term success. The Killers, Christina Aguilera, Beyonce and Pink all share a strong connection with teens that has extended into the older age groups.

Other artists with sufficiently strong teen support that are likely to join them for a long and rich career are Rihanna, Chris Brown, Scouting For Girls and Katy Perry. This of course assumes that their product remains consistently good.

Typically, when we hear the term “teen artists” we think of artists like Rihanna, Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana or JLS. The truth however is that there is a whole range of artists we wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in this young segment. Favourites of theirs include the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kings of Leon and Snow Patrol. All artists happily at home on AC radio stations.

The chart below shows how deeply affected teens are by Kings of Leon. A Love score of 22% spreads like a virus. Album sales are however likely to come from the 20-29 year old bordering age group ie adults with disposable income.

 Kings of Leon are yet to build a strong relationship in the older demographic segments. But to illustrate what an established relationship looks like, have a look at the graph below for Coldplay which shows the Love for the artist from teens to the 50-59s.

Cultivating a sizeable teen fan community isn’t easy and nor is it cheap. There is very little radio listening amongst young people which makes it much harder to achieve mass market awareness swiftly. However, since there is very little room for new music on radio playlists nowadays there is little to miss out on.

The big advantage of targeting teens stems from the much overlooked fact that they much more easily in love with artists and their music than older age groups. And when they do, word of mouth is likely to drive awareness and that’s when your digital marketing campaign should really kick in.

When the first web 2.0 social network sites launched, their members were mostly teen mobs. Today there are as many adults on these sites as there are teens which makes spreading the word into other segments so much easier thereby speeding the journey from Teens to Tesco’s.

"My advice to labels is take your eyes off the ball...and start listening to it." That’swhat a top UK radio man told me the other day and it makes a lot of sense.

Radio has not been much help recently to labels in terms of supporting their new acts and yet radio remains a very significant force. Without radio airplay it is nigh on impossible to achieve commercial success, but radio continues to go back to classic tunes, the ones with the greatest familiarity which make the hairs on your neck stand up. And why? Because much of the new music doesn’t sound like its produced for the ears but for the eyes and although the eyes can eat they can’t listen to the radio.

Many of the recent successes on the radio are not necessarily the ones you would instantly recognize on the street. The Kings Of Leon are a good example. So its no surprise that when youplay Guitar Hero or Rock Band you find that the most popular tracks are the classics with 12 year old boys battling online to songs like Hotel California. Kids worry much less about how old a track is than how buff it is and the more they get involved the less they care about the visuals.

With Beatles music due for digital release sometime this year via Rock Band kids will have the opportunity to learn about the band for the first time. It shouldn't be a surprise then if we see something of a Beatles revival.

There are some commentators who say that today's audiences have changed in that they are much more segmented than they were 10 years ago. They therefore argue that superstarswith mass audiences are no longer possible.Those people should start playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band and watch kids unifying over some classic Bon Jovi or Lynyrd Skynyrd. We shouldn’t always blame change; some things just don’t change.

And that love starts with a song. A perfect example of the power of a song and how the love for it translates to love for an artist is seen in this month’s PopScores result for Beyonce.

In September Beyonce’s PopScore stood at a mediocre 17 but by December it had risen to a lofty 26 placing her 49^th overall and in the Top 10 with teenage females.

As the PopScores chart shows the release of the single “If I Were A Boy” in the 3^rd quarter had a pronounced impact upon Beyonce’s positive scores which started to improve and her negatives which began to decline. The trend continued as the single reached Number 1 in November after airplay during October. The positive trend continued with her 2^nd single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) which reached position 14 in December. Following her X-Factor performance with Alexandra Burke “Listen” re-emerged in the singles chart at number 8.

 Click for fullsize image

During December Beyonce’s PopScore increased by a massive 4 points to 26 driven by a strong increase in love of 3% points amongst 13-19 females and 40-49 females. Her love with female teenagers is now at 26% which is over 3 times the average and this propels her into the Top 6 list of most loved artists. She is now closing in on the 3 female artists who claim the Top 10, namely Pink, Christina Aguilera and Rihanna.

With female teens taking the lead it is likely that Beyonce will start to build a stronger connection with adult females in early 09.

As noted, Beyonce’s negative scores have also been in decline for several months. During December the trend continued with a further 4 % point decline to 22%.The largest change is attitude is with teenage males whose dislike fell by a massive 8 % points. We believe this can partially be explained by the change of sound with her single “If I Was A Boy.”

The graph below illustrates how clearly the love for Beyonce correlates inversely with age falling from 26% with teenage females to 6% with over 50 females. Beyonce’s Popscore in the 20+ demos is already strong with an average of 30 and driven by the prospect of “If I Was A Boy” moving to recurrent radio playlists and higher rotations on AC stations we expect Beyonce’s love score and therefore Purchase Propensity to grow significantly in the first half of 09.

This should translate into continuing album sales and a rising PopScore.

It’s said that 95% of signed artists aren’t going to sell because they don’t connect with consumers. We subscribe to that view because everyday we at EMR see these problems. In the past, these products would simply be deleted. Now they end up in the long tail for friends and family filling up the internet (ie making search so much harder).

The continuing cries for music taxes, all you can eat subscriptions and licensing like TV and Radio make me feel nauseous. Consider a lake full of artists with only a few big fish. The big fish don’t want to be obscured by the mass of tiddlers whereas the tiddlers are happy to be there in case someone wants them. In such a model the earning capacity of the few big fish is much reduced and you would expect them to exclude themselves from such a model and sell their products individually, download by download at a far higher unit price with revenue visibility. When other big fish follow their exit the lake will be left with the small fish that get thrown back into the water because who wants to pay a fishing license for a lake without big fish?

I think it’s now time to seriously stop people downloading illegally by working together with the ISPs. They were, after all, able to block access to a Wikipedia site displaying a 1970’s album cover by the Scorpions. That should open some eyes.

This Christmas

So which artists are the big winners this Christmas? We use PopScores to identify which artists are commanding the highest purchase intention. We start by looking at the female segments in the December report.

13-19 females: Rihanna

Teenage segments are always more difficult to sell albums to but around Christmas it is the gifting market that really matters. The most wanted CD under the tree for teenage girls this year is Rihanna’s new album which tops the table with a 28% purchase intention. Pink’s new album is also in demand. Even Christian Aguilera’s Greatest Hits may make some in-roads along with Leona Lewis, The Killers and even Coldplay. From outside the Top 10, Britney Spears also looks to make a strong impression over the next few months, continuing to recover her consumer connection.

20-29 year old females: Pink

This is a very important album buying segment and it’s also the most influential group in driving CHR radio playlisting. Pink is the artist most in demand with this segment with a purchase intention of 29%, followed by Take That with a 23% score. Rihanna, The Killers, Kings Of Leon and Coldplay are also competing for share of purse.

30-39 year old females: Take That

Take That aren’t in the PopScores Top 20. In fact they are ranked 37th. The reason is Take That are one of the most polarising acts, dividing males from females. When we rank PopScores by purchase intention, (which is what really matters at this time a year) Take That rank 8th. The heat on Take That is not unifying. The heat comes from a few segments and these segments are strong enough to overcome the polarisation.

Take That score a 46 PopScore with females 30-39 and a 45 with both 40-49 and 50-59 year olds. Even in the 20-29 female group Take That show a significant connection, scoring 37. These high scores are driven by the love score which we know correlates almost perfectly with purchase intention. The strongest group are females 30-39, scoring 30% love which is more than 4 times the average (7%). In this segment, Take That rank 2nd, just behind Pink, but in terms of Love and Purchase Intention, Take That rank 1st. Take That’s purchase intention is 2 points higher than Pink’s and more than 4 times the average. If this segment buys one album this Christmas it will be Take That; if it buys two it will be Take That and Pink. Others seriously competing for attention in this segment are Coldplay and Snow Patrol.

40-49 year old females: Coldplay

The level of purchase intention amongst this market is significantly lower than amongst younger segments. Robbie doesn’t have a new album out this Christmas so it’s Coldplay and Take That competing for purchase attention.

50-59 year old females: Take That

There is little in this year’s final quarter to move this segment to spend money on music. None of this segment’s top five artists have new music on offer so those who want some new music this Christmas will opt for Take That and Coldplay.

And so, looking at what is available this year with artists like Pink, Leona Lewis, The Killers, Rihanna, Coldplay and Christina Aquilera all in the purchase intention Top 10 for Teenage females it looks to us very much like a teenage Christmas this year.

Wishing you very Merry Christmas from the PopScores team at Entertainment Media Research

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That in essence is the Matthew Effect. The term was originally used in science but can explain how music marketing works most effectively in the digital age.

At the heart of the internet there are lists. Lists are traffic drivers. Most viewed, Most discussed, Most listened to, most this and most that. People use lists to filter their exposure to new music. People want the best of things. For anyone serious about spreading their creative content, getting on a popular list is an absolute requirement.

Once on that list, the Mathew Effect takes over. Listed content will always grow in popularity, the extent determined only by the level of emotional connection. The more it grows, the more it will grow. That’s cumulative advantage or in simple terms, snowballing.

It’s not just the lists as we know them. It’s also about visibility, about “dressing up” content. A search on YouTube for a specific video may show up the same video several times. Tests have shown that the clip with the most views is the chosen one; the Matthew Effect at its best.

This of course also applies to different clips within the same subject.

While we’re all seeding content in the hope that people will ultimately share or recommend it, the sharing dynamic only applies when the content is perceived to be worth sharing. Generally it’s not individuals who discover music that they then share but a group or community who decide what’s best.

This of course is why social network marketing is so attractive.

Getting on the list to take advantage of the Matthew effect is the most difficult hurdle. Becoming richer when you’re already rich is much easier than going from poor to rich.

Matthew Effect Marketing is the art of bypassing the natural and often slow selection process and moving directly to relevant lists where visibility can create its own impetus.

Today’s debate on A La Carte versus Subscription digital models is intensifying, driven primarily by new unlimited download offerings from the mobile telcos. In time they will presumably be joined by the ISPs. The force is seemingly with these utility service providers whose single download services have thus far failed to achieve mass market traction. So what consumer evidence is there that supports the case for unlimited music supply?

PopScores is a useful source of information to help inform the argument. For starters there are the Love scores. We know that Love is the ultimate driver of sales. For every 10 people who Love an artist, 7 will definitely consider purchasing new music by that artist. We also know from PopScores that people only love a few artists at a time; on average a little over 4 artists at once. This does vary with age & gender but not so much as to matter. Women on average love 5 artists at any one time while men love 4. Males in their teens love 3 artists whilst males 20-29 love 5 artists. Females love 6 artists when they are teenagers and progressively fewer as they age.

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Radio tells a similar story. When the first jukeboxes were installed in clubs and bars in the US, a station owner noticed that despite the large choice of songs, patrons tended to choose the same songs. That was the birth of Top 40 radio. However, 40 songs were still far too many for radio listeners and CHR was born out of necessity to play fewer songs more often. The same Love principle applies today. There aren’t enough songs around that are loved at the same time by the same people. The implication sounds very unappealing but this truth clears up many of the mysteries around music sales.

So, choice is certainly no winning argument for subscription services. The “millions of songs” available mantra will be meaningless to consumers if they feel they have to pay for the right to access them all.

Furthermore, there is always the risk of overestimating familiarity. The vast majority of the millions of songs potentially available are unfamiliar to the target consumer who is generally aware of hundreds of songs rather than thousands. Why would millions matter to them? Even an advertising-supported model may struggle to attract enough consumers to build a mass-market presence. Music is unlike TV where subscription and advertising work. MTV knew a long time ago that people wouldn’t pay an additional fee to subscribe to their Music TV offering and so it was offered free as part of a package. TV stimulates us differently from music. We spend much of our lives watching TV as a primary activity while music is often a secondary or background activity. Radio still works as an advertising-supported model but the most successful stations have small playlists and drive ratings with celebrity-based entertainment and local, relevant non music content.

PopScores shows us that people are willing to pay for music if they love it. Music doesn’t have to rely on being supported by advertising or to be thrown into a pool of millions of songs that one might eventually stream. What music relies on is Love. The love a consumer has for an artist and/or song which is seemingly at odds with a volume for volume sake proposition.

Yes that’s the title of a Warren Bufffet biography but it’s also my idea of the worth of music. Consumers think music is free because of the many streaming opportunities and free legal downloads, never mind the piracy. It’s tragic and will probably take an age to fix.

At the same time free music affords huge value to businesses like YouTube. Let me make this clear - YouTube would not be remotely where it is without music and companies like Viacom and artists like Prince have long understood this and want to be compensated accordingly. Check it out if you don’t believe me - YouTube’s Top 100 most viewed clips of all time are dominated by music. No other content category delivers as much permanent value as music. What I mean by this is simple. Other categories do drive short term traffic to YouTube and do make Today’s most viewed honours, but after the short term limelight they quickly disappear pretty much forever. Compare Katy Perry’s I kissed A Girl with a Sarah Palin Interview. Which one do you think we’ll still be watching in 10, maybe 20 years time? Which therefore has permanent value?

Music never stops generating traffic. Kids know to go to YouTube for a brand new Panic! At The Disco c lip and thousands of others watch 50 year old Beatles clips over and over again.

Sure , the value depends up on demand like everything else but don’t tell me that music has no value. Without music or without having infringed copyright on a huge scale, YouTube would just be another copyright-respecting Spike (iFilm) and therefore way less successful. The music industry has learned its lesson and now keeps licensing deals very short knowing that soon it will be time to get some of that value back.

Sometimes I hear people talking about how YouTube showed giants like MTV how it’s done and that frustrates me. When you respect copyright, there ’s very little one can do to compete with those who infringe.

YouTube had its big break with the embedded player. Suddenly millions of websites were pointing to YouTube and breaching copyright. Their message was something like “hey kid, you like this clip so just play it on your profile page”. And the Google bots started indexing links to YouTube on a never seen before scale, sending traffic to YouTube in the millions. End of story.

We are in an age where a lot of self-interested business development execs and snake-oil digital strategists talk about paradigm shifts, pulling culture, music democracy and so on.

The fact is music comes attached with copyright and has huge value for businesses and consumers alike. Permanent value.

With the rise of social networks we are constantly being reminded that the familiar push culture is being replaced by the pull culture. How true is it? Pull is an attractive concept once your artist has secured a level of familiarity sufficient to create an emotional connection with consumers who then search them out. Relying upon it without that familiarity is certainly dangerous and possibly delusional.

For this reason established artists can make extraordinary use of new media and rely less on the pushing power of record companies hence Nettwerks’s achievement with Avril Lavigne and Live Nation’s ideas with Madonna. However, until an artist commands that level of familiarity, nothing can replace the traditional push strategy.

The average chart video is 23% less familiar than the song. That’s because songs are pushed on the radio making it incredibly hard for new artists to break-through without radio. Radio works because it filters product for its listeners and exposes them to music they eventually love. Pushing can work online just the same. We like to believe that when something is right for a market it will take-off simply through word of mouse but that’s rarely the case, especially when it comes to music. An extremely funny music video may work virally but may still not sell music. Visuals are important but even more important is the story told and to whom.

Recently, a new artist’s music video on YouTube was scoring about 100 plays per day globally which was credible but wholly insufficient to build substantial familiarity and a following. Few people where paying with their attention. The very same video was then featured by YouTube and generated 120,000 views in twenty four hours and was able to build a substantial subscriber base. The video now scores about 1,000-2,000 views per day and the artist is building a large following. The power of push.

In the 90’s, 70% of video product couldn’t find a home and was never played. Today there is a home on the internet for every piece of content but without getting selected, filtered and eventually pushed by a trusted entity, it remains unplayed. Distributing content is not pushing content. Too often we expect songs and videos to fly just because they are good and deserve success and are then disappointed when success eludes them. It may not be fashionable to admit it but the push model is as relevant as ever

The bridge that connects artists and consumers is music, or to be more accurate, the love for their music. Despite much nonsense spoken to the contrary, building this bridge with artists still relies primarily on traditional media such as Radio and TV. Sure, there are many opportunities for familiarisation online because online can bypass the playlist gatekeepers and generate awareness for artists that are ignored by traditional media. However, mass market familiarisation through an internet-only strategy is not yet a viable strategic alternative to Radio and prime-time TV which can generate huge levels of familiarity within a very short time span. For this article we will therefore focus on Radio.

Music testing for radio has been around since the early 80’s and radio programmers are highly adept at knowing when to back the song and when to support the artist. We make this point because there are artists around that manage to build a bridge with a single song and there are those that go almost unnoticed despite numerous hits.

Let’s take the winner in this month PopScores - Katy Perry. Her familiarity just increased by 14% and her PopScore by 19 points in the female teen market. She’s grown on average across all demos by a stunning 4 points. These scores are driven largely by her increased familiarity and overall likeability. However, her Love score is still low at just 2%. This compares to the 28% Love score for her song “I Kissed A Girl” which has put her on the consumer map. Which goes to show it takes more than just a song to generate that emotional connection that is a precursor to album selling success..

At its peak Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” scored around 35% Love and familiarity climbed incredibly quickly. Today, however, his Love score is just 5% despite nearly 90% familiarity which begs the question, how much do we really know about Gnarls Barkley?

Compare this situation to Snow Patrol, who also had a massive hit with love scores around 35% but today manage a handsome19% Love, which is more than 3 times the UK average.

If you just look at the five most loved artists in the UK , they have two things in common.

1. They all have at least one song that still scores 30% or more love with consumers

2. They all possess a compelling and highly differentiated story

The Beatles, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, REM, Kaiser Chiefs and Snow Patrol have managed to build incredibly strong relationships with consumers through their music and their stories.

Conversely, there is P Diddy, whose song “I’ll Be Missing You” scored well above 30% Love in song tests, yet himself manages only 4% Love despite 96% Name Awareness.

Jay Z had a number of hits with Hard Knock Life also achieving record-breaking research scores, yet his Love score is a lowly 6%. Even Joss Stone has a below average Love score (5%) despite a 96% Name Awareness.

What this highlights is simple: it’s not as easy as just having a great song, a song that receives saturation playlisting and people fall in love with. That’s difficult enough and happens only too rarely (just look at the amount of new music on commercial radio). What success also demands, and is non-negotiable, is a unique and truly engaging story. No wonder the US presidential elections are so much about each candidate’s life. They draw from the same well as artists although often unknowingly. So if you sell a government airplane on Ebay, make sure you tell the world!

The truest measure of artist traction is familiarity and the most successful artists are those whose informed awareness is 100% or as near as damn it across all demographics. Informed awareness means “Yes, I have an opinion on this artist” and high informed awareness is typically a function of long-standing commercial success or a sustained and highly effective TV/PR campaign and in most cases it is both.

Top 20 artists ranked by Informed Awareness

Reaching 100% familiarity takes an immense amount of investment and in most cases requires many years of commercial success. For most of these artists there isn’t a week that goes by without a headline and many of them still have active recording / touring lives. Being talked about is critical to building an emotional connection. An artist that isn’t talked about will not gain in familiarity and will have problems selling. Sure, there is room in the long tail for these artists but this shouldn’t be an excuse. Great music alone isn’t enough to enter the 100 Club. Despite his massive songs Gnarls Barkley still stands at about 80% informed awareness; Lenny Kravitz has been around for 20 years and still only scores 80% while former Blue star Simon Webbe, with a double platinum album under his belt scores just 64% informed awareness. Conversely, Leona Lewis is close to entering the club with her current 92% informed awareness.

For many new artists this is a positive challenge. Commercial album success on the back of low informed awareness indicates the potential scope. Number one album sellers Scouting For Girls score just 64%; The Ting Tings 33% and Alphabeat 30%.

Whilst the digital age presents its all too familiar challenges to the music industry, it does offer great opportunities for growing informed awareness. Never has it been easier to spread a message. There are countless opportunities to broadcast your message to millions of people - the challenge is to have a message, a story that connects by being distinctive and relevant and is capable of standing out from the rest of the noise.

With an ageing population at a time when the importance of the single is much reduced and rock is in the ascendant the music industry has shifted focus to adult-oriented artists and rightly so given the proportion of music sales accounted for by the over 20’s. However, the typical teenage act was often what we call a Mother & Daughter act and our research always revealed that those young acts didn't just connect with the teens but often with their moms, hence the significant album sales once they set foot in the teen market.

Ignoring teenagers isn’t the smartest move even if they aren’t music buyers. If a song or an act connects with them then their much larger network of friends becomes active and with today’s technology, the word can spread quickly via social networks.

From a modest PopScore of 5 in September 2007 to 24 this month, Scouting For Girls have grown significantly above the average. Why we highlight this is because the key driver segment has been the teens putting SFG safely into the Top 20 most loved artists with that demographic.

The graph above shows the steady growth in familiarity and popularity over the life-span of their campaign. This is an image of 3 singles. (and it’s likely to continue for a few more singles considering the purchase propensity score is 2 points above the average)

What’s important to understand is that love doesn’t grow equally across all demos and often there are sizeable variations between the demos. The lead demo for SFG is the core demo for probably 90% of all artists namely 13-19 year olds.

Why does this matter?

As SFG is demonstrating (and the Kaiser Chiefs, The Kooks and many others before them) one of the most effective routes to achieving an established and unifying status for an artist is by breaking that artist with teenagers before moving on to an older and more lucrative market. Of course, teens are the most fickle and unreliable audience, they tend not to buy music and retaining their interest over the long run is perhaps the most difficult thing to do. Consequently, the careers of many teen-oriented artists expire prematurely. However, targeting them is relatively easy and leveraging their connections is what music marketing is almost all about right now.

Once you’re scoreing 20-30% love in your target segment, you’ve made it. That’s so much love you will almost feel under pressure. Getting there is difficult. It can take a long time most of the time and when it does, it also takes a lot of great songs. There are no substitutes for great songs and it is better not to release a song then a great song. And experiments usually backfire. Stay away from dipping into other genres just because of your artistic freedom. Do it and pay the price. Bring people together through lots of great songs.

If you don’t want to wait and build love organically, you will need a megahit. These rarely come these days. We have aggregated a lot of them over time, but today it’s exciting if we hear one a year. Last year we had Chasing Cars.

It accelerated the growth of love for the artist from nowhere to 30% in during the life of the song.. And guess what? Chasing cars is still the number one testing song in the UK across pretty much all formats. An it’s not burned. People are not tired of it.

You can find evidence for this passion everywhere, on the likes of On Myspace, YouTube and broadcasting sites. Songs like this attract huge audiences.

But this love is not just great for the artists, it transfers right over to whoever ,manages to get involved, to ride along. Be it the Radio Station, A Tv Show, a website or a product.

Brands know how powerful music is and they do want to get involved. But its not the music that’s powerful, it’s the love some music generates. Without Love, there is little point. For a brand to play in music matters only if the can access love.

Ever wondered why many radio stations sound so much alike? They fighting for the same love. Love generated by a number of tunes, old and new. Now whilst we’re all subscribing to the idea that music has never been more important then it is today, its also never been more accessible then today and there lies the problem. There is still only a small number of tunes that attract large numbers of people. Yes, and we all subscribe to the long tail and target micro segments and we try and unify a smaller number of people, suggesting that we still can make money selling our music and tickets and merchandise to these small segments. The truth however is that music is a social medium, it carries a message that wants to spread and so by nature it is only the big songes that unite big crowdes and can create such phenomena’s as Youtube and Myspace. Its not the many small segments, the many not so popular tracks that in the end unite large crowds, else we would have seen the likes of MP3.com, Peoplesound, Vitaminic etc come far further then they have.

So please let’s not think it’s technology or new ideas that matter, what makes them work in the first place is nothing but the love for content.

Let’s keep finding the big songs!

A quick look at the list of the most popular artists with teens reveals a category dominated by male-fronted Rock Bands. So not only aren’t there any female artists, but there also aren’t any solo male acts to be found.

The list is driven by all aspects of popularity which means familiarity, love, like and low dislikes. Many of these artists are very familiar with teens and deeply respected by them but this doesn’t necessarily equate to most loved which is what really matters.

The way to get a more accurate picture is to isolate the Love scores and disregard all other aspects of popularity. So who are the top 20 most loved artists in the teenage segment? (13-19)

The Chili Peppers still make it to number one but the Stereophonics, Bon Jovi, Plain White T’s and Kasabian don’t quite cut it and their places are now taken by My Chemical Romance and surprisingly three solo artists, Justin Timberlake, Amy Winehouse and Rihanna.

The main reason why these solo artists haven’t made it into the Top 20 PopScores is because of their degree of polarisation. By that we mean they are much Loved but also greatly Disliked. For example Amy Winehouse scores a dislike of 36%, Justin Timberlake 35%, Rihanna 29%.

Does this tell us something - are solo artists generally more polarising?

The average Love for top 50 solo artists is 12%, the average Dislike is 18%.

The average Love for a band in the Top 50 is 14% and the average Dislike is 12%. That’s 50% greater Dislike on average for Solo artists.

The same exercise for teens reveals:

The average Love for Top 50 solo artists is 13% and the average Dislike is 25%.

The average Love for a band is 17% and the average Dislike is 15%

So, there’s clearly less Love for solo artists and an incredible 67% greater Dislike. This is reason enough to expect very few solo artists, male or female, in the most popular lists with teens.

So what does all this mean? For labels, solo artists are often a lot less hassle than signing bands and therefore the attraction of running solo projects is well appreciated. However, whilst one can’t deny the success of artists like Robbie Williams, Paolo Nutini, James Morrisson, Justin Timberlake, Pink and many others it’s far harder and takes a lot longer to build a lasting emotional connection with audiences.

Why? Because that long-term emotional connection with an audience typically needs to start in the young segment, which is notoriously difficult to keep entertained whilst maintaining credibility.

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If in doubt join a band….