To understand what lies ahead, you have to look back – all the answers are there. We tell you about audio marketing in 2021 and give you a forecast for the future. The pandemic gave a powerful boost to a trend that started a long time ago, and this year, Mark Zuckerberg and his metaclassical universe added to its momentum. The real and virtual worlds have more and more points of contact. Music and entertainment are among them.
Among the high-profile cases for the third year in a row are virtual concerts by popular artists in the free computer game Fortnite. Neither online nor offline, no one has ever gathered such a number of viewers. In 2020, 27 million people entered the game to listen to rapper Travis Scott – the total audience of three performances. An absolute record. In 2021, Epic Games developers have arranged a similar online tour for pop singer Ariana Grande.
Beneficial integration for both artist and brand on three counts at once:
- Audience Exchange;
- Creating an emotional connection with gamers and listeners;
- A powerful infomercial;
- Multiplied by two and, as a consequence, additional monetization.
Music Programming Will Be Handled By A Neural Network
Artificial intelligence is learning to understand people better. Our preferences are already well understood by apps for listening to music, watching movies and ordering groceries, recommending cherry yogurt, “Home Alone” and “Hop hey la-la-la-la”.
In business services, neural networks are also taking over much of the work. Sound Business, for example, has smart algorithms that tag tracks based on several parameters:
- Genres;
- Speed;
- Mood;
- Presence or absence of vocals.
They make up hours of professional playlists. This option allows marketers to spend more time on music strategies and working with audio as a sales tool, rather than matching each individual track.
Sounds Even Where It Was Quiet Before
Not only selling a product and service, but giving the customer an experience is a priority for businesses today. And creating a unique user experience is helped by music.
If in the past we used to voice stores, cafes, shopping malls, gas stations, hotels, now more and more requests come from industries where music is rare – for example:
- Medical centers;
- Pharmacies;
- Educational centers;
- Bank branches;
- Maternity hospitals;
- Metal warehouses;
- Funeral parlors and many other establishments.
The growth in demand for audio marketing is also evidenced by the numbers of plays.
What is the effectiveness of musical voiceover in Canadian online casinos?
Best Rated Online Casinos Canada have been increasingly using musical voiceover in their promotions and website design in order to attract new customers. But does this actually work? Numerous studies have shown that music has a significant effect on human psychology and can be used to influence emotions, memory, and even behavior. Additionally, research has shown that people are more likely to take action when they are exposed to music that they like. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Canadian online casinos are using music to try and encourage people to gamble. While there is no guarantee that musical voiceover will lead to increased gambling activity, it is certainly a strategy worth considering for those looking to attract new customers.
The Quantity And Quality Of Audio Advertising On Platforms Will Grow
Marketers have had their eye on this tool for a long time, but not everyone has learned how to work with it at 10 out of 10. Well, now is the time. The demand for promotion in the audio channel will grow.
According to studies, 72% of listeners pay attention to the videos posted in the audio stream, and 68% do not mind listening to them if there is information about discounts or promotions. The channel shows excellent engagement.
Thanks to the development of technology, it will be easier and more convenient to work with it – marketers will have more tools to conduct experiments themselves and capture the results of campaigns in real time.
For example, Business has a special scheduler for audio ads for this purpose. A user can upload a clip to the playlist on the site and set a broadcast rule for it – an interval or a specific time of playback – and then just as easily remove it from the stream.
Brands Know Exactly How They Want To Sound
Increasingly, we are being approached with a music strategy already in place. The understanding of what background music should sound like is formed internally, based on an analysis of the target audience and business objectives. And this is the only correct approach.
Unusual Solutions Instead Of Standard Ones
Among the genres in the HoReCa segment in 2021, the leader was the organic house. It is an original dance style with a touch of ethnics, each track is different from the next one – it is quite a bold decision. Brands are not afraid to try something new and trendy. Gradually moving away from popular music from the radio and TV.
Cross-Platform Music Solutions Will Emerge
Music is everywhere: in headphones on the bus on the way to work, in a cafe with a cup of coffee, in the store, and in the car on the way home. Therefore the creation of a unified technological music platform is a logical decision.
The first major integration of B2B and B2C solutions happened this year – Music lab joined the largest ecosystem and now acts under its own brand, in tandem with B2C service Business Sound for private music listening. This allows brands to offer more touchpoints with customers even outside of their physical venues. Exactly how this works can be seen in the example of brand profiles in the user app.
Music Marketing Lessons
For those of us who make our living in the music business, there are many reasons to celebrate lately. The industry has jumped from about $16.1 billion CAD earned in 2016 to more than 43 billion CAD in 2017, and 2018 has already seen another meteoric jump in revenue with more than CA$51.5 billion recorded to date.
The new model, which has been in the chrysalis for about a decade, has finally started to come out of its cocoon and show itself to the world. There are still a lot of kinks left, most notably the fact that artists only took home about 12% of the C$43 billion in 2017, but the fact that the money is coming in at the rate it is now suggests that we may finally be back to the golden days, or at least the ability to pay our bills.
Not surprisingly, about 75% of revenue comes through streaming and online radio, so there doesn’t seem to be much time spent discussing this issue. However, it’s important for artists to know how to plan marketing around their music in order to direct that money. With that in mind, here are some tips we learned in 2018 on where to spend your marketing efforts and budget.
Go Straight To The Flueiners
At the agency, we’ve always strived to keep a hyper focus on direct marketing from fans. As people moved away from seeking new music from those dubbed “gatekeepers” (i.e. radio, blogs, music magazine), we shifted our focus primarily to streaming and those people that fans, especially young people, follow daily: influencers. Whether it’s a brand or someone with 50,000 followers on Spotify, a personality on YouTube or a star on Instagram , there are many ways to get fans to listen organically in their daily lives without relying on them looking for new music.
YouTube is the number one resource for music discovery, so it’s important to target fans there. That could mean submitting to a blog like Suicide Sheep, Majestic Casual or David Dean Burkhart for inclusion, or it could mean working with stars in the world of gaming, parkour, fitness, makeup or any other popular field to add their music to the background of their next music video. The same can be said for Instagram Snapchat, where getting influencers to include your music in a video or post their story from your show can give you instant credibility and a bunch of plays and subscribers.
Spotify Is Important, But Don’t Overlook Amazon
I’ve been preaching the Amazon angle for a long time, but I feel more and more confident about it as they roll out more updates to their service. They have one of the largest paid conversion rates and have strengthened their original content throughout the year with plans to expand that element of their offerings in 2019.
They recently introduced a new voice feature that allows listeners to customize their listening experience by talking to Alexa. Amazon has surpassed Apple in music streaming volume for the first time, and because of its increased market share, Apple has been forced to allow users to play Apple Music on their Amazon-owned Alexa devices.
Join Amazon Music right now before it reaches the importance of Spotify, and it becomes even harder to connect with.
The Changing Role That Blogs Play In Campaigns
Blogs are still important, but not in the way we traditionally thought of them. A feature in a respected publication won’t attract new fans like it used to, but that catchy quote still comes in handy when you follow other things like tours, shows, playlisting and radio.
In many ways, the press campaign has become an industry resource rather than a method of direct contact with fans. That doesn’t mean people don’t read blogs anymore, but a premiere with even the best output would still only amount to a few hundred plays in which it insured tens of thousands of streams. On the other hand, if you can catch the ear of a respected writer who tells your story in a larger editorial piece, that might be enough to cut through the clutter and reach enough readers to actually generate new fans. This could mean writers who need time to write in-depth articles can have their day in 2019.
Another blogging note is the importance of what many top-tier writers post on video content. If you’re going to make a push for coverage, it might be worth focusing on setting up office visit times to record a live session or interview with one of these outlets. These are harder to come by than a standard content post, but it’s a great way to build long-term support for the publication and will likely attract more new listeners. Be sure to research which blogs and magazines do these sessions and find out how to contact them, or hire a publicist who already has a relationship with them.
Players Will Listen, And There Will Be Many
No one can deny the monumental growth of espouses on youth culture that is happening nowadays. The gamer community has evolved into an important taste community, and they have their preferred ways of finding new music to promote.
Earlier this year, we had a client who was relatively new and had no tour dates or press to rely on. With the aforementioned Suicide Sheep YouTube channel and another channel with the game music hub Nightblue Music, we were able to launch a campaign that ended up aggregating over 20 million streams in the first three months across all services, and it just crossed 100 million streams in total for the first year. The Nightblue feature also generated countless remixes and helped strengthen artists’ presence on Spotify. Since then, they’ve managed to turn that initial buzz into a steady fanbase and big touring opportunities.