Comments on: Is a Last.fm Powerplay Campaign Right for You?

By: Romano Italiano

Romano Italiano — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:54:27 +0000

Same experience with last.fm – still wolud be a loss of time and money even if it was 10 times cheaper. Maybe a good marketing tool for some big sharks – just to test songs, but certainly not for indos.

By: Brian Hazard

Brian Hazard — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:53:14 +0000

I agree. That info would be VERY handy. Jango has better stats control, in that you can target certain demographics. If I want only girls 18-24 in Wyoming to hear a song, I can do that. Unfortunately the follow-up is difficult if not impossible, as their communication tools need some work.

Say hi to your wife for me!

By: Empathy

Empathy — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 03:47:25 +0000

I think Eric is right on the money. With the amount stats-gathering algorithmic know-how available to last.fm, they could make the Powerplay promotions much more useful to artists by not only letting us “microtarget” our promotions, but also in providing more granular info as feedback. For example, I’d love to know what the top 10 artists were for those who listened, skipped, love, or banned a track. Even just letting us know the top ten artists for those who loved or banned a track would be truly helpful in future promotions. For example, if 90% of people who banned a track were fans of Band X, I’d love to know that so I’d stop trying to reach that demographic. I’ve made that recommendation on the forums here:

http://www.last.fm/forum/6666/_/557650

If you think this would be a useful addition to Powerplays, please speak up!

BTW Brian – my wife’s definitely a fan of your work, and she is, indeed a HUGE DM fan.

By: Monty Singleton

Monty Singleton — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:34:35 +0000

Just heard on the CD Baby Podcast some interesting statistics for teens. Physical and digital sales are down 20% for teens. Online radio usage is up 33% for teens. This was compared with the previous years numbers. Also, when a teen finds a song they like on myspace they go back and listen to it over and over again. However, only 1% of teens actually buy the song.

This clearly says to me online radio is the future and it’s going to be all about streaming.

By: Brian Hazard

Brian Hazard — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:18:20 +0000

I agree – demographic breakdowns would be nice. I get good demographics on my mailing list subscribers through ReverbNation’s FanReach 360, which I’ll be writing about in a month or so.

Microtargeting would be great. I’d try something like “fans of Depeche Mode, David Sylvian, and The Blue Nile.”

I’m all for geeky, but I can’t pull off funny. I’ve always found music much too serious.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:53:24 +0000

What would be more useful would be to actually get demographic breakdowns. We can only guess that the fans of Postal Service and PlayRadioPlay! who use Last.fm are college students. Sure, they are bands with a traditionally younger demographic, but then again, I also use Last.fm and have listened to streams of both those acts and I think I’m in your age bracket. So for all we know, the DM listeners and the Postal Service listeners could’ve been a lot of the “same” people.

Honestly, given our own demographics (we’re both approximately 30-something middle-class white guys) and the kind of music we make (something electronic and poppy) I think it’s probably a better bet to grab a die-hard (albiet small) cult audience in favor of a more initially lucrative but more fickle collegiate audience. And for that, in my opinion and limited experience, ad campaigns really need to be microtargeted. Instead of “fans of DM” it becomes “fans of DM, Claude Debussy, and Visage” or something even more ridiculously specific.

Or, you could just write geeky pop songs and tour with Jonathan Coulton or TMBG and be assured of nerdly-love and slashdot press forever.

By: Brian Hazard

Brian Hazard — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:45:31 +0000

This is great info Arron – thank you! Nice to see that my conclusions “scale” into a larger campaign.

By: Arron Clague

Arron Clague — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:44:55 +0000

We (Eight to Infinity) did two Powerplay campaigns for 2000 users when we launched Aether in 2007:

“Travelogue”
1598 Users listened to the whole track, and of those Users, 14 Loved the track
405 Users skipped the track or did not listen to it to the end, and of those Users, 12 Banned the track

“Say You’ll Come”
1233 Users listened to the whole track, and of those Users, 12 Loved the track
771 Users skipped the track or did not listen to it to the end, and of those Users, 67 Banned the track

Of all the statistics the only important one was the “Loved the track” stat, which increased the number of streams by almost exactly that amount per week.

So 660 euros bought Eight to Infinity 26 extra streams per week. We never get stats for our record company, and so I’ve no idea if that translated into sales. I suspect not, and even if it did, @ 100% success rate, it would have cost more than we earned.

If there was some way to scale it up though, it suggests that of everyone you play your track to, .75% love it. Your revenue comes from that .75 % . how many of that less than 1% are going to make a purchase ? My guess would be about 10%, tops.

So you can only lose money with Powerplay IMHO. I suspected as much when I did them, but I find the %age of loves per track a useful guide as to how “sticky” your music really is.

The target audience we used was every popular and underground electronic vocal band we could find, From DM down to B! Machine.

By: Brian Hazard

Brian Hazard — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:13:05 +0000

Monty, I know Last.fm, Jango, and Pandora pay royalties. I’m not sure about MySpace and Facebook. I’m hoping for Spotify to take over the world and pay us directly. Until one site establishes itself as utterly dominant, it’ll probably continue to be a mess.

Caius, your outlook is very encouraging. Thank you!

By: Caius

Caius — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:11:28 +0000

If you’re curious about whether college students will buy your music… I don’t know any of the actual relevant statistics, but speaking as a member of that demographic (and not the only one with my tastes), I can say that I strongly prefer buying music over just listening in places like last.fm. The reason is that while places like last.fm are great for seeing how an artist sounds, the only way to get the full album (legally) is to actually buy it. And most people who like music enough to pay for it to begin with like it enough to appreciate an album as a complete work of art. I haven’t bought an individual song in years, but I pay for full albums all the time, whether in CD or digital form.