Artist Services at MP3.com – 2002 Recommendations

               

Summary

Top Strategies

Top Projects

Artist Life Cycle

1.  Know the artist life cycle

1.  Affiliate deals for gear acquisition

Play instrument

                Get instrument/gear

                Music lessons

“The Band”

                Find other musicians

                Rehearse

Play live shows

                Book shows / tours

                Print/distribute flyers

Record music

                Copyright

                Studio booking

Create product

                CD duplication

                CD Label printing

                Vinyl production 

Get signed

                lawyer

                manager

Online promotion

                Encoding

                Hosting of downloads

                Hosting of streams

                Promotional links

                Targeted Emails

Online distribution

Credit card transaction

Shipping

Record label tasks

Offline promotion

                    Radio

                    Video

                    Retail co-op ads

                    Posters

Offline P&D

Music Licensing (sync licenses)

2.  Metrics (KPI)

2.   Expand referral services

3.  Usability – Fix first, then decide whether to create high touch Red Carpet PAS.

3.   Mastering for PAS

4.   Branding/Positioning – Become a destination rather than a utility.

4.   PAS upsell page weekly evolution

5.   Kill P4P

5.   Audio hosting – cut prices, support with marketing, pitch to indie labels.   

6.   Synergy with Universal music

6.   Classifieds for finding gear and artists, but forget revenue

Detail

Top Strategies (in priority order)

  1. Know the artist life cycle (ALC).  Until recently, MP3.com delivered services for a narrow spectrum of artist needs – online promotion and distribution.  Keeping the ALC in mind will highlight unexploited opportunities for artist services expansion.
  1. Metrics (KPI) – Just as the ALC shows what artists do when they aren’t on the mp3.com, improved artist KPIs will track artist behavior on the site, and will be used to validate or invalidate suggested artist services projects.
    1. Active base - Need to know active artist base to calculate reasonable upside on conversion of free to paid artists.  For example, taking 7,500 PAS subscribers divided by the “PR number” of 200K artists gives ~4% as a lower bound on subscription conversion.  Taking artists who have logged in over the last six months (~90K) gives 8%.  Perhaps there is limited upside in the conversion percentage given comparison to other shareware models.  If so, then MP3.com should instead focus on pulling the other levers of price point and growth of total artist base to raise revenue.    Also, I recommend using a shorter time period than six months to define active artist base.
    2. Segment by:         

                                                               i.      # of tracks posted – could be used to limit free users to N tracks to try and covert the power users to PAS

                                                              ii.      By DAM CDs

                                                            iii.      By Genre

                                                            iv.      By popularity/cost/# of streams and downloads

                                                             v.      by PAS subscriber

    1. Ratio between 128k streams, 24k streams and downloads
    2. Where are artists coming to the site from?

Segmentation can be multi-dimensional.  For example, segmenting by genre may show that electronica artists dominate, which may raise the priority of new services for a community of sound sample uploading and downloading or affiliate discounts on electronic gear.  Further segmenting to see whether electronica dominates PAS artists would indicate whether trying to sell sample CDs has revenue potential.

Examining the distribution of cost per artist may lead to free artist limits on total bandwidth (if a small number of artists are responsible for a majority of bandwidth costs).

Examining the ratio of the uses of different play mechanisms (see c above) may lead to restricting high bandwidth streaming to PAS artists.  The reasoning is that many other sites offer free downloads and some offer free low quality streams but none offer free 128 kbps streams.  The counter-argument would be that perhaps there is low demand for high bandwidth streaming from listeners because if a listener has a fast enough connection for 128 kbps stream, then they can also download the file quickly so they aren’t as likely to stream.

Regarding (d) above, mp3.com does not show up on many search engine queries around terms that artists might be looking for (see the ALC), nor is it linked to from many artist community sites or lists of sites with artist services.

  1. Usability – Significant problems with artist admin tools.  Fix these first before creating a turn-key “Red Carpet” solution for non-tech savvy artists…that business is high-touch and not a core competency of MP3.com
    1. Most used links should be above the fold and, if listed horizontally, should be on the left side.
    2. All links with upsell to pay services should be available from the master admin level because the upsell pages aren’t artist-specific…if entered from master admin level, allow choice of artist after clicking “Sign Me Up” (or allow master admin to choose ALL artists).
    3. Allow user to set a certain artist page as the default page after login so they don’t have to keep drilling down from the master admin page over and over again.
    4. Artist login should be bigger on home page…not saying that the artist link section necessarily needs more real estate on a consumer-oriented page, just that the login link should be visually offset from the other links.
    5. Artist should be able to create Album pages separate from the DAM CD program.  If not, then an artist with lots of content suffers from long page load times.
    6. Suggest that a new user wizard be added that guides the artist to various tasks that are common to most of the artist base…and in this way upsell messages to PAS can be littered throughout…in context of actions the value of the pay features becomes more obvious.
  1. Branding/Positioning needed for artists.
    1. Tone of artist admin section of MP3.com site is that of a utility created by engineers rather than a destination for artists.  The latter would be preferred.  The premise is that increasing active usage minutes on the site for artists will increase upsell opportunities and brand loyalty, leading to larger subscriber base.  See musicplayer.com, intermusic.com, harmony-central/zzounds.  Need copy written in “artist-friendly” language.  Also need to make more explicit reference to artist needs vis a vis the ALC.
    2. Services need renaming.  PAS sounds like a Jupiter or Forrester category rather than a brand name; too generic and too descriptive.  Doesn’t speak to me as an artist.  Many of the auction names also don’t communicate the feeling of buzz.
  1. Kill P4P.  The small set of artists that gain the most benefit to career from promotion are also getting paid more money, and they cost MP3.com the most money in bandwidth costs!!  You don’t want artists that depend on the P4P system to make money, it should be means to an end, and the end should be consumers giving the artists money and MP3.com takes a cut.   P4P would only make sense if the margin on a per artist basis was positive between the cost of audio hosting and the revenue from ads, but it isn’t.  The motivation of P4P is also skewing the results of artist surveys – the features they want are motivated by the P4P goal rather than the overall goal of their artist life cycle.
  1. Universal music synergy:
    1. “Opening band” auctions – an mp3.com artist can bid on a link on a major artist site.
    2. Remix of Universal artists – This would be a huge community builder for everybody involved.  A Universal artist posts vocals for mp3.com artists to download and then compete to be on a remix album.
    3. Market research for signed artists – Use a subset of the MP3.com visitor base (a panel) to give feedback on Universal artist projects prior to release to radio.  MP3.com visitors will be motivated by (limited) access to pre-release music from major artists; Universal record labels can better pick the single and target demographics and thereby increase profit margin on bands in which they have already made an investment.

Top Projects (in priority order)

  1. Affiliate deals for gear acquisition –
    1. Software/hardware – Digidesign, Propellerheadz, Steinberg, EMagic
    2. Offline retail – Guitar Center
    3. Online retail – Zzounds, Musican’s Friend
    4. The point here is to tap in to a definite recurring spend by artists – artists will keep buying guitar cables, for example, even when they can’t afford PAS
    5. Possible discount structure built in to PAS. 

                                                               i.      Example – 20% off of Pro Tools 001 for PAS subscribers

                                                              ii.      Coupon books

  1. Referral services
    1. Band Booker – support with marketing, or else make it a “pull” service rather than “push”…let artists contact their targets rather than the other way around.
    2. Rehearsal space finder – In big cities, there can be a long waiting period to be able to rent a space for rehearsal.  Often a bigger problem than getting booked at a gig.
    3. Recording studio finder
    4. Laywer finder for top MP3.com artists.  Although some MP3.com competitors offer general music industry contact lists, for a band that has built up a local following the most important step they can take is to find the right lawyer.  The right lawyer will help find the right manager, the right agent, the right record label deal, etc….
    5. Local radio contacts – how to get on local radio shows.
  2. Mastering - Add mastering as an automated step built in to the upload and post song flow for PAS artists.  Mastering evens out volume levels and makes the song sound “louder”.  High ROI on this one.  Many artists don’t have the computer plug-ins ($500-$1000) or hardware ($3000+) to perform this work.  Provide a selection of different mastering templates depending on genre…let the artist listen to the results and either accept or reject it.  Determine the templates by hiring some LA mastering engineers as consultants.
  3. PAS upsell page needs constant rework and evolution of copy placement, color, copy text, and price testing.  Should be on a weekly basis.
    1. Value of individual features not always clear to artists.  Work on copy and tie in to offline ALC.
    2. Marginal utility of adding too many additional bullet-points is low.  Too much to read and scroll through on the PAS upsell page.
    3. Right now there are two PAS upsell pages.  I would consolidate to one – the one with the comparison grid.
  4. Audio hosting
    1. Cut prices, take advantage of low-cost infrastructure, market to indie labels and/or groups of artists.  If the margin is 82% now, there is room to hurt the competition. 
    2. More marketing on the site.  The copy on the web pages doesn’t make it clear why I would want audio hosting, how a trial is initiated, etc…..
    3. There is a bug that allows deep linking.
    4. Kill the free trial.  Not necessary to sell this particular service.
  5. Classifieds
    1. Help artists find other artists for bands and projects
    2. Artists selling gear to each other
    3. Drop the revenue for this one…too many free alternatives to charge for posting

Additional notes:

  • Promotions
    • Agree that cross-VU promotion should be top priority
    • Second priority should be regional targeting…get local folks going to see the band offline in the local clubs
  • Community
    • “How-to” sections by artists for artists
    • Sample library upload and download (could include commercial component)
    • Classifieds
    • Tie in to local communities whenever possible