20 Music Marketers Share Their 2020 Predictions
A new year means whole new host of music marketing opportunities and challenges. Here twenty marketers from inside the music industry share their predictions for coming trends, what artists should focus on in the coming year.
Question: What is your music marketing prediction for 2020? What should artists continue to focus on OR start to look at (i.e. new trends)?
Suz Paulinski – The Rock/Star Advocate
www.instagram.com/rockstaradvo
Engaging Never Goes Out of Fashion
One trend is never going to go out of fashion – fan engagement. Sometimes it’s easy to overthink this stuff. Just be a human connecting with other humans. Word-of-mouth marketing is invaluable and people gush over those who show them attention and compassion. Get in the conversations. Show up for your fans and tell them how they can best show up for you and what it would mean to you when they do. Explain to them how their actions make an impact on your career. Ads and other marketing tactics and funnels are great, but when you don’t have a budget or when there’s nothing to promote or when you’re overwhelmed by everything you have to do, stop making it so complicated and just show up for people as your vulnerable, transparent, authentic self and see what happens.
Jay Gilbert – Music Biz Weekly Podcast, Co-host and curator of Your Morning Coffee Newsletter
Hey Siri, OK Google…
Music discovery is quickly moving to VOICE (Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod etc.) Metadata is becoming even more critical than ever.
Test your band name, album and track titles on these devices ~ do they recognize and play your music? Are the names of your songs and releases common or unique?
VOICE is less about genre now and more about mood and instrumentation. Make sure that information is captured in your metadata.
Emily White – Manager, Collective Entertainment, Inc
Build Your Text Message List
Building a text message club / list. And email list as always! But text communications are very easy and effective. Zoë Keating recently told me she just puts out a poster-board with her text list sign up out at the merch table and folks automatically join that way. No data entry required on her part.
Michael Sherman – Director of Business Development, Feature.fm
Look at Your Audiences Holistically
I think artist’s haven’t historically been empowered to look at their audiences holistically; especially around how they engage. I suspect 2020 will bring artists, fans and technologists closer than in years past to facilitate more ways for artists and fans to engage, collaborate and perhaps even monetize through experiences, content, messaging, etc.
Angela Mastrogiacomo – Owner Muddy Paw, PR
Tap into Unique, Brand Specific Merch
I think that merch is going to continue to be incredibly important for artists in 2020—I don’t think we focus nearly enough on this, and to be honest, most artist merch, including label signed artists, is incredibly boring. If you can tap into unique, brand specific merch that represents you, your brand, and how your fans identify themselves, you’re putting yourself in a really strong spot for both short and long term growth.
Bruce Houghton Editor of Hypebot, Bandsintown Senior Advisor, President Sykine Artists Agency, professor Berklee Online
The good news is that there will be more and better ways for artists to build a fan base and market their music. Unfortunately – as we’ve seen in recent moves by Spotify and Soundcloud – more and more of them will come with a fee attached.
That will make using analytics to measure results and target precious time and resources more important than ever.
Ariel Hyatt – Founder, Cyber PR
Get Great at Spotify
If you have not educated and engaged in all things Spotify – this is your time! Stop ignoring this platform! Yes I know it doesn’t pay you a lot, but the promotional benefits are rich. I am always shocked when I find artists who don’t even have their profile updated on Spotify and they have not taken advantage of all of the tools available on the platform such as presave campaigns, creating playlists, pinning tracks, and submitting to Spotify curators for possible inclusion in Spotify curated playlists.
Marni Wandner – VP of Digital The Syndicate, Holistic Health Coach, Co-Founder Equilibrium
Build Your Narrative!
I always go back to the importance of artists focusing on building their narrative. Ask yourself questions about what means a lot to you and why you wrote the wrote the songs you’re about to release, and create quality content that genuinely tells that story.
Trends aside, choose the platforms that make the most sense for you (and where your fans are), and spend time every day connecting with fans, and potential fans, in a meaningful way.
Michael Brandvold – Michael Brandvold Marketing
Marketing Plans are Key
Playlists will continue to be very important, but a playlist is not your marketing plan. They are only a part of your overall plan. Also make sure you are now putting your attention on Spotify Saves that you can create through a number of services, I especially like Smarturl.it. You can actually gather the email addresses of your Spotify listeners if they save your track or album.
Cassidy Tavcar – Artist Fan Support, Bandsintown
Stay Social
I believe social media will still be on the rise in terms of where marketing will excel and to the best audiences too. I’ve also been noticing a rise of the DIY/independent artists who are starting from the bottom and creating brands for themselves. Artists have begun to realize they have all the tools in front of them, it’s just a matter of putting in the time and dedication to the craft!
Bryan Calhoun – Vice President of New Media & External Affairs at SoundExchange
Build Your Audience
I believe there should be a greater focus on building audiences to run more sophisticated retargeting ad campaigns leveraging tools like Facebook, Google and Foundee. Simply doing interest targeting is not enough. Put retargeting pixels on everything and identify people who are spending money on merch, tickets (when possible) and music bundles. Retarget them with new offers and build lookalike audiences.
Alexis Jenkins – Artist Fan Support, Bandsintown
No Really, Stay Social
My music marketing prediction for 2020 is that social media will still remain key regarding marketing. I think many people are finding new music through social websites like Spotify, Facebook, YouTube, etc. I would recommend creating accounts/pages on all of these websites and actively posting and interacting with followers.
Mike Warner – Author of Work Hard Playlist Hard
Get To TikTok
With genres becoming less relevant and artists breaking the genre barrier (e.g. Lil Nas X), I predict that mash-ups will make a huge comeback in 2020. This will also most likely happen first with social apps such as Tik Tok and then translate to streaming. However with rumors of TikTok signing artists and delivering music streaming, it could become a lot more than an updated version of Vine.
Study Smart Speakers & Voice Assistants
The growth will continue as more people spend less time looking at their screens and more time requesting music with their voice. Artists need to keep this in mind when creating a title for a song, album, or new artist project name. If people don’t know or struggle to pronounce it, there’s a good chance they won’t hear it.
Understand Artist Tools
Spotify set the standard for DSP artist tools. Apple Music are lacking an editorial submission process, Artists.TikTok.com mysteriously was taken down a few weeks ago, Amazon are rumored to be launching artist tools soon and Deezer are overdue for a revamp. I believe next year independent artists will get access to more tools and more insights than ever before.
Andrea Young – Co-Founder at DPG Worldwide
It’s All About The Mood
I think we’re going to see more of the same, ie artists and their teams will continue to place at least part of their focus on participating on the streaming platforms as a potential gateway to finding new fans and engaging existing fans. Smart speakers/assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google are going to continue to make inroads into the music listening space, and because of that (and already happening to a degree), music listening is going to become less genre-specific and more theme and mood and other-specific (for ex, songs for focus, happy songs, sad songs, songs in the key of A). So we’ll be addressing this supplementary metadata which can help artists get their music heard further on playlists and other modes of listening.
Hisham Dahud – ArtistPro Founder | Music Artist (aka Rizik)
You must be on TikTok (Hey That’s What Mike Said!).
I won’t be alone here in this “prediction”,That is, until Instagram rolls out a similar feature. 😉
If your music: Contains lyrical content, falls in the realm of pop, hip-hop/rap, or country, or skews toward a younger demo. Otherwise, artists must absolutely focus on seeking collaborations with all kinds of creators—visual creators like designers, animators and filmmakers; and other music creators outside their chosen realm, genre or style to not only expand their potential audience, but to offer their existing audience a unique perspective of what they already find familiar and love.
Melissa Garcia – Partner at Collective Entertainment
I look forward to seeing what Spotify has up their sleeves for 2020. The end of the year wrap up was a brilliant move providing a means for fans to highlight their favorite artists by sharing it across social media platforms. I’ll be curious to see what other efforts Spotify will do to make their platform “artist-focused”, ie. what other kind of marketing and promoting tools will they add to encourage artists to use Spotify as one of their main forms of promoting their music (i.e. “Share Link” for playlists). Will Spotify make more moves towards having something similar to Pandora’s AMP? I’m also curious to see what happens with TikTok as the platform continues to grow. It may not be the right fit for the majority of artists, but there’s no denying the growth the platform currently has.
Bobby Owsinski – Music 3.0
Get Intelligent About Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence will become an even bigger part of everything involved in music creation and distribution than it is already. From audio production tools to A&R to playlist selection to data collection to track suggestions, increasingly more and more decisions will be out of human hands. Every artist will need to understand how AI technologies play a part in their professional lives and how they can make it work to their advantage.
Cherie Hu – Founder, Water & Music
Let’s Get Visual!
Streaming services that are traditionally known for their work in lean-back playlisting and music curation (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) are continuing to invest more and more in visuals, in multimedia and in deeper storytelling. Spotify wants more interesting podcasts on its platform, especially from artists (e.g. the series they did with mxmtoon). Apple Music, alongside Apple TV+, wants more longform video to court subscribers (e.g. a forthcoming documentary with Billie Eilish). Artists and their marketing teams should keep all of these multimedia and storytelling elements in mind, as I would argue it’s no longer sufficient “just” to release an album and hope people listen. There must be something deeper that can bring the album’s story to life from an earlier stage, not months after release — both for fans and for potential business partners.
Chissy Nkemere – Senior Director, Streaming Marketing at Concord
It’s Gonna Get More Global
In 2019, the globalization of music became more apparent on a popular music scale than we’ve ever seen. From the rise of artists like Rosalía, hybrid music marketing companies like 88Rising, and genres like Afropop digging their way into the mainstream, this year especially has proven that music has no borders. That said, most of this consumption has occurred digitally, especially through streaming. I think 2020 will show us a shift that sees this expansion root itself, physically, in the market. Where 2019 brought us a Lion King soundtrack deeply rooted in African culture, 2020 will show that one-off was just the first of what will soon become the norm. While the DSPs are industry leaders for global music discovery & popularization, we’ll see physical consumption and D2C (Direct to Consumer) rise and amplify the impact of the digital market as well.
Cynthia Brando – Musician & Artist Coach
Stream, stream stream!
Live streaming is still a great way, but I feel an under-utilized tool, to share lots of content at once such as music, images and real time conversation. To attract regular viewers, I suggest researching the process, purchasing a podcasting/live streaming mic and trying it out on a set
schedule, in a controlled environment with good wifi and lighting across multiple platforms such as Periscope and Youtube by using multiple devices. I’m really excited about this new company called Stationhead, a streaming radio station app that provides, “interactive audio content with live talk, guest callers and music streaming.” For independent artists, it’s another creative outlet, a way to build community, give back by promoting other artists and also share your own music. Stationhead also gives you the capability to integrate with your Spotify playlists for some cross promotion and connection!
More fake teachers! Mostly authors!
quite remarkable nobody is talking about trends within the live side of an artist’s career
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