Seth Godin

on Tribes
Outlining the music industry’s missing link

Rise of the Suffranets

Marketing to women through music

Music’s dark revolution

Marie Antoinette and the infinite iPod

The Great Wall of sound

What China’s music consumers really want

Help! my iPod thinks I’m EMO

Rebuilding music’s recommendation engine

C E
EN
LI G
T E L
0 1
U S IC
T / 0
IN

U KT M
O R
FR
E P
R
 04 | Radar
Detecting the presence, direction, speed and
wider implications of the ever evolving music
business through technology, music, gaming,
Brand finder
Amazon 34
Editorial Every story has a beginning. This is ours. Welcome to FRUKT
brands, retail and innovations. Baidu 20-23
Bebo 30-31 Music Intelligence, the first chapter in our guide to helping you
Blackberry 10-11 navigate the ever evolving, multi-collaborative world of music.
Carling 18-19 It’s a new page and music fans are rewriting the future. FRUKT
10 | Campaigns China Mobile
Coca-Cola
20-23
3, 10-11, 20-23, 30-31
Music Intelligence showcases that future in order to help you
resonate with a newly empowered generation of music lovers.
Lyndon Lawrence (Reebok) and Jack Horner Columbia Records 14-17
(FRUKT) pick apart a select crop of brand and Converse 20-23 Music has never before been more ‘in demand’ or available ‘on-demand’. This is arguably music’s golden
marketing campaigns to sort the ones with real Diesel 18-19 age. Now is the time to stand up and have a musical opinion, whether you are a digital retailer, a household
sticking power from the ones that, quite frankly, Durex 9 brand or just a musician on Twitter. Providing music is only half the package, music fans are looking to
need a sticking plaster. Echo Nest 3 be part of something, to make connections, to uncover rare gems, to find something of value. In the new
EMI 28-29 world where ‘cost’ is a dirty word it’s time to offer up something priceless.
Facebook 34 Music consumers are looking for something more, something deeper and more meaningful. They
Gillette 30-31 have turned away from the traditional gatekeepers in their droves looking instead to one another, to other
Google 10-11 fans in their tribe, their cell group, their digital enclaves for information. Why? Well, because they are
Guitar Hero 4 still looking for those trusted voices - someone to lead their nomadic tribes, someone to make sense
Harmonix 5 of the clutter.
iTunes 14-17 In this issue of FRUKT Music Intelligence Seth Godin signals the need for leadership as he outlines how
14 | Tribes Kraft Foods
Last.fm
30-31
34
the music industry had ‘Tribes’ of music fans in the palm of their hands yet failed to connect with them.
Likewise in China, that beacon of economic hope for the music industry, music consumers are finding
Marketing guru Seth Godin outlines the overriding Levis 9 their niches but are suffering from a lack of leaders and investors in new music. Disruptive technology has
importance of connecting with, and leading, Live Nation 35 ushered in a content revolution and changed the musical landscape, however the next revolution will be
‘Tribes’ as music consumers place increasingly MSN 18-19 one of ‘choice’, based on music’s emotive value, rather than ‘price’.
greater value on the connections they have with MTV 14-17, 30-31 Giles Fitzgerald, Editor, giles@fruktmusic.com
each other. MySpace 10-11, 34
O2 18-19

Contributors
One2One Network 3
Pandora 34
18 | Youth Trends Pepsi 10-11

The latest statistics and analysis highlighting the music

24 | Digital Pitchfork
Quantic Dream
14-17, 34
4
consumption habits of today’s youth, outlining their feelings Music’s Dark Revolution: Music fans Reebok 3, 10-11
on the economic crisis and their perception of brand are suffering from consumption Rock Band 4
involvement with music. 20 | Culture Clash overload and are increasingly
looking for someone to make sense
Sohu
Sony/ATV
20-23
30-31
The Great Wall of Sound: China’s emerging of the digital onslaught. As a result Spotify 6-7
economy has the mathematicians dizzy from the breaking away from the mainstream The Pirate Bay 9
potential music revenues. However, with piracy may become a necessity rather than Tower Records 14-17
and pop ingrained in the psyche of the nation a possibility. Twitter 18-19
there appears to be a sizable wall between music Unilever 30-31
Barbara Jones Chris Heath Dom Hodge Ed Peto
and monetisation. Virgin 18-19 CEO/Founder of the Director of Strategy at Director of Planning at Managing Director of Beijing
Virgin Mobile 10-11 One2One Network - the FRUKT, delivering bespoke FRUKT, looking after the based music industry
Women’s Word of Mouth consultancy projects for communication strategy consultancy Outdustry,
Yahoo 3
34 | Analysis
Marketing Network. global clients on competitor needs of a variety of which specialises in the
Yahoo Music 30-31 Formerly SVP of marketing insight, consumer trends, consumer brand and Chinese music business.
at Columbia, Maverick, and business modelling, retail technology clients. Previous clients include
Yaz 30-31 Warner Bros Records. and sponsorship. Coca-Cola and NBC.
Help my iPod thinks I’m EMO:
Paul Lamere laments the sorry state of musical
Editor:
recommendation engines and asks if the Giles Fitzgerald, giles@fruktmusic.com
‘wisdom of crowds’ approach is really as wise

28 | The Suffranets
Design & Art Direction:
as people think. Paul Greeno, paul@fruktmusic.com
www.fruktmusic.com/design

Here come the girls: With women responsible Subscriptions:

Dudley Ashton, dudley@fruktmusic.com
for 85% of consumer purchasing, if you’re not
reaching the female market you’re missing Chief Executive Officer:
Anthony Ackenhoff, anthony@fruktmusic.com Jack Horner Lyndon Lawrence Paul Lamere Seth Godin
a crucial set of influencers. We highlight the Jack worked in the digital Lyndon is the Digital Brand Director of Developer Seth is both the author of 10
Creative Director: music business for a major Manager for Reebok Community at The Echo books on marketing and the
brands that are making their mark and Barbara
Jack Horner, jack@fruktmusic.com label and one of the leading International. Having won Nest, a research-focused founder of the world’s most
Jones shines a spotlight on the music industry’s
35 | The Grid
advertising networks before several awards for his music intelligence startup successful marketing blog.
FRUKT Music, 56 Compton Street, London, EC1V 0ET
forgotten demographic. T: +44 (0) 20 7017 8181 F: +44 (0) 20 7017 8199
setting up FRUKT in 2001. Originals work at the adidas providing music information He was VP Direct Marketing
He is chief of big ideas and Group, he is now dedicated services to developers and at Yahoo prior to leaving to
www.fruktmusic.com
communications planning to doing the same for partners through a machine become a full time speaker,
Number crunching the big musical statistics for FRUKT’s brand work. Reebok. listening platform. writer and blogger.

2 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 3
 Nomad
The Radar Soul Redux

Gaming
With Guitar Hero and Rock Band seeming to have
hit saturation point and last year’s glut of titles
The Radar is devoted to the pulse of the industry. (Mirrors Edge, GTA IV, Dead Space) failing to
Going beyond music news, It’s an ongoing capture consumers imagination, just where does

conversation on technology, music, gaming,
brands, innovation and the wider implications
of the emerging music model. It's a two-way
street, send your views and comments to:
radar@fruktmusic.com
Siftables
the evolution of gaming go next?
Omikron: The Nomad Soul, which is ten
year’s old this year, was notable because of its
high profile endorsement with David Bowie –
who, alongside his collaborator Reeves Gabrels,
composed a number of songs used throughout
the game, and appeared as a character in-game.
Although plagued by some usability bugs the game
was arguably 10 years ahead of its time – both
in conceptual game play and in its endorsement

It’s a small Some intuitive little hands on devices

TECHNOLOGY
stance. It had the beginnings of music purchase How much music data could a single block hold, comparably
options in game (gamers could buy music as they
resembling scrabble tiles caught our to say a USB stick or MP3 device?

world after all traversed through the Omikron world), a Second

Life styled setting and narrative, and it leveraged
multiple game play elements: an adventure game,
attention at this year’s TED conference.
We caught up with MIT grad David
Well, our current prototype version would only hold 2 or 3 songs,
but flash memory is getting cheaper every day, so if that was
part of the business model it would be easy to increase the
a puzzler, a combat capacity to hold many albums at a time. However, the key thing
Merrill to find out a little more about his
innovation

Tilt shift photography, which plays title and a first person about Siftables is the physical, multi-object interaction that
with depth perception to turn both shooter. ‘siftables’ project and how they could they enable. I believe their greatest potential is as an expressive
Artist-based gestural interface, not as a storage medium.
still and video footage of crowds
gaming at present
inspire new interaction with music.
into a Lilliputian wonderland, keeps consists of titles like What can Siftables bring to the music discovery experience?
cropping up and making us wonder 50 Cent’s 40 track Could you briefly explain what Siftables are, how they function I think that making them the “knobs” on a multi-parametric
why no one, artist or brand, is strong Middle Eastern and what led you to create them? search interface to a large music database would be a fabulously
jumping on this niche. Ok, we know carnage ‘Blood on the Siftables are interactive computers the size of a cookie that interesting use for Siftables. Or, they could make a physical,
Sand’ or the perpetually can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital visual, directly-adjustable equalizer. Those are the first couple
Thom Yorke
in production ‘Brutal information and media. Imagine a pile of Lego on the table in of ideas that come to mind, and there are lots of possibilities.
mucked about Legend’, the heavy front of you, and think about how you would inspect, then sift and
with it a few metal beat-em up sort the pieces in search of particular ones or to categorise them With the current interest in music-based gaming, what could
years ago in his staring Jack Black. into groups. We skillfully manipulate collections of objects all the Siftables potentially offer in this area?
‘Harrowdown Hill’ “It is time for our time and the vision for Siftables was that they would replicate I really admire what Harmonix has done over the past 10 years
industry to grow up this type of interaction but for digital content. to bring this genre to the forefront, yet I think there are a lot
video, but each
and explore new possibilities instead of redoing of possibilities still out there waiting to be explored. It was the
time we see the same games with the same old concepts over Siftables appear to offer a tangible bridge between the digital combination of a more accessible, physical interface and the
a new group of and over again,” said Quantic Dream CEO David and physical worlds, how crucial do you believe this is to the right cultural context that made Guitar Hero so popular. I imagine
these short films Cage recently. Plans for the franchise remain future of digital media? Siftables enabling similarly fast-paced, spatial gameplay, with
set to music unconfirmed; a sequel has found itself constantly It’s absolutely critical. We are three-dimensional, physical greater puzzle-solving and improvisation possibilities.
in development limbo despite rumours of a late creatures, and that fact isn’t going to change. For a long time we
on Flickr they
2009 release date. Whether it will retread its artist have been using interfaces that are ok, but not great. When was While the development of innovative music platforms are
still astound us. endorsement route remains to be seen, but clearly the last time you felt true delight when you used your computer? continuing at breakneck speed online, there is still some
If you haven’t with Resident Evil 5 outselling every item in the At some point haven’t you wanted to reach right into the screen considerable way to go in creating a tangible access point
caught them UK Singles Chart on its release, eclipsing the total and move the items around with your hands? beyond the LCD screen. Guitar Hero is indicative of music fans’
already check sales of U2’s new album in only one weekend, desire to get hands-on, to leverage a physical attachment
gaming innovation and music innovation need How do you envisage the Siftable concept working for music? with music – something that has sustained the continual
out ‘Metal Heart’
to get hands on. The music sequencer example that I showed in my talk at the growth of the live arena. The Apple app store offers a pathway
and ‘Mardi Gras’ TED conference is one example, in which individual siftables here obviously, but a bolder, more tactile ‘everyman’ device,
and enter the Key moments in artist based gaming act as measures, samples, and effects. The player can create transcending age barriers, and at an affordable yet scalable price
micro world of a musical sequence, re-arrange it on-the-fly, and tweak effects point, is what will be the real catalyst in bringing music to life.
Keith Loutit on 1994 – Peter Gabriel offers gaming via Xplora. It gesturally by tilting the given siftables.
becomes the world’s best selling music CD-ROM The TED conference brings together the world’s most
Vimeo.
Could Siftables potentially offer up a new interactive physical challenging minds, innovators and pioneers. Its twin conference
1998 – Virtual band Gorillaz create an interactive product to replace elements of the mostly defunct CD market? TEDGlobal is coming to Oxford in the UK in July.
www.vimeo.com/keithloutit online gaming in-studio environment That’s certainly a possibility, since it seems like CDs are now truly For full details visit www.ted.com
on the way out. I suppose they could show music videos, then
2005 – Guitar Hero is released. Aerosmith are the provide an interface to remix the songs that a consumer has There have been numerous attempts to define tangible music
first act to release a stand alone title in 2008 already bought. control systems, to find out more see: www.fmilinks.com

4 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 5
 Roberta Maley
Premium Services Director, Spotify
DIGITAL MUSIC
By now you’re probably all over
Spotify, the Swedish streaming
music service that is changing
the face of music consumption.
If so you’ll be all too familiar with
Roberta the voice that punctuates
and personalises your listening
experience. But just who is she,
and what does she do?
We thought we’d find out:
Are you enjoying Spotify as much as we are?
Absolutely. The job is amazing in every respect.
How does it feel being ‘the voice’ of Spotify to 1M listeners?
To be honest, I don’t really think about it until I’m listening
to Spotfiy myself. The original idea was to be honest and
transparent with users because it’s a real person who actually
works at Spotify rather than an actor’s voice.
How did you become involved in the start-up?
I met one of the founders through a mutual friend and he told
me about the enormous challenge they had taken on at Spotify:
to archive all the world's music, provide a legal alternative to
piracy as well as offer a great user experience. I was blown away
by the scale of the idea, as well as its potential.
What do you feel has enabled Spotify to captivate such
a devoted audience?
It’s a combination of a few things but mostly it’s because Spotify
is just so strong and simple. The user has always been front
of mind in everything we’ve done and I think the passion and
enthusiasm that’s gone into building Spotify, which ultimately
aims to allow the widest possible catalogue of music to be
played as simply as possible and in good quality, resonates
with users.
Ads on the service are stepping up visually but are still minimal
in terms of audio, when will this start to change?
You’ll start to notice more ads over coming weeks and, in
particular, more clients creating bespoke audio content that
plays on the Spotify environment. Advertisers are experimenting
with producing content that communicates with our users in an
editorial style and engaging with them in a way that you can only
do within a one-on-one medium.
6 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
What do you believe will drive users to the premium version
of the service?
Continuing to add extra value for premium users. We have
piloted many initiatives at the end of last year for Premium
in Sweden such as adding exclusive content, pre-releases,
VIP competitions, gift cards and developing strategic
partnerships and we will be looking to roll out similar into
the UK throughout 2009.
You are premiering more and more exclusive content. How
is the relationship with both labels and advertisers developing
as a result?
It’s a win-win situation, we have been massively supported
by both major and independent labels meaning that we get
the latest or most exclusive content which, ultimately, gives
us a loyal user base and is in turn extremely attractive
to advertisers
Your shared playlisting service is proving extremely popular,
how do you intend to capitalise on this?
It’s the users who are enjoying the benefits of the shared
playlists, whether that be friends, bloggers or newspapers and
magazines who have begun linking their reviewers and experts’
playlists to Spotify. Again, we’ve worked hard to make it as easy
as possible for people to share music. It’s as crucial to the users
as the size and diversity of the catalogue itself.
Twitter users seem to get very upset when you aren’t ‘on air’.
Will we be hearing more or less of you in the future?
Ha, I’m not sure about that, I think next we should introduce
some new voices from the rest of the Spotify team.
RETAIL
SAYS
Pity the poor Spotify press officer
gathering all the plaudits from blogs to
broadsheets as they clamour to hype the
Swedish newcomer. We’ve already said
our bit but amid the applause for its
ingenuity, it’s worth noting that Spotify
is changing the way we consume music.
More than any other service to date, Spotify is seriously
challenging the concept of ownership. When subscription services
failed to hit analysts’ lofty projections a few years back, experts
argued consumer preference for ownership vs access was to
blame. Clearly this argument is no longer valid.
A straw poll at the last FRUKT Sessions revealed a drop in
digital purchasing thanks largely to Spotify usage. Extrapolate that
across a few million people and things start to look very different
for iTunes et al. Recently we’ve seen NPD publish research
confirming that US teens were abandoning purchasing at an
alarming rate, with the number of digital purchasers down 13%.
The Sunday Times recently suggested that Spotify ‘may spell
the end of ownership’. This is happening but it will take time.
We think it should signal the death of illegal ownership for
starters. With an ocean of back catalogue at your fingertips
there’s no need to waste time scouring p2p networks to
relive a classic track or catch up on a guilty pleasure.
Having said all that we need to mention the white elephant
here – can Spotify make the business model work? Money
talks and Spotify need to break new ground. As Roberta
mentions (see left), the number of ads appearing between
tracks is on the rise, experimentation is taking place
with new visual formats and sharing playlists is driving
engagement. Yet the whole concept relies on advertiser buy-in
and for them to understand what turns music fans on and how
to make the most out of the platform. It’s not a case of reusing
radio ads but getting creative on many levels. Suffice to say Spotify
also need to crack the Premium subscription offering to succeed
where others have failed.
The digital music marketplace is now effectively one
battleground where paid and free services, streaming and a
la carte models, fight it out. No doubt these can co-exist but
competition for attention (and revenues) is hotting up. There’s
also evidence to suggest the perceived notions about the volume
of music consumed, diversity in tastes and the way we are
(re)discovering music are all in need of reassessing.
Spotify is not perfect (yet) but it’s seriously starting to rewire
our music lives.
chris@fruktmusic.com
Chris is sharing his Spotify playlist of new music -
stop, collaborate and listen at www.fmilinks.com
Faux
Show
Gone are the days of getting a shout out to your
mates at work, or the radio airplay equivalent
of a “hello Mum”, now we’re talking ‘actual’
personalised radio programmes that put the
receiver into the context of the production.
The Faux Show package – created by long
serving radio broadcasting professional tag team
Heidi Secker and Jules May-Brown– consists
of a bespoke CD whereby the buyer picks the
recipients favourite music tracks, and a selection
of anecdotes to be read out by
a presenter. Friends and
family are then
invited to call
in to record
personal
messages,
which will then
be interspersed
throughout the
personalised
radio show.
Packages sit around
the £200-£250 mark - so it’s
a considered and somewhat luxurious
purchase. However, as proven by the
Trent Reznors and Radioheads of this
world, music fans will part with hard cash
for high-end limited edition product.
A twist on the service would be to brand it
with an artist. Having radio presenters read
out your messages is one thing, having your
favourite artist deliver a bespoke message
is something else. Packaged up as strictly limited
edition, what die-hard fan wouldn’t want to have
their favourite songs played and introduced to
them on a personalised CD? If Girls Aloud can do
the speaking clock in the UK (which they did as
part of Comic Relief) then surely it’s not beyond
the realms of possibility.
The problem with the humble CD – despite
the fact that it contains music that is arguably
available free – is that everyone has access to the
same thing. Its mass production is ultimately one
of its greatest drawbacks in the current DIY music
culture. Faux Show offers up a tailored experience,
which is ultimately what consumers are looking for
– premium music, that tangible something that
no one else has.
www.fauxshow.co.uk
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 7
 www.flickr.com/photos/notsogoodphotography/
SAYS

and finally
A brand
perspective
97% of brands see the from SXSW
value of music
Sex

BRANDS
As the sun was shining on a glorious
afternoon I was holed up in an air-
BRANDS

A new study from Stockholm-based brand communication considered assessment in order to structure a defining and conditioned room moderating a panel full

agency Heartbeats International, entitled ‘Sounds Like Branding’,
outlined the views of brand directors from 70 major brands
and found that a massive 97% of them believe that music can
strengthen their brand. Around 76% are actively using music
in their marketing with a further 74% understanding that music
is to become all the more important in the future.
With more music being consumed by more people than
ever before in history, and with the traditional restraints of the
recording industry broken, brands now have the ability to stake
a true claim on the hearts and minds of music fans. Not only
that but another recent survey suggests that 69% of passionate
music fans have already bought into the idea that brands will be
the music industry’s new revenue stream. Artists are in need of
new channels and new revenue now that their retail options have
been severely restricted; as a result they are now flexible and
willing to get involved with the right brand on the right project. activation/ In-store activity/ Loyalty reward
Naturally brands are eager to get in on the action, however
the avenues of possibility are numerous and require careful,
A band
BANDS
long lasting music commitment. Get it right and your audience
will love you, get it wrong and they won’t forget in a hurry. The
secret is in understanding your audience’s passion points. Music
is hugely versatile. It’s the ultimate connector, offering a touch
point across multiple channels, cultures and ages. But, just as no
two pieces of music are alike, no two music strategies are alike.
Here we outline a small selection of the possible routes
to market:
Artist endorsement/ Event creation/ Sales
promotion/ Competition mechanic/ Preloaded
on a device/ Demo of a connected service or
device/ Supporting discovery of music/ Investing
in young people and the arts/ Social responsibility
& charitable action/ Event sponsorship/ Festival
incentives/ Bespoke online content/ Artist
development/ Limited releases/ Launch events
of the great and the good from the world
of brands and music world. During the
session two things kept on popping up:
• A change in perspective is needed from the
traditional industry towards seeing brands
as business partners rather than just bags of
money. In a fragmented media environment
artists need new ways to reach consumers
and brands can offer powerful distribution
and promotion; access to consumers that the
‘traditional’ budgets would simply not allow.
• Easier access to content for brands. The live
music market is a busy and cluttered space
and brands need to find a way to cut through,
and more importantly build relationships with
consumers before and after activity. Content
is key to this happening, however licensing
suffers from too many cooks and often-
unreasonable demands for cash. Content
owners need to make the process less
Vs Music
A recent poll unveiled a gem of a fact with regards
to the popularity of music: 70% of 16-19 year olds
said that they would rather go without sex than
music for a week. Bearing in mind the estimated
value of unlicensed music traded over P2P
networks in 2007 was in the region of $69B we
thought we’d delve a little deeper.
We cross-referenced the weekly sexual
habits and the torrent activity of 26 countries to
see if any sort of pattern emerged. Looking at the
percentage of the population having sex weekly
(via Durex’s Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey
07/08) against the extrapolated weekly activity
data on the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate
Bay, a worrying pattern emerged. It appears the
only moaning in the midnight hours emanating
from the households in the West is coming from

perspective
from SXSW
With over 1400 bands playing
across 4 days there’s definitely no
shortage of good music to see. The
likes of Metallica, Dinosaur Jr and
other big names definitely drew the
crowds, however SXSW is all about
discovering new music. Here are
a few of the acts, old and new that
we stumbled upon.
MySpace and weblinks available
at www.fmilinks.com
The Cheek - 5 energetic youngster
from East Anglia; think the MC5
meets Blur with some Strokes
thrown in for good measure.
Wild Beasts - Yorkshire based
atmospheric indie band, a new
signing to the legendary
Domino label.
Janelle Monae – one of the craziest
performers I’ve ever seen, part of the
‘Afro Punk’ scene and bound
to become a massive star.
K’nann – A Somalian/ Canadian
MC and signer who’s just finished
recording his new album at Bob
Marley’s studio in Jamaica.
Nosaj Thing – LA producer who
mixes electronic glitchy sounds with
off-kilter hip-hop beats.
The Low Anthem – some lovely
delicate folky stuff, perfect to finish
off a night.
painful for brands – the industry as a whole
needs new investment, however brands
need to build platforms that resonate
with consumers.
Brands were out in force at the event, and
only a few of them were getting it right.
My favourite was Levi's association with
Fader magazine through the Fader Fort,
who created a festival within the festival.
The best things about this activity were that
the branding was ubiquitous but at the same
time subtle, the event looked beautiful and
the production was impeccable meaning
that fans enjoyed themselves and will
undoubtedly tell others. Fader also used
their relationship with artists to overcome
the potential headaches of content
clearances. They filmed performances and
interviews, which were streamed live online
and archived for fans around the world to
consume and share in the days and months
after SXSW ended. More of this please.
dom@fruktmusic.com
overloaded hard-drives.
Greece, Brazil and Russia see the most weekly
bedroom action at 87%, 82% and 80% respectively;
while their download consumption rate remains
fairly low at under 1M unique users a week. However
at the other end of the spectrum, nearing the
lowest and with exceptionally high download rates,
are the UK, US and Canada. Canada sees weekly
sexual activity of only 59%, the UK a miniscule
55% and the poor US a frankly embarrassing 53% -
almost half the population. When reflected against
torrent activity of 4M unique users in Canada, 5M
in the UK, and a whopping 11M in the US, you start
to see where people’s real passion lies.
Illegal downloading seems to be the love
of people’s lives and the main reason people are
staying up all night. Unless of course you’re living
in China where they seem to be able to maximise
both of their consuming passions at 78% and 23M
unique users respectively. More on China’s music
consumers – not so much on sex, unfortunately –
can be found on p20-23.

8 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 9
 Marketing:
Campaigns
Lyndon
Lawrence
Digital Brand Manager,
Reebok International
No one likes content.
Everyone loves creativity.
Nobody forgets originality.
Still very much on a mission
to perfect his craft, Lyndon
has been working and
living through the worlds of
marketing, advertising and
technology since he was 14.
Now, 34, and scarily 20 years
later, he’s still very much a
passionate kind of guy that’s
dedicated towards delivering
something cool, something
useful and something you
won’t forget for the adidas
Group. Having won several
awards for Originals, he now
works to do the same
for Reebok.
10 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
Pepsi:
Refresh
Legendary singer/songwriter Bob Dylan has teamed up with
Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am on a new commercial for
Pepsi. The ‘refresh anthem’ commercial sees the two singers
juxtaposing the differences and similarities between their
generations over a backdrop of montage video footage from
the two time periods. A specially recorded version of the Bob
Dylan track ‘Forever Young’, sung by both parties, soundtracks
the promotion. The commercial finishes with the tag line “Every
generation refreshes the world”.
LL: "Every generation refreshes the world” That’s what we’re
supposed to walk away understanding. On first glance, I did
not get that impression. With an impressive contribution by
a legendary artist, representing the past and will.i.am, perhaps
a legend in the making for the future, leaves a middle filled with
strange visual imagery of inter alia, war and surfing. This is
a pure brand message, and leaves little for the consumer of
today; they’re interactive, they relate in different ways. 1,697,984
views on YouTube might seem good, however what was the ROI?
JH: Pepsi’s refresh ad goes head to head with Coke’s new ‘Open
Happiness’ track written and performed by a ‘superband’. Coke
continue to drive their positive message very literally with some
straight up jangly middle of the road pop.
Pepsi take a more thoughtful direction, with an ad provoking
a sense of wistful nostalgia, and the creative idea comes through
clearly. It’s slightly baffling me who this is aimed at. It’s only
really a 30 something audience who relate, and we’re all downing
herbal tea and low fat smoothies aren’t we? So while Coke’s
jingle-made-single lacks the depth of narrative that “refresh”
has, it far more effectively communicates a consistent message
to a clearly defined audience.
www.pepsi.com
VV Brown:
Band in a Banner
A new campaign, to promote VV Brown, sees the singer
performing from within interactive web banners. VV Brown
squeezes into her own web banner ad, crouches down and
proceeds to sing acoustic versions of the songs ‘LEAVE!’ and
‘Crying Blood’ from within the banner alongside her band.
“As VV Brown is such a striking artist with a stunning vocal
talent, we wanted to move away from the standard advertising
formats and introduce her “in person” and singing live on
your desktop” said Pru Harris, Island Records Marketing. The
campaign echoes the video for the track ‘Leave’ which sees
VV Brown singing from within a cardboard box.
LL: Fantastic. A very nice concept, well executed. It would have
been nice to see the lead singer, VV Brown, step up and out
of the box of the frame of the banner and sing on the webpage.
Really, that would grab a lot of attention and be worth reloading,
because the music really is that good. What also might have
been nice to tack on is a send to a friend after the banner loaded
or the ability to embed it on a blog or social media platform.
Nevertheless, a great idea, nicely made and a fantastic track
in “Leave”.
JH: This is cute. A tiny band in an otherwise almost universally
ignored and disliked little digital sales rectangle. The simplicity
is key, the band just play and because it’s not all sales messages,
it makes you smile. And because you smile you feel all warm
inside. And you forget that it’s a website, it’s a mini private
performance just for you. The only shame is that you can’t share
it – all that effort to shoot this so effectively, and they rely on the
media buy to deliver the right audience, when it’s perfect to be
shared by friends and embedded on social networks.
www.vvbrown.com
Jack
Horner
Creative Director/
Co-founder, FRUKT
Jack founded FRUKT with
a vision to help consumer
brands and the traditional
music industry ‘play nice’
together. Anyone can play
in the new music economy
so it’s time for consumer
brands to cut through the
clutter, by defining a clear
role and perspective in music
and asking themselves
how they can add value
to their audience. He also
manages a band and likes
old synthesizers.
jack@fruktmusic.com
Frankmusik:
Live and lost
Singer and serial remixer Frankmusik (Vincent Frank) has been
dumped in a field by his label with only £20 in his pocket, and
he has to perform 5 gigs in 10 days and make his way back to
London. Once his £20 is spent the only people that can help
him with travel, food and accommodation are his fans. His
progress can be tracked on MySpace and a Google map on an
accompanying website, and the whole thing is being filmed for
a Channel 4 documentary. Kyte TV will also stream footage
filmed on his travels live via his mobile phone.
LL: Awesome. That’s where we have to begin. I mean, come on,
let’s face it, something real or real enough is what people are
looking for today. It is where they are at. The concept is just cool.
It’s fun and interesting. You listen to the music, you want to get
involved. Yes, this has been done before, but has not everything
else too? Thing is, this guy has talent. Listen to his music. So it
seems that sometimes you have to plant the seeds to get the
grass in order to get grassroots and then blossom out of this.
Frankmusik is engaging; touching and feeling where people are.
This is the coolness. Thumbs up.
JH: Every brand targeting the yoot is desperate to create some
authentic branded entertainment to push out through those big
old social network channels, and many fail with concepts clearly
cooked up by people far removed from the audience. However,
this is great. Good work Blackberry on taking a risk on a relatively
unknown artist and allowing swearing and what appears to be
genuine spontaneity to go out with your brand on. The challenge
with a lot of brands is their need to use words like ‘own’ when it
comes to content and music, Blackberry have been braver than
that and let something real unfold. The only slight critique is that
some episodes felt a little on the long side of ‘snacky’.
www.myspace.com/frankmusik
Virgin Mobile:
Right Music Wrongs
Virgin Mobile has launched a new platform aiming to right
music wrongs. The website outlines a manifesto saying “it’s
time to make a stand, it’s time to remember that great music
isn’t how it’s packaged it’s how it sounds”. The site invites users
to vote on crimes against music. First up Is Vanilla Ice who
features on the website’s homepage in the ‘Vanilla Ice Says
Sorry’ video offering up an apology for his career and his music.
Visitors can vote on whether he’s guilty or innocent, leave
comments and add to a chart of other music wrongs. The site
also promotes the V festival as righting ‘festival wrongs’.
LL: Cooler than ice. This is subzero when we’re talking pure
coolness. What a superb hook to bring this classic ‘Music Wrong’
– straight back in to the ‘Right’ and right now. Starting of with
Vanilla Ice, the consumer is brought back in time to a place
where doing it wrong, was doing it right. Until someone caught
you out. A really nice, compelling idea, very well executed. My
congratulations to both the client and agency. They have guts
and a sense of humour. Transport this in to the social media
world and they’re off to a flying winning start.
JH: A simple idea but brilliantly executed – both online and
live with the vignettes of Vanilla Ice visiting Oz for their V fest
recently. While browsing the shocking chart, and wincing to some
offensive pop trash, you realise what an inspired choice to trial
Mr Ice was. The guy can laugh at himself, and is fine talking about
being a product of other people's management – he gets stuck
into the whole campaign, and ends up a free man as a result.
There’s plenty of chatter going on community areas of the site,
further proof that the subject matter for a discussion provoking
campaign was an effective one.
www.rightmusicwrongs.org
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 11
 The Index
Looking outside the traditional top 20 charts highlights Highest
just how disparate and diversified music consumption
is. The retail charts only paint half the picture, music trading
consumption is now defined by what people want and
not by what they are offered. As a result popularity niches
Most secondary Most
have formed and a certain amount of lateral thinking is
now required to assess consumer demand.
requested tickets UK Blipped
Ad-funded (Viagogo)
MOST music
music 1
2
Michael Jackson
Madonna
REQUESTED
(Blip.fm)
(We7) 3 Girls Aloud 1 Radiohead

P2P 1 Lady GaGa

4
5
The Killers
U2 LIVE 2
3
U2
David Bowie

POPULARITY EVENTS
2 N-Dubz 6 Beyoncé 4 The Cure
3 Akon 7 Tina Turner 5 Coldplay
4 Kings Of Leon 8 Metallica plus Machine Head 6 Led Zeppelin

SCORES 5
6
7
Taylor Swift
T.I.
Flo Rida

9
10
& The Sword
Hard Rock Calling
Snow Patrol
(Songkick) 7
8
9
Pink Floyd
The Killers
Bob Dylan
(Big Champagne) 8 Beyoncé 11 Kings of Leon 1 Taylor Swift 10 The Rolling Stones

1 Rihanna 100 MOST 9

10
The Saturdays
Lily Allen
12
13
Take That
Nickelback
2
3
Jonas Brothers
Never Shout Never
11
12
Queen
Johnny Cash

BLOGGED
2 Akon 97.4 11 Alesha Dixon 14 AC/DC 4 3oh3 13 Pearl Jam
3 Chris Brown 86.8 12 Kelly Clarkson 15 V Festival 5 Bring Me The Horizon 14 Kings of Leon
4 Beyonce Knowles 85.0 13 Katy Perry 16 Depeche Mode 6 Muse 15 Depeche Mode
5
6
7
T.I.
Eminem
Lil Wayne
83.3
68.8
59.7
ARTISTS 14
15
16
The Pussycat Dolls
Shontelle
Michael Jackson
17
18
19
Ne-Yo
Britney Spears
Oasis plus Kasabian & The Enemy
7
8
9
Lady GaGa
Lil Wayne
Miley Cyrus
16
17
18
Muse
Beck
Metallica
8 Usher 57.4 (Hypemachine) 17 Britney Spears 20 Morrissey 10 Faith No More 19 The Smiths
9 Ludacris 53.3 18 James Morrison 11 Girl Talk 20 Red Hot Chili Peppers
10 Ne-Yo 53.1 1 Royksopp 19 Miley Cyrus 1st January – 20th March 12 Ne-yo
11 Michael Jackson 47.7 2 Animal Collective 20 The Killers 13 Katy Perry 20th January - 20th March

12 The-Dream 46.4 3 Franz Ferdinand 14 Hollywood Undead

13 R. Kelly 43.9 4 Phoenix 20th January - 20th March 15 Adele
14 Nelly 43.3 5 Lykke Li 16 T.I.
15 Soulja Boy 42.7 6 Andrew Bird 17 The Saturdays
16 PLIES 41.1 7 Yeah Yeah Yeahs 18 Framing Hanley
17 Taylor Swift 40.8 8 Radiohead 19 The Killers
18 Flo Rida 36.3 9 The Pains of Being 20 Metallica
19 Leona Lewis 35.6 Pure at Heart
20 Aerosmith 35.5 10 Little Boots 1st February – 9th March

11 Empire Of The Sun

Based on new searches and songs shared - week ending 20th March 12 Lily Allen
13 M. Ward
14 Beirut
15 Ladyhawke
16 N.A.S.A.
17 Neko Case
18 Passion Pit
19 La Roux
20 Kanye West

15th January – 15th March 2009

12 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 13
 Seth Godin
Interview:
Seth Godin is the author of the
world’s most successful marketing
blog and over 10 bestselling
marketing books including ‘All
Marketers are Liars‘, ‘Permission
Marketing’ and ‘Survival Is
Not Enough’. Business Week
referred to him as “the Ultimate
Entrepreneur for the Information
Age” and Forbes heralded him as
a “demigod on the Web”. His latest
book ‘Tribes’ argues that lasting
and substantive change can be
best effected by a group
of people connected to each other.
We caught up with Seth early one
morning in New York to discuss
how his Tribes concept
applies to the rapidly
evolving music business.
14 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
In Tribes you start by saying: “You can’t have a tribe without
a leader, and you can’t be a leader without a tribe”. Who is leading whom
in the music business?
Well I think it is pretty clear that listeners, fans, can’t do their part unless
there is music to listen to and we need to make a distinction between the
music business and music. There’s more music now than ever before,
listened to more often, by more people. There’s no music shortage, there’s
no music problem. The music industry however is a group of people who
don’t necessarily play music but is trying to profit from the people who do.
What we have is three people involved now, we have the listener, we have the
musicians, and we have the industry – with the industry trying to put a tax
on the relationship between the musician and the listener. My argument is
that musicians will get paid when they lead people and the leading includes
not just producing a song that someone wants to listen to but creating all
the stuff that goes around it that people are willing to pay for: experiences,
souvenirs, connections.
You also talk about “heretics” as the new leaders. Who or what do you see
as being the new Heretics in the emerging music industry?
Well no one follows someone because they’re boring. No one says I’m going
to join this tribe because it doesn’t do anything. If we’re going to make the
choice to actually join up, to connect, to follow its going to be because the
person we’re following is doing something new or different or earth shattering.
So when Bob Dylan got booed off the stage at Newport he was acting as a
heretic. If he hadn’t been willing to do that, if he had just wanted to be another
Dave Van Ronk or Pete Seger there is no way Bob would have ended up leading
as many people as he lead. He was willing to be a heretic first. So when we talk
about music, as opposed to the music industry, we see someone every year
or two changing what it means to play music, whether its David Byrne or Bob
Marley or Cat Power. These are people standing up and playing music that
critics originally don’t like because it’s not the status quo. When we talk about
the music industry what we see is over and over again is that it’s an outsider,
it’s a Steve Jobs or a Shawn Fanning, that changes the way music is delivered,
that gets people’s attention.
Chris Anderson suggested in a recent interview with us that
music was moving from a product to a service. Would you agree
and how will this change how music is ultimately delivered?
The music industry is changing from a product business to
a service business - music is still music. The music industry
is understanding that what people will actually pay money for
is a concert, what they will pay money for is the chance to meet
other fans, what they will pay money for is a souvenir or
a limited edition of something.
You can’t really take this apart until you understand radio.
Radio was so powerful at spreading music that the music
industry bribed radio stations to play their music for free. Well
the Internet is nothing but a giant radio station. The scale is
what has frightened the music industry. But it ‘is’ a radio station
and as a result instead of suing people who spread your music
you should be bribing them to spread your music. Because if
everyone knows your song you will make money.
So could music go beyond ‘free’. Could consumers ever be ‘paid’
to listen to music?
While it’s unlikely, imagine what would happen if a musician could
afford to pay people to listen to their music. If Rihanna’s label
could invest $1M and in return get a song listened to by everyone
in the country would that make money for her or lose money for
her? My argument is that it makes money for her. That anybody
who has a hit record, where I define hit by a lot of people listening
to it, ends up figuring out a way to make money.
Do you believe the music industry is still too focused on
embracing a factory mentality as opposed to building tribes?
How do you see this evolving?
Well the music industry is filed with people who want the status
quo to remain because that’s what they signed up for. They
signed up for expensive studio time, and limos, and contracts
with advances, they signed up for Tower Records and a system of
timing and releases and everything else that matches what they
are used to. This is what Van Morrison wants to continue, and the
Rolling Stones wants to continue, and the people at Sony want to
continue. But it’s not going to continue, it’s haemorrhaging, it’s
over. So what is taking its place? I think what’s taking its place is
if you can lead and connect with a group of people who want to
follow a musician you can profit all day long. The example I gave
on Tribes
If you
can
lead
when I spoke to Columbia Records is you guys
have been publishing Bob Dylan forever, how many
and Bob Dylan fans have given you permission to talk
directly to them? How many of them do you have
connect their phone number or email address? How often
do you send them an email newsletter? When they
with write to you do you write back? And the answer is
zero. They have no connection with Bob Dylan’s fan
a group base. They just ignored it for 30 years. Multiply that
by ten thousand artists and you see the problem.
of In the past musical tribes have predominately
people been determined by musical genre. At least that’s
been the common perception. How do you think
you can this has changed?
I think that programme directors have tried very
profit
hard to teach teenagers that they should only
listen to hip hop and never listen to Jazz and that
all day
they should only listen to Jazz and never listen to
urban music. They’ve tried very hard to pigeon-
long
hole people by genre but in fact that’s not the way
people listen to music. Programme directors felt
forced to do it because they can only play one song
at a time and so they wanted the radio station to
stand for something. But when you look at what
teenagers actually listen to it’s extremely eclectic
and it’s only the programme directors that have
forced them to do something otherwise. So now
when you look at someone’s playlist on their iPod, or we look
at the trail they leave behind on Pandora, it’s not that they’re
only listening to one kind of music. They want to listen to what
their friends are listening to and that can change daily.
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 15
 Interview:
You suggested recently that the controllers of the playlists will
ultimately hold the most power in the new music business. How
do think this will work in practice? Who are they and what will
they need to do to harness that capability?
That’s a great question. I have no idea what it will look like. I know
that the programme director of the radio station ten or fifteen
years ago was so powerful that record industry people would
bribe them, so therefore it’s pretty clear that if you can be the
middleman of who’s deciding what’s next you have power. So if
I look at something like Pitchfork, the guys doing Pitchfork have
an enormous amount of power over what music gets listened
to next. That’s what I would aspire to do if I was in the music
industry. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I know
it’s going to work.
In that respect do you think the digitising of music, and I’m
thinking of services such as iTunes, are missing out because
there aren’t tastemakers to direct people?
I think iTunes is really missing out by not building an asset where
they get to pick what’s going to be hot tomorrow. That’s a huge
mistake on their part. I think The Long Tail is extremely powerful.
The long tail shows us that things way out on the edge, if you
aggregate enough of them, add up to be as big as the hits and
I think that’s a legitimate analysis. But music is very much about
community and about hits, they’re not giant hits, they might be
small hits, but the job of people who programme music, the job
of people who create music is to figure out how to tap into the
gestalt of the moment, to the zeitgeist, so they have the song
that tribe needs to listen to right now.
You also mentioned that “people don’t listen to companies,
they listen to people”. Is it time for the faceless music
industry to become a more personal entity? If so how could
this be achieved?
The industry has tried very hard to be faceless and when it stops,
like with Dick Clark, it was huge. I mean Dick Clark made millions
of dollars for forty years by being the face of the music industry
and we need more Dick Clarks. We need people who are willing
to stand up and say “take it from me, this is what you should
listen to”.
16 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
Traditional music TV shows have virtually died off. What effect
is this having on how consumers perceive music now there
is no central point of reference?
Again we’re seeing the fragmentation; we’re seeing things
breaking apart into little bits. MTV had an opportunity to create
tastemakers, to create people who folks wanted to follow, but
they were worried that the VJs would become too powerful.
So they kept rotating them and kept them from developing
a unique voice. They got very corporate on us. I think among
the people who listen and spend the most money on music,
teenagers, they’re dying for individuals to step up and say this
is what I believe we should all be listening to. They are missing
a central place and they want one.
How important is authenticity when marketing music? How
have the parameters of the old notion of ‘selling out’ changed?
I think authenticity means doing what you say you’re going
to do. It doesn’t necessarily mean letting it all hang out and
being who you “really are”. When teenagers find out that you
manipulated them and were doing one thing and saying another
that backfires. But it’s totally fine for Quincy Jones to repeatedly
produce great pop albums even though he doesn’t listen
to it at home.
There appear to be two main tribes in the emerging music
economy, one based on free content and one prepared to pay
for high-end premium content? What happens to the casual
consumer in the middle ground?
I’m not sure there’s a tribe based on high-end premium content.
I don’t think tribes are aligning based on how much it costs.
In the Grateful Dead tribe there is a subset that will pay money
to fly somewhere to see a concert, there’s a subset that will pay
for a box set, and then there’s the rest of the people who are only
listening when it’s for free. They’re all part of the same tribe. Just
because you can draw a graph doesn’t mean people are going
to want to line up on a graph. There’s probably a chasm there,
there’s probably a gap in the middle. Once someone is willing
to pay five dollars they’re probably willing to pay ten but it’s not
clear there’s this linear progression all the way down to free
You talk a lot about creating stories around products, do
musicians need to be a character first and a musician second?
No they need to be a musician first. Question Mark and The
Mysterians, the guys who wore masks and sang 96 Tears, those
guys were characters first and musicians second, maybe the
Monkees too. But generally the public listens to someone before
they hear the story. After they listen to you though you need a
story. Britney Spears has one, she’s a walking train wreck, Bruce
Springsteen has one, but there are plenty of people who’ve come
along and sing a song and disappear because there’s no interest
there, I don’t want a connection with
Are there music consumers that naturally fall outside of the them. I don’t want to hear anything
if you
tribe mentality? about them. So you’re better off
There are plenty of people who listen to music who don’t want being Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson
to connect with other people who listen to the same music. Nor than being some anonymous person
do they want to connect with the artist. I’m thinking of the guy
who sits down the street, who sits there and listens to his opera can be the who just happens to sing nice.
middle
records every day by himself. He’s not in a tribe. He just likes How about the Hannah Montana
listening to music. Nothing wrong with that. However music is phenomenon, which started
inherently social and so a large majority of music fans are quite as a character based show and
happy to talk about their music, listen to music with their peers
and engage with the people who make the music. man who’s had a different association with
its audience?
deciding
I think that’s good work if you can
Do you think the term music piracy is an outdated concept in get it, but for every hundred people
a music ecosystem that is increasingly based around sharing? who try it only one of them is going
Do I think the idea of demonising and criminalising the fans
is an outdated concept? Yeah, I do. I think that what happens what’s to pull it off.
next,
is the cost of making this problem go away is now greater than I read somewhere that you have
anyone can afford. It used to be seen as a problem they could bought one or two CDs every week
solve with money, now it’s clear to them that it’s not. So they for the last twenty years. What
may try to solve it the way they have just tried in New Zealand
by criminalising the behavior, but I think they’re going to give up you have tribes do you feel you belong to
and what made you buy in?
power
soon on that too and come to the conclusion that this is actually It’s actually not that interesting. I’m
a good thing for their future and not a bad thing and start trying sort of eclectic but not as eclectic as
to influence it as opposed to criminalise it. your cousin who has a pierced face.
The important thing is I’m not the
Live music appears to be the only constant throughout the only one. That this is a basic human
evolution of the music industry. How can the music industry need and the record industry was
build upon its one remaining trump card? lucky because for forty years the
Well, I think the way they are doing it is completely wrong. That record industry was perfect and
if you try to pay for it on the back of mega tours by mega acts everything about it lined up just right.
and paying Bruce Springsteen nine figures it doesn’t work. You But its naïve to think it will stay that
can’t do that. It’s a Long Tail business. You need a thousand way and it’s not going to.
artists, touring a thousand cities, for a thousand nights and then
you can make money. It’s about how do you profit when three
hundred people show up to hear a jam band one night in one
city? And then multiple that times lots of cities and lots of bands.
Does this spell the end of the road for megastar artists?
Well, I think it’s about rent. The rent that a van Morrison or
a Bruce Springsteen can charge is so high because they are the
last of their breed, and the only people making money is them.
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 17

Vital Stats
Youth trends
70%
Attitudes towards music consumption
do not feel guilty about downloading illegally
61% 75
43
believe they shouldn’t have to pay for music
Out of the 1,000 respondents between the ages
of 15 and 24 polled, 61% of 15-19 year olds think
they shouldn’t have to pay for music online. Out
of those happy to pay, the average price for
a single-track totals just 39p. Despite the fact that
66% think it is “morally acceptable” to download
free music, the rise of free music is driving far
greater consumption across multiple mediums.
Turning the tables for a moment the group was
asked what they would want most if they were
a big artist, ‘creative freedom’ at 42% outstripped
‘lots of money” at 20%. Ironically the Internet has
offered up greater creative freedom for those
artists ready to embrace the new free music
economy. This is the playground of the inventive
artist, with revenue to be generated around music
as opposed to from direct sales.
Source: Marrakesh Records/Human Capital
18 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
UK teenagers online consumption
Social networking 3hr47
MSN 3hr29
Homework/research 3hr10
Chatrooms 2hr05
YouTube 2hr02
Virtual World sites 1hr55
Shopping 1hr49
Downloading music 1hr40
Soft porn 1hr40
Dieting/weight loss 1hr35
Family planning/pregnancy 1hr32
Auction sites 1hr28
54%
NHS Direct/Health 1hr22
average amount
% have listened to music
Dating 1hr15
of unpaid for music via a mobile in the Cosmetic surgery 1hr08
owned previous week
Samaritans 1hr01
67%
%
watched a music view radio as the key
The UK’s teenagers have got better things to be
doing than looking at porn online, despite the
alleged 1hr 40 mins it takes up a week. Outside of
video online in the medium to discovering the equally sizeable time they spend downloading
last month new bands music, socialising is clearly the stand out past
time, across MSN, social networks and virtual
62% 63%
worlds. Activating music within a social setting
is evidently the way to reach the youth audience.
Music isn’t about simply offering up a product,
it’s about engaging in an ongoing conversation,
listen to music on their value friend’s one that transcends music and creates a long-
mobile phone recommendations as term artist presence in-between releases. Artists
a driver to new music embracing platforms such as Twitter – which is like
receiving text messages from your favourite act –
45% 38%
understand the importance of having a hands on
connection with music fans.
Source: CyberSentinel survey/OnePoll
have played a music- use YouTube to check
based video game out new artists
81% £3.91
have used an MP3
player in the
average price they
are willing to pay for
previous week a download album
Incentives to join a brand group or fan page
Receiving news or product updates 67%
96%
Access to promotions 64%
Youth perception of Credit Crunch
Viewing/downloading music or videos 41%
Submitting opinions 36%
Connecting with other consumers 33%
62%
Millennials seem as happy to befriend
brands online as they do people.
Research from Netpop suggests
that a typical social network user
of Millennials admitted they’ve will spend $101 online per month.
of European youth are aware of the financial downturn visited a brand or fan page Despite the fact 19% of Gen Y’s may
find the ads irrelevant a sizeable 84%
notice them, with 74% in this survey
36% 75% 48%
actually bothering to click through
now and again. The top three drivers
to brand pages highlight the traction
of music based promotions and
feel their personal finances have
been affected
are cautious about money they
spend on themselves
of Millennials have joined
a brand or fan page
product updates.
Source: The Participatory Marketing Network
75% 66%
US Youth: Music brand association
say they are attempting to spend
less via their mobile
rank fashion as their top
spending priority Just what brands do music fans associate with music? Well according to a
poll to see how many brands a group of teenagers could recall in 6 minutes
O2 comes out on top, getting a mention by over 65%, due to its heavy live
The current economic slowdown is causing Europe’s youth to prioritise their presence. Virgin stole 45% of the memory vote with Carling coming in third
spending. The 15-24 year-old age group ranks fashion as the one thing they at 35% (something its recent removal from the live scene may change
aren’t prepared to give up amid the Credit Crunch, alongside going out with considerably). The Diesel clothing brand also pulled in 25% of the poll due to
friends. The 25-34 year-old age group cites travel as their number one priority. its strong ties with music, in fact fashion scored the most unique brands
However, overall 65% seem to view staying in as the main way to claw back overall, with online and electronics among the lowest. Source: Psfk/Ruby Psuedo
excess expenditure. German youth rank music as particularly high on their
spending agenda, they are also least likely to cut back on clubs & gigs. “Instead Brand sector Number recalled in 6 mins
of being oblivious to the changing economic circumstances around them,
young people are actually very aware and focused on issues affecting their Fashion 40
lives,” states Jules Robinson, SVP of VBSI. Source: Viacom VBSI
Music Hardware 14
Food/drink 12
Music promotion (TV/print/vendors/online) 11
Misc 8
Music Devices
Electronics
Online
5
2
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 19
 International focus:
The
Great
Wall
of
sound
A few years ago China was
heralded as the world’s key music
market, as the country’s 1.3B
consumers appeared to offer a pot
of potential gold at the end of the
digital rainbow. However, with piracy
endemic and with the consumer
perception of music seemingly
at odds with the West’s adoption
of music discovery models, has it
all merely been Chinese whispers?
20 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
Music as leverage
Speaking at SXSW, Chris Anderson highlighted the way China is embracing 107M Regularly visit blogs
piracy in a way the West has yet to accept: “‘Cantopop’ stars are learning to
use piracy because it creates celebrity. Instead of music sales, they make Users accessing
their money through personal appearances, store openings, corporate gigs, 298M the Internet
company meetings, advertising and product endorsement”. In other words
piracy isn’t just endemic, it’s essential in the well seeded 360º marketplace. Users downloading
The current economic crisis is putting even greater emphasis on China 71% music online
to consume, rather than produce, as demand for product in the West slows
down. Suddenly the emphasis is on selling inland. The rise of the middle- Users on
classes in China, which rocketed between 1990 and 2005 from 15% to 62%, 98% BBS online forums
echoes other emerging nations where a new found middle class suddenly has
cash to spend. However this cash clearly isn’t been leveraged via music, but Members of the Qzone
increasingly through consumer brands that align with music. “Music is just 200M social network
a tool to sell things,” said the singer of Mika Bomb, a band that have previously
been sponsored in the country. In China this is probably the most accurate Estimated percent of
description of the current climate. 99% illegal music downloads
Youth on your side Say they can’t find the
The 320M strong youth sector in China, aged between 16 and 30, are 64% songs they want online Digital Sales by format
a significant force to be reckoned with, with an estimated $135B in spending
power. “There’s a huge youth demographic that’s adopting new trends and Amount of mobile
demanding Western brands in mass volume, despite what’s taking shape 633.8M phones owned
in the re-organisation of the global economy,” suggests Tom Wallace,
President of Label Networks, which is about to release its 4th Annual China Number of mobile
Youth Culture Study 2009. “Young people want exciting advertising, the 117.6M Internet users
opportunity to adopt global fashion brands and lifestyles, and they are
without the cynicism seen in other youth markets.” This ‘Phoenix Generation’ China Mobile full-track
embraces Western brands and technology, which offers up deep traction for 76M music downloads in ’08
consumer product. However without tastemakers, without a guiding hand
to new music outside of the ‘all-consuming pop machine’, China as a music
Sources: CINIC /Music 2.0 Digital Music Survey/
market beyond the ‘hit factory’ is still waiting to emerge. If music’s sponsors IFPI/Tencent Ringback tones 62%
can truly get behind the small but burgeoning independent scenes then this Master ringtones 13%
is a market with the eventual potential to reap rewards for all parties involved. Streams 13%
The Great Wall of China, like the Chinese pop market is vast, yet small Online single tracks 4%
sections of it are breaking away and lie crumbling. It’s these parts that are Subscriptions 3%
often pillaged for stones to build local homes. The Great Wall of China’s music Mobile single tracks 3%
industry is also equally being deconstructed, a small piece at a time, but Music video 2%
eventually it should create something more personalised for China’s music
consumers. For now, a true Chinese music democracy is still
just out of reach.
Free for all
China’s music industry is so heavily steeped in piracy that the term itself is
rendered almost meaningless – piracy is simply the norm. In China it is legal
music that is sailing a lonely ship on the fringes of consumer purchasing.
Naturally the IFPI and the WTO aren’t best pleased with regards to the woeful Willingness to pay for MP3 music Reasons for paying
33% Yes
statistics emerging from such a potentially lucrative market. However, the
numbers speak for themselves, with an estimated 99% of downloads acquired
illegally. Music is perceived as a free commodity, and arguably has been since
the day the Internet took root, which means that music has to find another way
67% No
around the problem.
It would be wrong to suggest there isn’t money to be made. The search
engine Baidu, the scourge of the Chinese Internet – referred to as “ the largest
and most incorrigible distributor of pirated music in China” by the director
general of the Music Copyright Society of China – has reported earnings of
(RMB)330M. Plus A8 Digital Music, which digitally distributes music via mobiles,
has reported record revenues for 2008 highlighting a 147% increase to
(RMB)706.1M. Don’t even ask about the dominance of China Mobile, suffice to Cannot find free version 31%
say they virtually own music sales. China Mobile shifted 76M mobile downloads Support favourite artists 27%
in 2008. However, the prevalence of ringtones and the mass market leave little High quality MP3 23%
room to leverage both Western artists and regional independent acts. This Legal 14%
is essentially a ‘one genre’ nation. Taking your artist into China to compete Other 5%
against the likes of Jay Chou, Jolin Tsai and Jane Zhang is akin to setting up
a lemonade stand in the centre of Bejing hoping you can steal a slice of Coca-
Cola’s market share. The likelihood is you’ll just go unnoticed.
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 21
 culture
clash
Ed Peto,
Managing Director,
Outdustry
Ed Peto left London after a number of years as a label manager, artist
manager, promoter and sync consultant, to set up a Beijing based music
industry consultancy. He has written extensively on the workings of the
Chinese music industry and consults for a variety of clients on music related
projects. As a man very much on the inside we quizzed him on music’s
traction in the Middle Kingdom and why expectations of this emerging
market need to be managed against the harsher realities.
What is the key difference in your mind between a Western and a Chinese
music consumer?
There are fundamental differences really. In the West music is used as
music to people, all they’ll do is list the top 100 ringtones and these charts are How critical is brand sponsorship and are the niche acts missing out on brand
what people will browse through to see what songs they haven’t got on their backing in a pop based culture?
phone. They’ll do it by charts and not by recommendations by people, so you This also comes back to the pop echo chamber thing, where brands tend
have to get into those charts if you want your songs to become successful. to look around those people who feature in those top 100/top 200 charts.
You have to make the lowest common denominator pop music possible which If there’s a good looking young star whose got a song at the top of the
results in this kind of pop echo chamber. ringtone charts and has the right look then the brands will go and support
that because the exposure is there. The overriding rule here is that people
Are there any would prefer to spend top dollars on the top artist as opposed to the
underground scenes cleverly spent money on niche artists. So the idea for example of a brand
that are developing?
There’s a lot of rather understanding that it’s cool to be involved with a tiny niche scene in which
there is 50 people in a club doing something quirky and interesting, and that
I thought you might say that. 360º deals seem to be endemic, is music just
a small part of a bigger ‘celebrity’ package?
It happens in a number of different ways, you come along as a musician,
you end up as a film star. You come along as a film star and you end up
as a musician. Once you go into the spotlight you really turn your hand to
everything. So actually what happens is a number of the big Chinese labels’
resources are largely taken up by talent schools first and foremost. So, for
example, in Korea there is JY Park, who’s the big pop mogul in Korea. He
developed the artist Rain over there, who’s this huge Korean pop artist, and
Rain was in training for six years before he actually released his first piece
of music - that’s dance, vocals, the whole lot, right across the board. We’re

a differentiator, you would identify with bands who say something about
yourself. It would become a way of making you stand out from the crowd,
to make you more interesting to your friends. It’s something that you use to
engage with people and tell them something about who you are. Whereas in
China rather than being a differentiator, music is a way of trying to fit. So rather
than
attention at the the spin-offs of that is that these people are tastemakers and spread out working with a label here who do exactly the same, they’ve got the No.2
moment being paid to into the mainstream, that’s kind of understood in the West now - in China it’s biggest pop star in China and half of their office is dance studios, music
the Bejing indie scene absolutely not. So if you’re doing something small and niche here sponsorship lessons, etiquette lessons, and they just spend years doing this. What you end
which is exciting to
the West. You don’t being a is incredibly difficult to find. up with is someone who can turn his or her hand to anything. That’s the artist
development there, it’s not let’s sign a band let’s put out a record and develop

than looking for the latest hits that no-one has heard before and you can get
before anyone else, what they tend to look for in China is the song everyone
else has so they can also have the same song. It’s an interesting market; the
idea of music discovery is of fairly marginal concern here. What you have is
monster hits that everyone has and if you don’t have it you’re left out and
differen-
come here expecting Which brands are using music in an interesting way? the artists through touring. The artist development here is to make them into
to see a buzzing liberal There’s been one example really, where Converse sort of buddied up with the a 360º star. The music is tacked on to them at the end of it and used as a
club scene. There are indie scene in Bejing to do a documentary, they did a tour, they did a branded vehicle to develop that star further.
a few bars here that
play that music and tiator, bus that went round a few cities with a couple of bands and played around
China. This is the first time this has ever been done really; it was kind of an Is brand involvement with music the primary way forward in China?

that’s not cool.
Who are the tastemakers? Who decides who listens to what?
It’s almost always the technologists who are the tastemakers, the people who
have set up these enormous portals and SPs (Sohu, Baidu, etc). These kind of
music is
the bands are getting experiment. I’m not sure how successful it was, I don’t know what metrics If you look at the landscape brands are the only significant area of revenue
much, much better. It’s they’re measuring it on. I think in China the idea of associating yourself with that we can see in the future. It’s tough if you’re trying to make music here and
kind of exciting from the indie hip scene as a brand is not a proven way of winning eyeballs in the then trying to cut yourself into ad share deals with video sites or music portals,
a Westerners point
of view but in reality a way of mainstream sense. the returns are so low that you simply cannot survive. Brand partnerships are
the only feasible way of going forward, which is a difficult call actually. It’s a

companies, which are not set up by music fans but by ‘tech heads’, find music
is a key driver for their portals and platforms, so they start trying to become
music tastemakers as an afterthought. Beyond that the issue is the media
here is either government owned or heavily monitored by the government.
Which means to get any significant media exposure you have to be releasing
fairly anodyne music. So even in that respect the media can’t really become
tastemakers, they literally have to play whatever they can play as censor-
approved music. What you’re left with is a 90%+ pop environment.
When all the music is free in China it means that the only way you can
actually make money out of music is by having an absolute monster hit. So
most people who are investing in trying to make music invest in making out
and out pop hits. What it means is there is no real investment in music further
down the line in the niches. The big websites, rather than try and recommend
trying
in China it’s of such What form do the main brand campaigns take? If they’re not taking the difficult place to do it in China. Part of the reason the niches are so niche here
marginal interest to grassroots approach does that reflect on how they use artists? are because there is so little money in it. There is no real history of making
the population here to It’s the biggest banner sense possible in terms of literally just having the money out of music here. From day one pop has been the only way to go. Even
be almost negligible.
The Internet here is
obviously huge so there
to fit popstars hold your product and then putting it on billboards around China.
Concerts always have a brand involved. What you tend to have is brands tend
to pay people to be their ambassadors which is fairly common, and each
if you’re here as one of the international majors and you’re sitting on top of the
catalogue that has Linkin Park and some of the other bigger artists here like
the Black Eyed Peas, these kind of artists here do have some kind of interest
is plenty of coverage, artist will be an ambassador for multiple brands. This is big money these from a Chinese audience but there’s really no way to monetise that interest.
but of those 300M guys are talking about. Linkin Park did play live here and they made some money out of that, but the
people who use the Chinese Internet a fraction of a percentage of that will ever promoters lost money. So no one's actually trying to push these artists really
have heard of them. It’s there and it’s starting but it’s very niche, to the point How do Chinese consumers view artist’s taking endorsements from hard because no one can see where the money might come from on the back
where they get very little access to the big portals and rarely get any media multiple brands? end. The marketing budgets aren’t there. So all these international artists and
exposure. There’s no real crossover hit from the indie scene ‘Selling out’ is not really a word over here. [laughs] the niche domestic artists have almost zero in the way of marketing budgets,
is the short way of putting it. so it sort of compounds itself as a problem.

22 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 23
 Analysis:
Music’s dark
The future, to paraphrase Too much of a good thing
Laurie Anderson, is “Somewhere around 2020, all the world’s content
“exactly like where you will fit inside an iPod, and all the world’s music will
sit in your palm as early as 2015,” said Sukhinder
are right now, only much, Singh Cassidy, the vice president of Google’s Asia
much better”. However as Pacific and Latin America Operations, back in 2007.
Around 10 years ago that would have been an
technological advancement exciting and groundbreaking prediction, a glimpse
of an exciting future when owning all the music
and music innovation you’d ever wanted might be realised. However in
offer up vast new levels of 2009 it is considerably less exciting. Why? Well,
because consumers already have iPods rammed
consumption, will the sheer to the hilt with music. They’re torrented up to the
saturation of music force proverbial eyeballs. Music is now, to all intents and
purposes, perceived as a free commodity - not
fans to rise against the just in terms of cost but in the ability to be ‘freely’
acquired. The issue now is not about acquiring
digital content Tsunami and music, it’s about knowing what to do with once you
go underground? Piracy have it. Previously consumers selected what they
would purchase based upon careful considerations
is seen as the consumer around a perceived set of limitations based
‘reign of terror’ against the fundamentally on price. Now with pricing no longer
an issue consumption is frivolous. When that
music industry, however happens the attachment to songs tends to also
becomes less important.
another revolution is
brewing.
24 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
Viva la revolution!
Marie Antoinette had everything – married off
at the tender age of fifteen she was thrust into
a lifestyle of frivolous extravagance. Queen of
France by the age of twenty she had an unlimited
abundance of wealth affording her a lifestyle built
almost purely on the gratification of indulging
in excess. She was the It girl of her day, over-
spending, gambling, and partying to excess,
she was castigated by the nation for lavishly
spending as France faced bankruptcy. However
having everything soon wore thin and, as
the realities of her position became more
unsatisfactory, she withdrew, creating her
own micro-world with her world.
Music consumers have everything – with the
old music industry cast aside like yesterday’s
newspaper they have been thrust into a lifestyle
of conspicuous music consumption. Kings of
their digital domain they have been presented
with an abundance of both paid and free
music, amassing vast swathes of content and
leading to a musical over indulgence. They are
the modern day highwaymen, castigated for
their lavish consumption of free music as the
recording industry faces bankruptcy. However
with everything on offer, and no guiding hand to
navigate the musical onslaught, their position
is becoming ever more unsatisfactory causing
them to seek out their own musical enclaves.
The land of make believe
In 1783, Marie Antoinette, sought refuge from
the overload of being able to command virtually
anything at will. So what did the girl who had
everything do when consumption fatigue set in?
She constructed a new beginning, a niche within
her own world, which she could control, and
shape to her own will. She commissioned a small
ersatz rural farm, her Hameau de la Reine (Little
Hamlet of the Queen), to be built on the outskirts
of the royal palace of Versailles. An imitation
small holding where she could live out a rural
fantasy among a select group of invited peers and
handpicked servants, where she honed the true
desires of her heart outside her everyday life of
excess, where she staged her own personalised
theatre productions, and developed a bespoke
environment. It was to be her retreat from the
world, a stripped back version of the reality that
surrounded her.
Music consumers are on the verge of a similar
withdrawal from the open ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet
of the emerging music model. Having everything
offered up on a plate is wonderful at first, but after
the gluttonous feast something in the pit of your
stomach tells you, perhaps you should have been
more selective. The focus after the first wave of
‘open content’ was to offer up music discovery,
which on the surface would offer up the ability
to create a bespoke music experience. However,
choosing what to eat for lunch isn’t easy when
staring into an infinite fridge of food. Services
suggesting a nice piece of X because ‘we already
know you like Y’, as some music models do, also
doesn’t offer up a particularly eclectic platter
Music’s ultimate future has more in
common with our immediate past than
we are willing to admit to in an age of
progressive innovation
either. Where are the tastemakers says the world?
We don’t know what’s cool anymore! TV won’t tell
us. Radio can’t tell us. The Internet models are
asking us to make all the decisions. Help. We need
another revolution.
Something lurking in dark
The Darknet is on the verge of going mainstream
and may by among the first pointers to the 2nd
musical revolution. Which is bad news for rights-
holders hoping to monitor public P2P networks,
as it opens up yet another black hole for the music
business. Darknets are P2P services without a
public entry point to the network, whereby users
create a sharing network between themselves
and their friends. What you end up with in effect
is a far more personalised version of illegal file
trading, whereby a user becomes the taste-maker
of a particular peer group. The idea itself is not
new, and various services have attempted this
route before, however a newly released version of
Limewire has brought the ability to create these
sharing portals to a much wider audience. It’s now
not about the easy to spot big ships of piracy any
more, users now have the ability to create their
own personalised P2P submarines which will travel
directly under the radar of the music industry.
If you can’t find them, you can’t sue them. Fail.
If you can’t find them you can’t market through
them. Epic fail.
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 25
 Analysis:
Invitation to the masked ball
Sharing and navigating the digital
clutter is key in today music culture,
and closed cell groups are bound to
form. However, even in a closed group
someone has to stick their head
above the parapet every now and
again to see what’s new in the world.
Consumers have usurped the music
industry throne, however the palace
has many rooms and navigating all
of them is time consuming, especially
when you’re not sure what you are
looking for. It’s enough to make
you lose your head. As consumers
create their own walled gardens
they too – like the former Queen of
France – will still need someone to
tend to that garden. The members
of a Darknet still need a source, a
point of reference, someone to plant
the seeds in their personal utopia.
However, as Marie Antoinette found
out (with her difficult time producing
a male heir), having seeds to plant
is one thing – growing something
of value is the tricky part. The tables
have turned - it’s now about the
music industry being invited into the
consumer’s private circle and not
the other way round. In this brave
new world permission marketing
becomes all the more critical.

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26 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
History repeating itself
So what does music’s future look
like? Well imagine a future where
tracks are selected by an overriding
tastemaker who compresses the
massed knowledge of all music
content into a palatable and
accessible format. The selected
playlist would be both authentic –
as it would come from a trusted
source – and accessible as it would
strip away other music, highlighting
only what the listener ultimately
wanted to hear. Now imagine it has
a tangible life beyond the digital
realm, that it is packaged up for ease
of use and has a tactile unique and
personalised quality to it. Sound
familiar? Maybe the CD wasn’t such
a bad idea after all. Perhaps it’s the
ultimate niche. Perhaps our ultimate
future has more in common with our
immediate past than we are willing
to admit to in an age of progressive
determination and innovation.
The old model was too narrow;
the current model is too wide.
The music business is moving
from compact discs to compact
dissemination and it will be the
sharecasters, the tastemakers, the
opinion providers who will be the new
musical ruling class. To misquote
Marie Antoinette: “ let them bake
their own cake”
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1/ Give
Whereby the recording industry took music
from the live arena and packaged it up for mass
production. This ultimately put them in a position
whereby they dictated the pricing, format and
tastes for consumers.
2/ Take
The arrival of the Internet moves the business
model from push to pull as consumers become
empowered online. Napster sets a precedent,
birthing ‘Generation Free’ which in turn gives rise
to conspicuous music consumption as consumers
ingest music en masse at no cost.
3/ Receive
The parallel rise of social networks and P2P
against a mounting rejection of ‘ownership’
amongst music consumers puts greater emphasis
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 Analysis:
Here come
the girls
With women spending Rise of the Suffranets
“If you want my future forget my past,” sang out
around $5 trillion in the The Spice Girls as they launched themselves on an
US and accounting for unsuspected world in 1996 with the now infamous
song ‘Wannabe’. The birth of The Spice Girls and
over 80% of all consumer the ‘Girl Power’ tag line that surrounded the group,
purchasing, music is may be a distant memory yet a new selection of
young empowered female artists are lining up to
playing a key part in helping aid brands in there ongoing quest to captivate and
reach out to a new breed of female consumers.
major brands reach out The ‘Suffranets’ are a new wave of tech savvy,
to a newly empowered brand conscious females who are casting their
vote on your brand. Are your policies aligning with
female market. However, their values? Do your campaigns resonate with
are brands harnessing the the realities of their lives? Their voice is louder and
more dynamic than any other online. Authenticity
true potential of music is everything, and wrong footing them will earn you
the brand equivalent of a Geri Halliwell style high
to engage with female kick off their social and economic radar.
consumers? With women
Domestic bliss
watching their breadline, The turn of the century saw women turn from
how can music help their position as makers to consumers as an
abundance of products became readily available
leverage products to an in the post-Industrial age. From the offset women
have indirectly called the shots. As early as 1908
audience that knows what a decisive shift in female empowerment with
it wants? regards to brand advertising was first seen when
the beaming ‘corn maid’ of the Kellogg’s company
was replaced with an annoyed women. “Excuse
me. I know what I want, and I want what I asked
for, Toasted Corn Flakes. Good day,” stated the
women in the adverts tag line. The ad, which was
the forcible result of ‘other’ brands creeping in
on known brands territory, may have been more
situational than directly intentional, yet it had
tapped into a new positioning, one that saw women
as empowered consumers.
The uber-consumer that was the 1920s
flapper, born into a post war era of purchas-
ing indulgence was an example of the first truly
‘Independent Woman’ focused around music.
28 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
Taking her cue from fashion, a
new musical freedom, and conspicu-
ous consumption. However the ensuing
periods of advertising that followed, particularly
through the 50s, would return women’s concerns
to more domical duties. The domestic goddess
ads from that period saw women’s lives revolving
primarily around middle class commodities or as
highly sexualised objects.
Near Miss
Female sexuality and the
notion of empowerment has
come a long way, however
products can still sometimes
miss the mark. Christina Aguilera endorsed
Skechers shoes a few years ago in a series of print
ads which saw her dressed as a cop in fishnets
arresting a perpetrator (also herself) straddling
a car. One female reviewer said: “Seeing Christina
getting down and dirty with herself is a guy’s
fantasy. Not something a girl wants to see”.
A recent poll carried out by The Co-operative
with YouGov to find the UK’s least popular ad
music, saw the jingle for women’s car insurer
Sheila’s Wheels (featuring overtly pink women)
voted as the number one worst commercial.
Gamma time
Alpha women, as depicted stereotypically in Sex
and The City, know what they want, If they decide
they want a new Gucci handbag they will find a way
to acquire that particular product. However, the
transaction is merely one way. A desire leads to
a purchase. The purchase halts the relationship. It’s
purely ‘cause and select’. However, Gamma women
– which account for around 55M Americans –
approach a consideration to purchase in an entirely
different way. The Gamma woman wants to be “the
centre of her friends, and wants to be in the know,
share information and be an educated consumer,”
says Aliza Freud, founder and CEO of SheSpeaks.
They don’t want to merely shop, they want to
interact, to share, to discuss, examine, road test
and review. They are socially secure, independent-
minded and yet more than ever willing to listen if
they feel they are being heard. “Everyday women
have a powerful economic impact, and it’s time
for marketers and advertisers to recognize that
and adjust their marketing messages to speak
to them,” says Paula Foundeur, executive director
of market solutions for Meredith Corp.
Digital Divas
Collette Dunkley, chief executive of XandY
Communications suggests that women generate
between two and seven times more word of mouth
referrals than men do. Women outnumber men on
virtually all social networks according to data from
Rapleaf, with 14-24 year-old females among the
most active. The number of women using social
networks in the UK rose by a sizeable 53% in 2008,
according to new research by IPC Media. Although
the amount of females networking would seem
to testify to the tired stereotype that woman like a
good chat, in actual fact it paints a far more diverse
picture of women in 2009. Women now “consider
their computers and cell phones as extensions of
their personalities” stated Beth Ulyenco, Global
Research Director of Microsoft’s Advertiser and
Publisher Solutions.
Social Shopping
To suggest selling music and marketing through
music to women has become something
resembling the sharing nature of a Tupperware
party would not be far wrong. To the extent
that Tara Leigh, which is part of the House Party
company that stages events in peoples homes that
consumer brands sponsor, is actively aiming to sell
music to women through shared groups. Former
EMI marketing executive Josh Zieman organised
2,500 listening parties at homes throughout the US
last year, with the events attracting 42,000 people,
88% of which were female. Sales were minimal,
primarily due to its old media (CD) positioning,
however the engagement levels were high, which
speaks volumes about how women shop.
We are your friends
Music marketing still tends to fall very much into
the endorsement category, which is all well and
good - especially at present when young female
artists appear to be on the increase. However,
endorsement campaigns work to a brands best
advantage when they are interwoven into the
heart of the female social circle. “If you wanna be
my lover, you gotta get with my friends,” sings an
echoing refrain of that Spice Girls song again. Geri’s
Union Jack dress may have seen better days but
some words still ring true; brands need to befriend
their women customers, and music is a social
glue like no other. It brings people together in
a way that other promotional activity simply can’t.
With a plethora of social media and social music
functionality waiting to be tapped into isn’t it about
time your campaigns and endorsements became
girl empowered as opposed to girl powered.
amount of consumer electronics group, eager to broadcast the results of their find-
$90B spending influenced by women in ’07
of women with children aged 13-17
have talked about products within
70% a social network
pass along information about deals
92% or finds to others
of female Internet users in the UK
33% download or listen to music online
never unplug from digital devices
50% even when sleeping
SAYS
Suffranets: a new wave of tech savvy,
brand conscious females who are exercising
their right to vote on your product or service
The Suffranet manifesto
Alone in a crowd – The individuality and
independence of the gamma women is offset
by a desire to be part of a collective entity. Social
networks offer up the opportunity to be a strong
voice among many, with high values placed upon
relationships with virtual friends.
Hive tastemakers – They are altruistic in nature,
informed decisions makers who crowd source their
views for the better of the group. Eager to build
mutually beneficial relationships focused around
a series of trusted voices.
Share–casters – The gamma woman has a natural
desire to broadcast her opinions and thoughts to
a community on a multitude of subjects. They
act as beta testers, deconstructing products as a
ings to a shared community.
Tech logical – A gamma woman’s social status is
depicted via her ability to showcase her individual
style. High-tech devices are viewed as mere tools
for information, communication and connection.
Technology is a means to a shared end, an
extension of themselves.
Retro-prospective – The old 60s concept of home
making has given way to home building, as the
recession steers women to become the masters of
production at home as ‘thrift’ becomes a necessity
as well as an expression of self-reliance.
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 29
 Here come the girls:
Brand
Divas
Taylor Swift
& Gillette
What? Country starlet Taylor Swift, who signed
a publishing deal with Sony/ATV Music aged
merely 14, went on to write and record a Country
No.1 at 17 and take the US charts by storm is the
teen empowerment spokesperson of the moment.
She became the Goddess Of Summer as she
promoted Gillette’s Venus Embrace shaving range.
The campaign saw Swift sharing her favorite
summer beauty advice with fans on the Venus
Embrace website, encouraging women and young
girls to be confident and to embrace the fun side
of summer. “This has been an amazing year for
me – and my new ‘Goddess Of Summer’ role is
a fun way for me to connect with my fans,” said
Swift at the time. Gillette suggested the campaign
was a perfect fit for Swift, as it would “honour the
songbird’s confidence, sense of fun, and goddess-
worthy legs”.
30 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001
So what? Swift is currently hot brand alignment
property in the US with numerous companies
eager to hitch themselves to her endorsement
bandwagon. Prior to becoming the ‘legs’ of Gillette,
she was also the ‘face’ of L.e.i Clothing. She has
also donned the famous Milk Moustache in the
long running ‘Got Milk?’ campaign. Swift has an
all-American appeal which works on two levels
for brands as her image straddles a line between
tween and teen, whilst her music has an appeal
across a far broader and older demographic
of women. The wholesome nature of her music
and her everywoman appeal give her a grassroots
quality that offers up both the safe retro roots
of the homestead whilst providing a more youthful
and safe rebellious nature. Jack Gross, CEO of
Jones Apparel Group – which is currently selling
a Taylor Swift designed clothing range via WalMart
– referred to her as “someone with a good
reputation and someone who we didn’t have to
be afraid of getting any sort of bad press”.
Brand assets:
Multi market – crossover artist straddling a broad
age demographic: tween, teen and above.
Clean cut - wholesome independent youth role
model with attainable beauty appeal .
Social Currency: Gamma Range: Social currency:
Gamma range: Gamma range:
Estelle
& Crystal Light
What? Kraft foods built a recent campaign for its
Crystal Light brand of powdered drink mix around
Grammy Award winning UK artist Estelle. The track
‘Star’ was specially composed for the promotion
and was offered as a unique free download via
the website ‘upumpitup.com’. Roxanne Bernstein,
senior brand manager for Crystal Light, referred
to Estelle as “a very strong woman” and that she
conveyed an attitude to women to “never give
up, always take risks, never stop pushing yourself,
always try to be better.” The website offered up
a bio of Estelles route to success: “Don’t let anyone
tell you that you can’t do something. I never do”
says the singer.
So what? Singer/actress Mandy Moore also pops
up on the ‘upumpitup.com’ website to further
enhance the ‘be-all-you-can-be’ messaging of
the campaign with a series of challenges (under
the themes Connect, Express, Inspire and Explore)
aimed at bringing women together as a community
to change who they are. The site also offers quick
‘How To’ advice on how to make playlists that rock,
changing a tire and creating a family storybook.
Estelle’s free exclusive content acts as a driver
to deeper interaction and collaboration between
its target audience by inviting them to actively
participate in activities that draw other uses into
the site. The site has around 53,000 members
involved in numerous lifestyle challenges.
Brand assets:
Self replicating – utilises a mechanism whereby
users can draw others into the brand activity.
Network friendly – enables users to interact
collaboratively with each other and the brand.
Social Currency: the viewers to control the outcome of the final
Gamma Range: music selection also ticks all the crowd-sourced
Alicia Keys
& Dove
Go Fresh
What? Unilever, following on from its bold Dove
Real Beauty campaign, utilised Grammy-winning
artist Alicia Keys in a micro series aimed at
promoting the launch of the Dove Go Fresh range.
The three-minute episodes – entitled Fresh Takes
–debuted around MTV show The Hills and focused
on the lives of the three girlfriends highlighting how
“20-something females are suffering from ‘inner
critic syndrome’, a pressure to measure up to,
and surpass, the previous generation”. Alicia Keys
stated that she hoped the series enabled others to
“get a fresh take on the pressures in their lives and
start enjoying the ride”. A poll via MTV saw visitors
to the site voting for which karaoke duet Keys
would perform in an upcoming episode.
So what? This campaign aped the growing interest
for micro-dramas sparked by Bebo’s successful
Kate Modern micro-series. It capitialised on its
endorsement by 41M album-seller Alicia Keys
by claiming that all important major music star
gravitas yet also managing to ground her in reality
by given equal billing to two unknown actresses.
This bridges a gap visually between the two
and helping the viewer project herself in direct
alignment to the product ambassador. Enabling
boxes so important to this demographic.
Brand assets:
Story telling - utilises a tangible narrative,
achieving long-term buy in via repeat viewing.
One of the girls – creates empathy by bridging the
often sizable gap between the endorsee and reality.
Social Currency:
The Veronicas
& Yaz birth
control
What? Twin sisters The Veronicas launched
a weekly web series exclusively via their Yahoo!
Music web channel entitled UNTOUCHED in
association with the Yaz birth control pill as part of
its Go Beyond Birth Control campaign. The micro-
documentary charted the duo’s journey across
the US as they promoted their album, Hook Me
Up. The videos – shown over a period of 10 weeks
–highlighted the girls’ rise from their childhood
in Australia to their preparations and rehearsals
for a high-profile tour with The Jonas Brothers.
The duo’s song ‘Goodbye To You’ also previously
featured in a Yaz commercial earlier in the year.
So what? The Veronicas are one of Australia’s
hottest exports selling 1M singles in the US.
The female duo offer up an updated take on
empowerment, putting a strong Rock Chick
voice behind a product that seemingly has little
attachment to music. However, the launch of the
pill in the 60s was synonymous with rock n’ roll
and now, nearly fifty years later, the alignment with
music still stands the test of time. The campaign
offers up plenty of background info on the product
whilst the documentary styled series promotes
repeat visits to the site to follow the girl’s progress.
Brand assets:
Mainstream niche - Aligning with artists on the
cusp of breaking in the US leverages the emerging
factor onto an other wise populist act.
Rebel chic – brings the right level of rebellion and
glamour to a relatively mundane topic.
Social Currency: to step out of their increasingly hectic and
Gamma range: demanding lifestyle. Diet Coke also embraced the
Duffy
& Diet Coke
What? Coca–Cola’s latest pan-European Diet
Coke campaign feature Welsh singer Duffy as its
new spokesmodel. The £35M campaign sees the
soft drinks brand repositioning Diet Coke towards
a female audience primarily in their teens and
twenties. Duffy covers Sammy Davis Jnr’s ‘I Gotta
Be Me’ in the 60 sec TV commercial, which sees her
jumping on a bicycle for a mid performance break.
Kathryn Sleight, Coca-Cola GB marketing director,
said that the promotion aimed to show “strong and
confident women taking control”. The campaign
includes the strap line “I’m no superwoman”.
So what? The diet coke guy has been given the
shove and the focus for women is now more on
stealing a moment for herself than stealing
a quick glance at a six pack. This is emphasised
by the commercial’s tag line ‘Hello You’. Diet Coke,
and Duffy’s supermarket bike dash represents
a ‘me moment’ of micro rebellion, inviting women
tech savvy female consumer recently by partnering
with Gabriella Cilmi as the host of The Silver Room,
a mobile Internet portal which brought together
celebrity gossip, fashion, and new music.
Brand assets:
Everywoman factor - Evokes a ‘one of the girls’
feeling of solidarity between artist and consumer.
Megastar neighbour – places a massive artist into
the everyday environment the viewer inhabits.
FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 31
 Here come the girls: of these woman are also on Twitter he’s starting to build his

Girl Talk
own little fan club by interacting with the women he met at these
two conferences. He now has a ton of fans and he doesn’t even
have anything out yet. The fact that they are so not saturated
in this general market is exciting. They’re not jaded, they’re not
journalists, they’re not ‘ho-hum another new singer’, it’s exciting.

Is retail not catering to how women what to consume music?

It’s hard because yes a lot of women are searching online
with Amazon and iTunes and there are places people can go.
However, they could do a better job of tutoring outreach as How can new artists get cut through directly to women today?
opposed to expecting them to come. I don’t really see the music It’s more Long Tail theory, if you can really target who your audience is you
retail community getting involved with the women’s blogging actually can start to build an audience with a particular group through word
community in any kind of proactive way. They could be doing of mouth. It really is doable. It just might take longer. If you’re smart and you
How have female consumers changed over the last decade and what can a lot better job on figuring out how to get there, in the same way budget properly and you really realise that you need to build community
marketers do to create greater engagement with them? that other brands and industries are doing - everything from around your artist and let the community do the referring. The whole top
I think first and foremost over the last decade you’re looking at the Internet Dell to Johnson and Johnson, to a whole range of companies and down, spend millions of dollars,
being a huge new edition to women’s lifestyles. As one of the women in the
demographic of ‘adult women’, and also a marketer, what I have found is the
incredible ability to target specific groups of women now that we have the
brands that are realising the power of this community. Women
do 85% of all buying in the household, so if you’re not getting
to her you’re probably not getting something bought. They’re
“Women do do the big ad campaign - to me
that is just so passé. People are
still spending budget like it is 1995
ability to do this on the Internet. One of my reasons for starting this company
was as a marketer for a very long time - and dealing with all the different
genres of music we had to deal with - we always found the ability to target
approving what their children are purchasing, whether it’s online
or otherwise, and if you are not getting to them in a meaningful
way how will they know where to go? I think there is a lot more
85% of all thinking they can sell a lot of records.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to
look at the charts and realise the

buying in the
various different groups and demographics. I don’t care whether its the that could be done by suggesting new music, by wooing them number of records that are being
college kids, if it was tweens, if it was focused on a gay and lesbian market - Blogging seems to have empowered a new generation of a little bit. sold. The budgets have to be in line
there were always places you could women to act as brand beta testers. How important is having with that.

household,
go to find people who were working a community voice and how can brands best seed themselves Is it better for brands to align with empathetic or aspirational
on targeting those markets. But into those networks? artists as spokesmodels in the current climate? Is ‘down I caught a comment on your blog
when it came to any projects aimed The importance of the blogging platform is for women it offers to earth’ a bigger draw than star quality? that mentioned ‘The Viral 4-H Club’

so if you’re
at adult women it became very, the ability to put out their thoughts and build community around Music is still the sexy side of everything. It depends on what the in terms of marketing to women,
very difficult to target them. Where a particular topic. What they’ve discovered is that they started brands are. It’s all about being genuine and authentic. Although could you expand on what you
are they? How do you get to them? to build a real community, and for women especially community they still love the celebrities I don’t think it’s relatable to most mean by this?

not getting
How do you get into their everyday is very important. These natural communities they’ve built via of these women. The days of ‘so and so uses it so I’m going to Some people will go “we want to
world? I realised there was a huge blogging and now micro-blogging on Twitter have become a use it’ are gone. Women today, and especially younger women, make it viral”. Oh ok, you want to
opportunity there and basically what very empowering thing for women and moms especially. are very turned off by things that are unattainable, and I think make it viral, so what is interesting

to her you’re
I’ve built is a street team concept. As far as there impact it’s a known fact that 80% of people if you had a brand that could associate with a relatable artist about it? What makes somebody

Barbara Jones, CEO and Sometimes I ask myself: “How did we

market to these people before the
Founder of the One2One
Internet?” I mean seriously [laughs]
look to friends and family for personal referrals before making
a purchasing decision. The credibility factor and feeling of
personal recommendation trumps any kind of advertising.
that’s when it’s going to feel like a fit. Just because JLo or
Gwyneth does something it’s not relatable, especially in this
want to tell somebody else about it?
It has to be a catalyst. There has to
probably
economy. So many people think whatever, that doesn’t apply be something about it that makes

Network a women’s So just how would the music

So the voice that these women have and the ability if they do like
a product can truly make an impact in the community they are
Word of Mouth Marketing
industry have targeted talking to. Especially as the Gen Y’s are developing– and there
to me. I think if a brand aligns with a music artist like Beyonce
it’s tough to relate to somebody that fabulous. It all depends on
a human being want to take action.
That’s why I call it the Viral 4 H
not getting
what the brand is looking for, if they want high-end associations Club. It either has to be really funny

Network, took time out women before?

We would do very broad or very sort
to talk with us about the
of hand-to-hand combat types
is a ton of them that I’m working with, and in the 25-34 range
too– they’re building these communities and they’re becoming
then that’s what you go for. (humorous), has to be a helpful tip,
has to feel good (be heart-warming)
something
a voice and a trusted credible source for information. A recent report pointed to ‘The Lipstick Effect’, which suggested or it has to make somebody hot-

somewhat neglected female of things. Prior to the Internet you

would do things like, lets say if there
demographic in the music
was a show coming through your
Is there a gap in the market for female tastemakers when it
comes to discovering new music? How are women finding out
women will still spend on little luxuries in an economic
downturn. Is music still a little luxury?
blooded, it has to make somebody
angry. I believe those are the things
bought.”
Music is a little luxury; it is a little something for yourself. that makes something viral. There

industry and how brands can market by a similar artist to the one
you are promoting, you might hire
benefit from creating deeper somebody to go pass out flyers at
what they should be listening to?
I feel in general that what happens is that for women after their
college years, nurturing a career, and once they start having
Because you can take little bits online those are the things you
don’t feel too much in your pocket. Music is still so important
are tons of things on YouTube, but
what rises to the top? It’s the ones
to people, it’s a sense of catharsis and enjoyment, so if they are that evoke an emotion of some kind.

connections with women. the show when people are leaving.

Or have somebody get in there with
a clipboard and start taking names
to sign up for an email list or a fan club list. Very, very basic things that quite
frankly were like dropping a stone in the ocean. Either that or you’d do very
broad campaigns, we advertise on Oprah, we advertise on the Today show.
Getting into the nooks and crannies and the very targeted communities is
almost so easy now that it‘s embarrassing.
families what happens is not that there’s any less interest in
music, in my opinion it is just that it becomes lower on the
priority poll of all the different things you have to do in your
everyday life. Often women and moms will not put themselves
first in the equation. The biggest part is that I feel there isn’t
a credible source, a place they can go to. It gets intimidating. I’m
not talking the super music fans as they know where to go as it’s
part of their life, but as far as the mass public goes. A lot of the
stuff I’m doing is turning them on to new music in a very mass
way. For example, I threw a blogging conference called Blissdom
in Nashville in February. We had 250 women bloggers there and
I brought in a new Sony artist whose record is not even out yet
and had him perform at the event. What happened then is that
we put him on Twitter too and then all of a sudden because all
turned onto the right product that feels good to them it’s still
that little something you can do for yourself - like buying a candy
bar when going through the grocery store. I still think women will
purchase music, the bigger issue is finding the trusted source
to refer and give tips on new music. I truly think that is one of the
biggest problems, they don’t know where to go and who to ask,
and they don’t have time to waste.
How critical is two-way communication between brands and their
female audience?
People who find out about things online don’t only keep it online, it’s the
natural next step to go offline and tell your circle of friends who aren’t maybe
as Internet savvy. It’s a natural progression; it’s a ripple effect. This goes for
music and brands. You need to build your community around it and let your
community be your voice.
The smart brands are engaging in conversation, they’re listening to what
people are saying and they’re interacting. People today want to know who
is the person behind the brand, the band, the company. They expect to know,
they want to get a glimpse, they’re looking for authenticity, they’re looking for
a genuine person, a genuine goal, a genuine mission. I think the people who
are doing that are making an impact because they get people on their side.

32 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 33
 Analysis:

Help! The Grid

My iPod thinks I’m Emo 52M 600% $933M $10,000
Background music license fee
People attending one of Live increase from the PRS for Music ASCAP sees an 8% rise in royalty Resale price of Michael
Nation’s 22,000 events in 2008 for Oldham Athletic football club collections on 2007 in 2008 Jackson’s O2 tickets mere hours
If you like the Britney Spears song “Hit Me Baby One More Time” you might Fixing Music Recommendation (Live Nation) (Oldham Athletic FC) (ASCAP) after official release (WENN)
like “The Congressional Report on Pre-War Intelligence for the Iraqi War”, It is clear that music recommendation needs to be improved if we are
so says the recommender of a well-known online music store. If you’ve going to help people find new and interesting music from new artists.

-600,000
$1M £250,000 $71,442.69
spent any time trying to find new music online you’ve probably Soon we will see the emergence of new approaches being developed by
encountered music recommendations like this. The recommendations researchers that will fix some of the problems endemic to wisdom of the
are often either far fetched, obvious or just plain wrong. But as the crowds recommenders.
amount of available music continues to grow, we increasingly rely One new approach is to base music recommendation on what the music
on these broken recommenders to help us find music. We need to fix actually sounds like, instead of basing it upon who is listening to the music.
music recommendation so that, as our music collections grow, we can This is deep science. Researchers combine signal processing techniques,
help guide music listeners to new and interesting music. machine learning, musicology and search technology into a system that
can find music in a billion song catalogue that sounds similar to music that Marketing budget a cover-
Why is Music Recommendation Broken? you already like. This content-based approach addresses the new artist mount on UK newspaper The
Most music recommenders rely on ‘Wisdom of the crowds’ to make problem. All artists are treated equally - a brand new, undiscovered artist Drop in Sirius XM Satellite Radio Kylie Minogue's fee for appear- Independent allegedly saved Estimated cost of purchasing
recommendations. They look at overlapping purchasing and listening patterns is treated identically to The Beatles or Coldplay. Since recommendation sign ups in Q4 (against the same ing briefly in the Bollywood film the Wall of Sound label every app available on the Apple
to make recommendations such as ‘people who purchased Jimi Hendrix also is based upon what the music sounds like and not who is listening to it, period in 2007) (Sirius XM) Blue (Starpulse) (Wall of Sound) App Store (Venturebeat)
purchased Eric Clapton’. This type of recommender is easy to build and gives this approach is immune to the feedback loops that we see in current
good recommendations for popular artists. However, there’s a flip side to ‘the music recommenders. Sometimes the reaction the world has to music

$25M 7 seconds
$1.3M $1.2M
wisdom of the crowds’. For new music or unpopular music there is no crowd is as important as the music itself. To capture this cultural context,
and with no crowd there is no wisdom. A wisdom of the crowds recommender researchers are building systems that will crawl the web for everything
cannot make good recommendations for new artists, it just doesn’t know that is written about music. The resulting data is parsed and analysed
enough about these new artists. The result is that new artists are ignored. for reaction and significance, and is used along with biographical, editorial and
What’s worse, a recommender feedback loop can form. Popular items are relational information to build a better model of how artists and songs relate.
frequently recommended, and because they are frequently recommended This information is used to offer transparent, explainable recommendations.
they become even more popular. This results in the recommender reducing None of the three approaches described here provide the optimum
the overall diversity of the set of recommended items. Instead of helping us solution for recommendation. Each approach has its advantages and
find music by new, unknown artists, recommenders point us right back at the disadvantages. The next generation of music recommendation will combine Sponsorship Ford is to put
popular artists we’ve been listening to all along. the best aspects of all three approaches into a single hybrid recommender. into American Idol despite the Time it took for a one off Paul BitTorrent hub Mininova's Illegal drugs confiscated from
The recommendation “other people who listened to Nine Inch Nails also Music recommendations will be transparent, free from feedback loops that economic issues surrounding the McCartney gig in LA to sell out apparent earnings in 2007 the Phish reunion concert
listened to Johnny Cash” seems like a really bad one. Industrial metal doesn’t lead to limited diversity and extend to all music, no matter how new or rare. auto industry (LA Times) (BBC) (Mininova) (Associated Press)
usually go with country music. However, if the recommender could offer Soon, all recorded music will be online and available for listening
an explanation such as “Johnny Cash offers an honest, haunting, powerful anywhere, anytime and on any device. Tools for helping people wade through

30,000 $80M 80% $2.3M

cover of the NiN song ‘Hurt’”, this recommendation is transformed from
one that seems broken into a phenomenal one - a recommendation that
may have a Nine Inch Nails fan listening to ‘Folsom Prison’ in a few weeks.
Recommendations based on the wisdom of the crowds can’t offer these
detailed explanations, they can only offer a trivial explanation of the style
“people who listened to X also listened to Y”.
all of this music, tools to help them explore for and discover new music will
be an essential part of the music listening experience.
Paul Lamere,
Director of Developer Community, The Echo Nest

The Expert The Friend The Algorithm The Database Purchase Comparison
SAYS Sammy Hagar, formerly
People in the Sharing of music Analysing component ‘Scrobbler’ analyses ‘People who bought Number of bottles of wine Sting of Van Halen, nets an 80% sale Revenue increase in virtual What Primary Wave has netted
know, sharing their recommendation parts of music, your music collection this , also bought this’. is selling from his vineyard of his Cabo Wabo tequila brand goods sales on Chinese social from its $50M stake in the
experience. between friends, one- ‘sounds-like’. and listening habits. e.g Amazon (NME) (WENN) network Tencent Nirvana catalogue
e.g Pitchfork, blogs to-one, one-to-many. e.g Pandora e.g Last.fm
e.g MySpace, Facebook

34 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 FRUKT Music Intelligence | April 2009 | Issue 001 35
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