Peter Ruppert's Blog

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.

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