Songs Used In Promotions Get A Ton Of Sales... So Why Does The Music Industry Try To Make It Harder?
from the short-term-thinking dept
Ethorad was the first of a few to write in pointing to an article over at the BBC, highlighting how old songs are finding new life and new sales after showing up in a commercial -- or being used on TV during a popular event. In other words, getting your music more widely heard leads to more ways to make money. That, of course, should be obvious. And yet, why is it that so many in the industry are trying to make it so much harder to get music heard by putting up tollbooths at every stop? You have the RIAA/Soundexchange working overtime to put an additional tax on radio play and you have ASCAP/BMI trying to get fees for everything, from the 30 second previews online to ringtones. Of course, the more you put a toll on such things, the less the songs are used, the less they're promoted and the less opportunity there is to increase sales. It's really amazing sometimes that these big organizations don't seem to comprehend the basic idea of a "promotion" and how that helps sales.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: promotions, sales, songs
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
At the ens of the commercial they show who wrote the song and the artist.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
APRA/AMCOS/PPCA doing the same down under
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Everything is negotiable.
What they don't appear to understand is that if they want to sell at a price that is too high, their potential customer doesn't have to buy from them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
For instance, I wanted to know what remix was used in those Geico commercials, so I tried doing something I thought would surely fail - I went to Geico's site. Right there on the front page is a link called "What's that song?" which leads to another page where you can learn about the artist, watch a music video, or download an .mp3 in one case.
This also led me to look up the rest of Mysto and Pizzi's stuff and it isn't bad either.
All in all, pleasantly surprising.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whats is a problem of "balance"
So, the way to maximize profits - is:
1) to create new taxes
2) prevent "non taxable" channel to appear
3) if #2 fails apply #1
This is problem of business model. If they would SELL that music MAYBE way would try to find balance.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They are all idiots who see everything in the light of "how can this make me money right now?"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ooh La La
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Commercials
Literally ENTIRELY because of that commercial...
(Full Discolosure: I am already incredibly ashamed of my deep seeded love for that song, but feel free to bash my head in about it....I deserve it.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Commercials
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Backwards
They see the music as selling the advertised product.
Instead of seeing a partnership as both music and product helping each other, or more sales of the music because it is associated with a product. To those execs, all of the value is in the music and there is no (or little) value in anything else, because they've been trained to think like that. And so, they make a product more valuable and think they deserve to be paid for it. As has been said before, they over-value the music to the detriment of everything else.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
commercials
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: commercials
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: commercials
Ah, when you have no real argument, you always start with an insult.
Did anyone *say* that BMI sells music? No. We pointed out that promotion opens up lots of opportunities to make money. That doesn't just mean the direct sale of music.
They collect royalties for songwriters (who are not necessarily recording artists) every time a song is played in public, including commericals. So how is it "stupid" for them to make sure songwriters are paid when their songs are used in commercials?
Because it limits the market by putting a tax on it. Just because songwriters choose a dumb business model doesn't mean the world needs to bend over backwards to make it work.
Time for a better business model.
These are not taxes. BMI operates on a non-profit basis, paying about 87% of what they collect to songwrites and publishers.
Heh. Tell that to the people forced to pay BMI. It's a tax. And the fact that they're non-profit doesn't mean anything. They're still collecting money and decreasing the market for music.
Somebody on this forum obviously is clueless about how such organizations operate.
Very familiar with how they work, thanks. I guess you needed to end on an insult too?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Slippery argument
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Slippery argument
And apparently they once tried so hard that they were paid to do so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Long Tail
I think the internet provides a great medium/platform for revitalizing some older songs that "never made the cut." There are so many gems out there, and so many have gone unheard.
It's reasons like that that we start Rank 'em (www.gorankem.com). We allow the fans to rank their favorite songs from all their favorite artists. When you put the fan favorites together for each individual artist, it creates a POWERFUL resource that anybody can use from the most casual music observer to the most diehard fanatic.
We've been in Private Alpha/Beta for the last ~8 monhs, but feel free to request an invite. We're always looking for the passionate and oppionated music fans!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The Long Tail
(That's a plug)
Smells like astroturf...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Guitar Hero did the same thing
Also, After playing the guitar hero series, I purchased a LOT of those songs for listening outside of my playing time, my favorite musical find was Dragon Force and I never would have heard of them if it wasn't for the game.
Remember the Philips Magnavox song that was played ALL THE TIME for those commercials somewhere around 8-10 years ago. Another example of me buying a song/album because of a television commercial.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
senshikaze wins
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Promotion vs. Income
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That's a no-brainer
They are trying to make it harder for everyone else to compete - and they can just factor the extra taxes into their costs of production ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]