Peter Ruppert's Blog

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….

So the two worlds are finally getting to know one another. The Music world and the Online world. Both have their own currencies and an exchange rate is becoming apparent.

Love is the currency that makes the music industry tick. Love for an artist or a song is what generates the cash. But the models are changing and hyper availability and accessibility of music discourages people from paying for it like they used to. While the concept of free music slowly creeps into our consciousness people now pay with their attention. Online, the currency is traffic. Traffic makes or breaks a site. Traffic is what made Myspace, Google, Bebo and Youtube what they are today regardless of their actual cash flows.

The music industry is a big player in the traffic business but it isn’t yet generating serious income from it while all of the above mentioned sites wouldn’t be where they are without music.

The most viewed video on Youtube of all time “Evolution Of Dance” wouldn’t be there without music and 8 of the top ten titles of all time are music videos, a combined traffic value of around 451 million plays. However, if we consider these plays as world wide plays with repeat viewing and suddenly the number of plays appear in a different light. In comparison, a single play on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show instantly will expose a track to 5 million listeners; a rotation will easily expose a song to 15 million people.

Still, music and online fit very well together. Love generates attention and that means traffic and traffic generates cash. Traffic works like a commodity and you can deal with traffic like you can deal with frozen orange juice. Not all traffic is equal and converts to cash the same way. Depending on the traffic quality it can convert differently for different industries. Traffic is what everyone who operates in the online environment wants most and it’s a huge market.

It’s up to the traffic owner to identify the best converters. No traffic, no income. Remember how the music industry sent their “traffic” to MTV by supplying free programming, the videos? Whilst for most businesses it’s acceptable to turn their traffic into hard cash and advertising and affiliate sales are the core money generators.

To date the music industry generally only converts its traffic into own product sales ie albums, digital tracks and maybe a tour. The problem is that there isn’t a sales opportunity every day and conversion rates are low because of the increasing perception of free music. There is an album a year and a few singles and if you’re lucky a tour.

What happens to the rest of the year? There isn’t enough product to generate significant amounts of money and the traffic travels around until it hits a site that knows how to convert it. A goldmine owned by the music industry, but it’s keeping the miners away.

Naturally, advertising and affiliate sales have to be handled very carefully to avoid diluting an artist’s brand value but affiliate marketing has become the core traffic purchase model by businesses all over the world so that there is a matching product or programme for everyone. Amazon has one of the most successful affiliate networks and has been buying traffic through it for many years as has eBay, Napster and a number of seriously cool, music, textile and cult-photo retailers.

If you have an artist site generating more then 500 visits per day then let us help you implement a money-making affiliate strategy.

Last month we talked about using Popscores as a discovery tool; looking into artists that are as yet unfamiliar but show a strong connection in a small segment. If you remember: Big Fish Small Pond. So when an artist is in the small pond then all that matters is to increase the size of the pond (Familiarity).

This month, I would like to expand on this using the example of Alphabeat.

We know with young acts, particularly in the CHR/Pop segment, that the first point of connection is the song. In the Pop genre, traditional connection points such as live play, music press and the internet are usually later in the chain. For Alphabeat, it was the song that built the core connection. ‘Fascination’ had early support from Radio 1 and ILR came on board fairly quickly, exposing Fascination to large audiences.

Alphabeat’s main objective now is to continue growing their Familiarity, which in turn will build a stronger connection.

It’s a simple numbers game: More exposure = More Love = More Sales.

That formula doesn’t apply all the time, but it does apply when an artist has a strong starting position, a strong connection even in the smallest market.

Naturally, the size of the total market segment depends on how many people generally listen to the type of music, say Pop. This is what we call Market Potential.

For those who regularly test new music with EMR, the term Market Potential is a familiar one. It identifies the percentage of consumers with a preference for a certain sound.

According to current EMR HitForecasts, the Pop genre has a market share of around 55% MktPo, Rock around 65%, HipHop around 45%, Dance around 30% in the UK .

Although we measure Market Potential for each song, we can safely assume that Alphabeat fits into the Pop Category and that’s a comfortable market segment (55%) with massive sales potential (that depends on the level a song can convert familiarity to love which in turn converts to sales at a rate of approx 70%).

So at 55% MktPo, there is plenty of scope to turn familiarity into sales.

For an artist in the Dance genre, it is more difficult to generate sales through familiarity since the market size is smaller. To make this a little clearer lets look at the country music niche. Dolly Parton is a highly familiar artist; however a new album from her is unlikely to generate as many sales as a new Nickelback album for example. That’s simply because Nickelback’s market(Rock) has a 65% share whilst Dolly Parton’s market(Country) has an 12% share. That’s not to say that 12% market share cannot generate significant sales, it’s simply a lot harder, especially for a new artist.

PopScores tracks the increase of awareness and informed awareness over time and, more importantly, across each of the 10 consumer segments.

This month Alphabeat saw an increase of 5% in Name Awareness and 3% in Informed Awareness. Major growth again from teens but also a substantial growth in the 20-29 segment lead by 20-29 year old women, where Name Awareness grew from 26% to 34%. That’s not too far from the teenage awareness of 40% and a second single is likely to increase Familiarity significantly.

Another good example of correlated awareness/sales growth is Leona Lewis.

The graph below shows how in the early part of 2007, following her X-Factor win in late 2006, most of her connection scores had calmed. Familiarity did not suffer, but the silence had somewhat decreased her overall Like scores and increased dislikes significantly. Her Popscore slipped from a credible 20 to a low 13 during the summer. People nowadays are extremely impatient and can quickly lose an emotional connection to an artist if that connection is not stimulated.

When she arrived back with the single Bleeding Love, her score recovered and grew significantly. Her awareness gap nearly closed and positives grew accordingly. Unusually, despite this significant rise in familiarity, negatives only increased slightly, far less than is commonly observed with such a high level of overall growth.

Purchase intention and Love tripled since the summer of 2007 and positives grew far more significantly then the norm which shows the potential of future purchase conversions: More Awareness = More Love = More Sales.

I had a chat with a senior music programmer yesterday about the state of the music. He said the problem was that in the nineties you had too much great material and too view playlist slots and today you have too little great material and too many playlist slots, so you have to rely on golds

I thought this would be a good place to highlight some of the greater, yet more or less undiscovered acts we come across every so often.

Check out Crystal Castles:

PopScores takes consumer perception of artists and transforms it into measures of emotional connection. It’s straight forward - the more popular an act, the higher the PopScore rank. It’s also immediate - it identifies the demographics an artist is connecting with in a blink of an eye. From this we can see for example the impact each single has on an artist and how PR impacts artist perception and purchase intention

The system is now well understood and it has uncovered many unknowns of emotional connection. We have learned for instance

• At what level of emotional connection people buy records
• How many artists on average different demographics Love at any point of time
• The fastest and strongest initial connection is with female teenagers
• Which demographics an artist needs to connect with to generate sales

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PopScores goes deeper still. It can be used to spot future winners, acts currently only connecting with smaller segments and therefore unfamiliar to the mass market. From this month we will feature a section which highlights these breakthrough acts.

To understand how to do this we need to look at a combination of factors. Let’s use an earlier breakthrough prediction identified by PopScores such as Alphabeat.

Alphabeat have a PopScore of 6 which ranks them at 204. Name Awareness is 29% and Informed Awareness is 13%. The band had a relatively good start on radio in February but for the mass market it’s still early days requiring as it does a considerable amount of persistent exposure to break through the 50% familiarity barrier.

With young acts like Alphabeat the total ranking is meaningless because it’s driven by the level of familiarity which in their case remains low. The higher the familiarity, the greater potential for love. To make this even clearer look at rank 197 which is occupied by the Spice Girls who are 99% familiar but rank only 7 places ahead of Alphabeat.

So if we consider Alphabeat’s familiarity is well below the average then what do we look for? Well, most acts at their level of familiarity reveal some tell-tale emotional connection or they flat-line. Let’s look at a typical profile for a not-yet-happening artist with a similar level of familiarity. As you can see there’s very little love within any demographic despite almost 1 in 3 people having heard of the act.

Example of Flat-line Emotional Connection

Compare this to Alphabeat’s chart below. What’s really important is their 6% Love score with a specific demographic (20-29 year old men) indicating a strong node of connection. Further growth in Informed Awareness in this segment is likely to grow Love well beyond the average.

This position is underscored by the fact that the 6% Love is the same as the average Love for this segment overall but achieved on Informed Awareness of just 25% Vs an average of 65%.

We already know how important “love” is for purchase propensity but it is equally important for the spread of word of mouth which will generate awareness across the demographics.

Alphabeat Love Score by Demographic

The top buzzing act this month is Does It Offend You, Yes who are clearly connecting with female teenagers with a remarkable 13% love score on just 18% awareness. Here’s a taste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6_ubiAzoSk

Top Buzzing Artists

This Month’s Movers & Shakers

Mark Ronson is gaining credibility in particular with 20-29 year olds. His Love score rose by 4 points from 9% to 14% supported by a 7 point increase in Name Awareness to 86% and a 6 point increase in Informed Awareness to 75%.

An act that has been bubbling under with teens for a while is Scouting For Girls and they are now showing signs of breaking out of their core market. They recorded a significant increase in Love in the 20-29 female segment (8% to 12%) and a very decent 9 point increase in Informed Awareness with 30-39 year old males taking it to 60%. Name Awareness increased by 4 points to 68% and Informed Awareness grew by 6 points to 50%.

Only consumer attention can turn an unknown song into a hit. Get that song on the radio and consumers will generally start to pay attention. Obviously there are only so many songs radio and music TV can support so it’s fortunate there are other means to get that attention online. But just being there is far from adequate. Interruption marketing is just as ineffective as it is in any other media.

Understanding what kind of consumer is connecting with a song is arguably the most important first step. Once that target market is identified, it then takes someone to make the introductions to the target market. And once those introductions are made, stories start to spread.

In music marketing, the currency of emotional connection is love, and that’s exactly what it takes to build a strong relationship between the Song, the Artist and the Consumer. Although PopScores focuses upon artists it actually highlights the power of songs all the time. Take a look at the Hoosiers story.

In less than a year The Hoosiers have built a dream relationship with consumers based on just two songs

Another great relationship is currently building with Scouting For Girls. Consider this - the boys’ album made it to number 1 in the UK sales chart with no more than 40% Informed Awareness but with two big airplay hits that truly connected.

This is an extremely promising platform for the future and highlights again how important it is to track the key values of emotional connection to understand the true potential of an artist.

This Month’s Movers & Shakers

The Hoosiers continue to show how an artist can build a strong relationship with consumers over a very short period of time. Over the last month for example they grew their total PopScore by 4 points with the largest growth coming from females 30-39 with a massive 9 points increase. Informed Awareness of the band also grew by a phenomenal 9%.

The second biggest grower is Scouting For Girls. They recorded a 3 point increase in their total PopScore to take them one point above the average. Their core market is still deeply rooted with 13-19 year old females with whom their PopScore increased from 27 to 35 (over twice the average in this demographic). The second biggest force behind their growth came from females 30 to 39 with whom their PopScore increased by a massive 6 points to 20. Interesting stats for the marketer one might think.

Amy Winehouse recovered from a slight dip last month and increased her PopScore by 3 points to 26.which takes her well above the average. Interesting to note for some, her core target market is females 20-39 years old which is where her strongest growth is coming from. She is also enjoying considerable support from females 30-39.

This month’s biggest growth in love was enjoyed by Mark Ronson with females 20-29.

The average Purchase Propensity score for all artists in PopScores is 4% but this month two acts show a rare increase of 2 points. Muse’s score increased to 12% and Radiohead’s to 7%. These compare to 15% being the current highest score achieved by The Beatles, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Snow Patrol

Finally, we can see some hot acts buzzing on the horizon. Despite ranking below 200 because of their low total familiarity levels Ali Love, Late of the Pier and Does It Offend You, Yeah achieve above average PopScores with teenage males. It’s still early days for these acts but there are some encouraging signs which should be tracked.

In this report we have aggregated PopScores data from 2007 to identify the biggest growers and the most successful acts of the year.

There is a range of different music buying segments in the UK and with PopScores we define these core segments using age & gender demographics segmented by 10 year intervals from 13 to 59 years of age. That’s a powerful way of understanding how well or not acts connect and possibly unify one or more demographic groups

The most popular acts in the UK over the year were The Beatles and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Beatles’ success should come as no surprise because although they have very little connection with teenagers they remain massively popular with British adults. In fact, the Beatles break all records in terms of emotional connection with the over 50’s with almost one in two (45%) saying that they love them. To put this into context, the highest love score in any other age group was 30%.

The Chili Peppers’ strength comes from their continuing ability to unify the market and despite having been around for some considerable time they were the most popular artist with teen males during ‘07, a list that’s entirely made up of rock acts.

The overall Top 10 is entirely made up of groups and 8 of the 10 acts are rock. The other odd one out is the Scissor Sisters in 6^th position. 4 of the Top 10 acts are relatively new – Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, Scissor Sisters and Coldplay.

Female teens showed a lot of love for rock during ‘07 and also for solo female acts, the most popular of whom was Pink. Edgy pop is what best defines the twenty something female. Pink, Gwen Stefani and the Scissor Sisters lead the table. The rest of the table was dominated by rock bands with the sole exception of Nelly Furtado, who came in 10^th place.

Twenty something males prefer rock bands again with not a single solo artist in this segment’s Top Ten. The “sound” of the 30+ female doesn’t appear to differ much from the twenty somethings, with the exception that this segment’s top 10 also features Kylie Minogue and Bon Jovi.

In the 40+ and 50+ segments there is little room for newer acts. The exceptions are the Kaiser Chiefs and Snow Patrol who built enough love in the 40+ segment to appear in the Top 10. The other big acts in these segments all had 10+ albums to build that strong connection.

In summary, each ten year segment has its own distinctive sound. There is some overlap between age segments but one could readily programme a radio station that reflects the preferred sound for each of the segments.

This exercise confirms again that whilst some artists like Snow Patrol and the Kaiser Chiefs manage to unify 20-50 year olds, the rule is that our music preferences stay with us for a long time while we grow our emotional connection with artists. The warning message to the music industry appears to be build acts with long term careers that can last a generation or today’s teens and twenty somethings will have a lot less passion for music when they’re older. A two album career simply isn’t enough to build a long term connection.

Top Ten Most Popular Acts in the UK

1. The Beatles 
1. Red Hot Chili Peppers 
3. Snow Patrol 
4. Kaiser Chiefs 
5. REM 
6. U2 
7. Scissor Sisters 
8. Coldplay 
9. Bon Jovi 
10. The Police
 

Top Ten Most Popular Acts by Demo

13-19 Females

Pink 
Snow Patrol 
Christina Aguilera 
Nelly Furtado 
Gwen Stefani 
Killers 
Kaiser Chiefs 
Kelly Clarkson 
The Kooks 
Maroon 5
 

13-19 Males

Red Hot Chili Peppers 
Killers 
Foo Fighters 
Muse 
Razorlight 
Snow Patrol 
Gorillaz 
Arctic Monkeys 
Kaiser Chiefs 
The Zutons
 

20-29 Females

Pink 
Gwen Stefani 
Scissor Sisters 
Red Hot Chili Peppers 
Snow Patrol 
Killers 
Kaiser Chiefs 
Bon Jovi 
Green Day 
Nelly Furtado
 

20-29 Males

Red Hot Chili Peppers 
Foo Fighters 
The Beatles 
Snow Patrol 
Oasis 
Green Day 
REM 
Killers 
Nirvana 
Razorlight
 

30-39 Females

Scissor Sisters 
Robbie Williams 
Pink 
Snow Patrol 
Red Hot Chili Peppers 
Kaiser Chiefs 
Madonna 
Kylie Minogue 
Bon Jovi 
Gwen Stefani
 

30-39 Males

Red Hot Chili Peppers 
Kaiser Chiefs 
U2 
The Police 
The Beatles 
REM 
Foo Fighters 
Snow Patrol 
Green Day 
Killers
 

40-49 Females

Scissor Sisters 
Robbie Williams 
Annie Lennox 
Take That 
Meatloaf 
Earth Wind & Fire 
Genesis 
Bon Jovi 
Snow Patrol 
Stevie Wonder
 

40-49 Males

REM 
Annie Lennox 
David Bowie 
Genesis 
Scissor Sisters 
Meatloaf 
U2 
Kaiser Chiefs 
Snow Patrol 
The Police
 

50-59 Females

The Beatles 
Simon & Garfunkel 
Eric Clapton 
Stevie Wonder 
Genesis 
Meatloaf 
Elton John 
Annie Lennox 
Robbie Williams 
Bryan Adams
 

50-59 Males

The Beatles 
Simon & Garfunkel 
Eric Clapton 
Rolling Stones 
Santana 
Bob Dylan 
Genesis 
David Bowie 
Annie Lennox 
Diana Ross


The Top 10 most popular acts in the UK are a weighted result and reflect the population of the UK, i.e. larger population segments such as 40-49 year olds weight heavier than the much smaller population segment of teenagers

The Biggest Growers in 2007

The biggest growers during 2007 were The Klaxons, Amy Winehouse and The Fratellis. The Klaxons enjoyed their largest support with teen females but also with 40-49 year old males. Amy Winehouse had the strongest growth in emotional connection with 30-39 and 40-49 year old females and The Fratellis grew the most with 50+ men.

Other big gainers were Kanye West who secured considerable support from teen males and Fergie who grew strongly with 20-29 year old females and 30-39 year old males. Snow Patrol experienced the biggest increase with 50-59 year old females.

The Top Three Growers

1. The Klaxons +12 PopScore points

2. Amy Winehouse +10 points

3. The Fratellis + 9 points

The Biggest Growers By Demographic

13-19 Females: The Klaxons + 22 PopScore points

13-19 Males: Kanye West + 18 points

20-29 Females: Fergie + 20 points

20-29 Males: Klaxons + 16-points

30-39 Females: Amy Winehouse + 19 points

30-39 Males: Fergie + 15 points

40-49 Females: Amy Winehouse + 14 points

40-49 Males: Klaxons + 17 points

50-59 Females: Snow Patrol + 15 points

50-59 Males: The Fratellis + 17 points

The biggest grower this month is Leona Lewis.

Although X-Factor afforded her a significant amount of familiarity, only now is she close (86%) to reaching the magic barrier of 90% Name Awareness where just about everyone has heard of her. Once there, she will be in the company of household names such as Moby, Kelly Clarkson and Bryan Ferry.

The single most important market of late driving Leona has been 40-49 year old females. Her love with them quadrupled from 5% to 20% on the back of a 10% point increase in Informed Awareness to 87%. As we would expect because of the almost perfect correlation between Love and Purchase Propensity (see the article below) the latter surged by +9% points to 14% which happens to be 3 ½ times the PopScores average.

Altogether Leona’s PopScore rose by 8 points over the month taking her from 130th to 81^st position.

LEONA LEWIS

Scouting For Girls are also big winners this month. Their Informed Awareness increased significantly (14% points) in their core teenage market and by 9 % points with both 20-29 and 30-39 year old females. Love and Purchase Propensity also increased across most of the female segments. Their total PopScore showed a 40% increase to 14.

The Hoosiers continued their advance. Their Name Awareness increased by 10% points to 65% and their Informed Awareness rose by 9% points. However, at 44% familiarity and an Awareness Gap of 21% (the net difference between Name and Informed Awareness) there is still much further to go.

Russell Watson’s medical situation has been widely publicized and it appears the population has responded sympathetically. His Positive score increased by nearly 30% to 19%, driven by 40-49 year old males, whilst his negative score decreased by 12% to 22%.

Radiohead have received a sensational amount of publicity since announcing their digital “name your own price” campaign. However, in terms of emotional connection it doesn’t appear to have enhanced their position in the UK. Their overall PopScore actually fell from 30 in October to 27 in December reflecting a general increase in dislikes from 13% to 15% and a decline in Love amongst teens...

RADIOHEAD

Those millions of Zeppelin fans who weren’t at the O2 this past Monday are enjoying clips of the show on YouTube. The clips are of course not more than mobile phone footage shot by fans during the gig. Warners and the Zeppelin management have requested that this footage is taken down, despite Warners agreement with YouTube.

Understandably, the footage is of poor quality and for someone like Led Zeppelin, footage like that only kills the spirit of the re-union and may even harm a possible future tour. It shows again that the internet has not become the new radio for the labels. Copyright owners, artists etc all want to be on the ride, some even for free, but the lowest common denominator is quality and all agree, bad quality is bad for your image, no matter who has uploaded the clip. So apart from copyright issues, quality control is another major issue that will surely be the next big thing on the music industry agenda.

The music we love is not something new we find everyday. Many of our favourite songs we’ve been loving for years. From the time we first hear music we love, it can then take a long time if ever to truly connect with the artist. An emotional connection between consumer and artist based largely upon the music is unlikely to endure. The industry is littered with here today / gone tomorrow artists whose star declined when the music faded.

In this month’s PopScores we want to investigate how many artists the average person actually “loves” and to find out if there’s a difference between the genders and the different age groups.

PopScores has the answers. The average number of artists that a person considers a favourite is four. Considering the volume of new releases each week, all competing for this “love” that’s a pretty low number.

Across the ten demographic groups that we cover, those with the least amount of “loved” artists are 13-19 year old males and 50-59 year old males. The top 20 most loved artists for male teenagers are without exception rock bands. The Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Killers, Muse etc all earn plenty of respect from teen males.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the most loved artists for 50+ males are immortal artists such as the Beatles, Dylan, Santana, REM and Annie Lennox. However, what PopScores reveals is that there isn’t much room for love in their hearts given the average of just 3 loved artists

Those who fall in love most easily are 13-19 and 20-29 year old females. These segments love 6 artists on average, double the rate for teen and older males.

Teenage girls also appear to spread their love a little wider. Rock bands dominate the most loved list, but there is also room for female artist such as Kelly Clarkson and Pink.

So does any of this matter? We would argue vehemently that it does. We know from earlier PopScores analysis that there’s a direct and strong correlation between Love and purchase that simply doesn’t exist with Liking for an artist. On average 70% of consumers who love an artist state they will definitely buy new music by that artist.

Despite (or because of?) the volume of information available in the media about artists and a myriad number of ways of consuming their music, monitoring their lives, accessing their thoughts and engaging with their product, the number of artists that each consumer loves is so limited that it must directly impact recorded music sales.

Reports of Prince suing fans and internet companies continue to arrive daily. Many suggest that Prince is trying to hold onto an analogue music world controlled by copyright. I wonder if that's so. The physical world is more controlled than ever with CCTV, DNA, GPS, intelligent barcoding etc. Yet, quixotically we seem to believe in (or is that surrender?) to the notion that the internet should be an unregulated world, where anyone can do everything without consequences; that everything out there belongs to everybody and has no value. The corollary is that musicians and the industry need to devise new ways of making money such as touring and merchandise.

I don’t subscribe yet to that future. Although it has taken time to catch up, there’s evidence that the internet doesn’t have to be lawless. The problem is that as long as we allow this perception to prevail it will continue to attract criminals, paedophiles and opportunists. Illegal filesharing kills the value of IP like counterfeiting kills the value of money and that's all there is to it. And that's why we don't allow anyone to copy money.

Is Prince giving us a wake up call to say “don’t give up”? Remember, Prince was one of the first artists to endorse internet-only distribution which makes it even harder to understand what he's up to now.

I believe Prince wants his rights to belong to him for much the same reason as he fought Warners some years ago. What’s more he seems to be winning. In the first days of his clash with Youtube, deleted clips returned the same day until frustrated culprits finally tired of setting up new accounts such that Youtube is now Prince-free. Ok, the clips moved to sites like Dailymotion.com,but the same thing is happening there and to similar sites. Suddenly, it appears that Youtube & co can be controlled.

Where to from here? If anyone is still taking notice Prince may well turn out to be the industry’s martyr proving that rights can be preserved albeit at a high personal price as Metallica discovered when they took a robust stance against file sharers, many of whom were their fans.