sandbox issue 97 - music ally€¦ · seen the highest digital album sales. this was a trend...

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SandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxSandboxIssue 97 | 20th November 2013

MUSIC MARKETING FOR THE DIGITAL ERA

This Christmas, rather than the traditional orange and socks combination, more people than ever will be unwrapping new tech devices under the Christmas tree. How are labels and music services preparing for the arrival of a whole new digital audience? In addition to reaching them, how can they also get them to buy music online for the fi rst time, take out subscriptions and become long-term digital customers?

Research firm IDC has predicted that a seasonal rush in demand will see shipments of tablets reach 84.1m units worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2013, while Apple CEO Tim Cook has been talking about an “iPad Christmas”. Sales

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This Christmas, rather than

Christmas presence: targeting new consumersCampaignsPAGES 5 & 6: The latest projects from the digital marketing arena >>ToolsPAGE 7: Snapchat >>Behind the CampaignPAGES 8 - 10: Mat Zo >>ChartsPAGE 11: Digital charts >>

Issue 97 | 20th November 2013 |

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of smartphones are also edging ever upwards, predicted to top 1bn units in 2013, and these will also be sitting under many a Christmas tree on 25th December.

For the music industry – and in particular the digital music industry (if the two can still be separated) – this is a big opportunity. Christmas has always been a massive priority for labels, with December alone accounting for over 20% of all annual music sales in the UK thanks to the gifting market.

But in 2013, falling sales of digital music in many key markets – digital track sales in the US were down nearly 6% year-on-year in Q3, while digital album sales fell 5% – means that the spotlight will be on how many units the industry can sell in the festive season and whether this will be enough to turn around what has been a shaky year for digital sales. (It’s worth noting that these falling digital sales do not include revenue from streaming services – but that’s an argument for another time.)

Luckily, the raft of new devices delivered as gifts gives the perfect opportunity to do just

years, the last week of the year had seen the highest digital album sales. This was a trend repeated in 2012 when British consumers bought 1.3m digital albums and 5.6m digital singles thanks to them redeeming Christmas music vouchers.

Setting the groundwork on digital stores and social media channelsThe Christmas market, then, represents potentially thousands of new customers. But how can the music industry reach them?

The key, according to one major label digital marketing executive, is targeting the right channels and platforms: in the run up to Christmas you should make sure your acts feature prominently on the sites where people are doing their Christmas shopping, like Amazon, where British shoppers bought 3.5m gifts last Christmas.

Then, to capture the attention of consumers with new devices on Christmas and Boxing Day, labels should make sure they work their artists’ social media accounts in the days after 25th December.

“People activating new devices often want to test out the new features on their favourite artists, so having a good presence on socials

that: as people fire up their new toys, they are going to want to see what they can do with them. And that can mean playing and buying music as well as potentially signing up for subscription services.

We should also not forget the popularity of music vouchers as presents. BPI research from 2011 claimed that, in the five previous

in the days following Christmas is a good way to compete for their attention,” explains Adam Cardew, digital marketing manager at Absolute Marketing & Distribution. “Also, you can’t ignore those looking to redeem vouchers on iTunes, Amazon and other platforms – so making your product links easily discoverable on social networks is particularly important at this time of year.”

Understanding the seasonal diff erences and responding to themGiven the number of new device users, a front page placing on a digital retailer can be all-important in the days following Christmas. This, however, is easier said than done. As one digital marketing executive explains, most of the acts who appear prominently on these stores around Christmas have sold well throughout the year. And this is not something that can be replicated in a seasonal digital marketing campaign.

Labels can, however, look for opportunities with these retailers, o� ering exclusive content, such as free tracks or videos – or even using pricing o� ers to get their support.This process is not all one-way tra� ic, though. For retailers, too, Christmas is a significant opportunity to sell music and they must make sure they act accordingly, as 7digital’s director of marketing and communications Anna Siegel explains.


“The labels generally stop putting out major releases in December so we put together promotions in our stores to showcase all the new and classic holiday albums and best sellers from the year,” she says. “We usually also increase on email communication with our customers during the holidays and sale price albums that really draw in the music lovers.”For a retailer such as 7digital, Siegel suggests deals with device makers are particularly important at Christmas.

“7digital powers services on – or is the default application for – a number of device manufacturers and carriers,” she explains. “If someone buys a new BlackBerry, Samsung or HTC device in many territories we are either right there with our own branded app or behind the scenes powering the device’s main music service. We work on these

relationships all year, but they are definitely important for getting in front of new device owners during Christmas.”

Everyone is aft er the same customers so standing out is harderSadly, the seasonal music market is nothing if not crowded, with many major labels holding out their big releases for the first two months of Q4 in the hope of boosting sales. This means that it can be di� icult for individual releases to stand out, with many indie labels simply not bothering with new releases during the festive season.

To combat this, labels should try to target consumers who have already shown an interest in their acts rather than going in blindly. This means using your mailing lists and social media but also retargeting – using online advertising

aimed at consumers based on their previous actions online. This is both cheaper and more e� ective than going in cold.

“The key thing to avoid getting lost is knowing your product,” says Cardew. “If you start a campaign targeting gifting purchasers or new fans, then you’re likely

competing with the major releases of the holiday season and might struggle.”

He adds, “Alternatively, targeting your existing fanbase who have vouchers and new devices to try out can be a good way of avoiding getting caught in the rush.”

It is not just about downloads and streamingOf course albums and tracks are not the only things that labels can sell to consumers in the run up to Christmas: there are also the big-ticket

“The labels generally stop putting out major releases in December so we put together

relationships all year, but they are definitely important for getting in front of new device

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box sets that come into their own in the gifting season and a wide variety of merchandise, both of which are typically o� ered by artists and labels via their own D2C stores.

The One Direction Store, which is run by Digital Stores, is a great example of this seasonal cheer, stocking everything from 1D festive jumpers, to Christmas stockings and toothbrushes. However Russel Coultart, VP of global D2C for Universal Music/Digital Stores, explains that, global superstars aside, Christmas is not that big for D2C.


“This is simply because D2C is aimed at fans of individual artists and most buyers are buying for themselves,” he says. “You may be a big fan of Robbie Williams, but you’re not going to buy a present for your Mum from his store [unless she’s a big fan too].”

From an independent perspective, Essential Music & Marketing head of digital distribution Richard Leach says that, D2C is largely driven by new releases and many indie labels hold o� on releasing new albums in Q4 so therefore D2C campaigns can be pretty passive.

“But if you have an act with a dedicated and active fanbase, it might be possible to discount certain lines to help move units,” he adds. “It would have to be a big act to produce lines of product specifically for Christmas, and sell enough to make the exercise worthwhile.”

Despite this reticence, Coultart explains that Universal and Digital Stores’ bigger D2C stores do plan for Christmas, with preparations including: adding Christmas branding; creating a “Christmas” category with bundles and gift ideas; sending out

Christmas-branded emails; o� ering gift wrap, and supporting the stores by asking artists to tweet about them and promoting them on Facebook.

Can gift ing be replaced with gift cards? Maybe…One of the most interesting questions about Christmas 2013 for the music industry will be how popular subscriptions to music streaming services prove as presents, with gift cards from Spotify and Deezer giving them that vital physical, gifting presence.

Spotify launched its gift cards in the UK in November 2011, with the US following in August 2012. These can be redeemed against subscriptions and were launched with the Christmas market firmly in mind. Deezer will launch its own gift cards at the end of November, featuring a pin code that can be redeemed against various months of subscription.

“Deezer strongly recommends a streaming music subscription as a Christmas

gift because it’s an emotional good that can be accessed from all devices whenever and wherever you are,” says Deezer Spain’s MD, Leo Nascimento. “This facility is a plus for the music experience of the people who receive it; it doesn’t matter the format it has. In the end, it’s all about music and music always is a good present.”

That is a sentiment you feel that even Thom Yorke might agree with.

And that is surely the spirit of Christmas.

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Spotify launched its gift cards in the UK in November 2011, with the US following in August 2012. These can be redeemed against subscriptions and were launched with the Christmas market firmly in mind. Deezer will launch its own gift cards at the end of November, featuring a pin code that can be redeemed against various months

“Deezer strongly


CAMPAIGN FOCUS: The latest projects from the digital marketing arena

Keane’s Facebook appAhead of the release of Keane’s greatest hits album (released on 11th November), Island Records and digital agency The Unit created a Facebook app which gave users a chance to contribute to a personalised video to accompany the band’s single, ‘Everybody’s Changing’. Facebook pulls the users’ most popular photos from the site (judged by likes, shares and comments) and also includes past statuses – that have most likely been forgotten by the user – alongside the photos.

“I wanted to create an emotive storytelling tool that helped remind them [the fans] why they loved the band’s music,” Glenn Cooper, director of digital at Island Records, told us. “That would, in turn, help promote the album [in a way] that they could then share with their friends.”

The app collates all photos and then shows them in a virtual photo album featured in a slideshow. The video is 90 seconds long and, in the end, all people shown in the slideshow are mentioned in the rolling credits. The video can be edited afterwards as the user has the chance to change photos before sharing if they wish to do so.

According to Cooper, Facebook provided

the best chance of reaching targeted fans and the platform, being viral by nature, would naturally facilitate in sharing. It is, however, di� icult to discover other videos made by other fans. The videos are not being shared on the band’s Facebook page and the campaign doesn’t have an o� icial hashtag. Without an o� icial hashtag, the campaign

is more likely to be focused on making fans remember Keane’s music rather than making it go viral via social media. Even though the target audience is somewhat older, fans perhaps would have appreciated an opportunity to easily connect to other fans through the videos.

The app was promoted through email, the band’s website, Twitter and all the Island channels using the band’s own video that featured photos of the members over the years. The app works on both desktop and phone/tablets (Android and iOS), although having a slightly stripped down version on mobile. Everyone creating a video on the app was informed of the album’s arrival via Facebook on the day of release.

The initial Facebook video that launched the app had a response of over 3,000 likes and 559 shares. In the first 72 hours, over

2,000 videos were created and shared. The app had, until last week, over 4,000 videos created and the app website drew over 25,000 unique visitors. The statistics show that there are still a lot of Keane fans out there.

Keane have had great previous success with all four of their previous albums reaching #1 on the UK album chart. Island Records’ aim for this campaign was, as Cooper describes it, to “find the fans who had bought Keane’s first album, ‘Hopes & Fears’, but had gradually lost touch with the band over the years”. Considering the reactions in the Music Ally o� ice, that goal seems to have worked as several co-workers commented on how they had forgot how much they like Keane. The campaign has also certainly had a boost from the latest John Lewis Christmas campaign, featuring a Lily Allen cover of the band’s ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ (the song is currently #2 in the UK singles chart) and this is likely to sustain it in the coming weeks.


CAMPAIGNS: The latest projects from the digital marketing arena

Little Mix: Mixers SaluteLittle Mix’s latest competition gets fans from diff erent countries around the world to compete collectively, with a special Little Mix event going to the winning country.

The campaign is appropriately named after the band’s latest album, Salute. Little Mix Mixers Salute is not too di� erent from their previous campaign from earlier this year (called Mixers Magnet). The competition has its own dedicated website and encourages fans in di� erent countries to participate in a series of di� erent challenges spread over a month. Learning from the previous Mixers campaign (entries for that campaign were restricted to the 10 countries with most fans in), this campaign is open to everyone.

The challenges involve activities such as creating a ‘look book’ as well as taking a selfie that mimics one of the band members’

trademark pouts. The challenges take part across all the major social media platforms.

Music Ally reported on a similar challenge-based campaign a few months ago for K-Pop star Taeyang and both campaigns are well aimed as the acts have a similar target audience. The Little Mix campaign

is, however, somewhat easier to understand, with a dedicated website which makes it easy for fans to find challenges and answers for possible questions.

Fan engagement did initially increase at the start of the campaign by almost 20%, but the engagement has been quite irregular since then. The challenge of holding fans throughout a long campaign (what we might term ‘competition fatigue’) was exposed with fan engagement decreasing considerably lately, although this might increase in the run up to the end of the campaign later this week. Little Mix’s latest albums has, however, performed well, debuting at #4 in the UK album chart.

Red Bull Revolutions in SoundRed Bull’s Music Academy’s 15th birthday was celebrated last Thursday (14th November) with the Red Bull Revolutions In Sound taking place at the EDF Energy London Eye. The event included 30 UK clubs of the past and present (Cream, Fabric and Yo Yo amongst others) hosting each of the capsules on the Eye. At the foot of London Eye, a Silent Disco was held, with 2,000 people participating.

The event sold out within minutes, but for those missing out there were a chance of seeing all of the 30 stages simultaneously in real-time on channel4.com in the UK and YouTube for the rest of the world. Red Bull has also created an online hub with Google+

that encourages DJs, clubs and fans to take part and add photos and comments in order to create an interactive archive for the event.

Besides beating the record previously held by the 2012 Olympics for the most live performances in one place (the Olympics had 26 vs. Red Bull’s 31), the event is notable for the highest number of live streams a broadcaster has ever hosted. According to Red Bull, the live stream attracted more than 1m views online.

The event shows Red Bull’s high investment in the music industry over a number of years – resulting in events such as these as well as putting up a number of recording studios around the world. These types of investments from big brands (for example Hard Rock and Mountain Dew) are not rare, but Red Bull seems to have a solid understanding of the business alongside easier access to a young audience than perhaps certain alcohol brands have (due to age-based advertising and marketing restrictions). Compared to other brands that seem to think it’s enough only investing as sponsors, Red Bull shows genuine interest and prospect in becoming a successful brand highly connected to music.


TOOLSSnapchat

This fortnight we look at Snapchat, which made the headlines yet again last week aft er reportedly turning down a $3bn acquisition off er from Facebook.The news raised eyebrows in the music industry, not only for the sheer amount of money involved (63% more than what UMG paid for EMI, to put it in context) but also for how it resonated with growing concerns for Facebook losing its cool among teenagers. According to data from the Pew Research Centre, 9% of US mobile phone owners were using Snapchat in October this year (so around 26m users in the US alone), which rose to 26% for the 18-29-year-old segment. According to Snapchat, the number of daily photos shared on the service grew from 20m in October 2012 to 350m in September 2013.

We assume that most Sandbox readers will have tried Snapchat, but those who are not yet familiarised with it can think of it as a very interesting and engaging take on Instagram, based solely on the exchange of self-deleting pictures and short videos (‘Snaps’). Upon taking a picture, users can apply very basic e� ects, such as drawing on it and writing a caption, as well as determining its lifetime. The pictures can

only be seen by the recipients for between one and 10 seconds; they can’t be saved, re-shared or interacted with in any other way, although more tech-savvy users can find ways around this to keep the content. (Users can, however, take screengrabs of messages, but the sender is informed of this after the fact.)

The ephemeral nature of the pictures is the defining aspect of Snapchat, di� erentiating it from traditional social networks, as well as from other new mobile-only messaging services such as WhatsApp. This makes the service ideal for friends to have fun posting images carelessly knowing they’ll be deleted (we’ll leave sexting and bullying concerns for another time). It also drives engagement as the sense of immediacy encourages recipients to quickly respond. The fun aspect of Snapchat is furthered by the ability to easily scribble drawings on the photos, fostering friendly competition to come up with the funniest creations.

Given Snapchat’s strong focus on personal communication, there is not yet a defined set of best practices for brands and musicians to make the most out of the service for marketing purposes. The Naked & Famous were an early adopter in the music space, using Snapchat to share blasts of their new songs with fans and posting snippets of music from the studio. Companies that have experimented with the platform include

MTV UK and US frozen yogurt chain 16 Handles. More recently, Taco Bell tweeted to its followers that it would make a ‘secret’ announcement on Snapchat, where it later informed them of the return of the Beefy Crunch Burrito.

Despite the widespread interest in the platform, marketers will find that Snapchat has a handful of very important limitations as a standalone promotional tool. From a CMS point of view, the service does not have an online dashboard through which account holders can manage Snaps – i.e. there is no Tweetdeck for Snapchat. There is also no way to schedule messages, get performance stats or manage audiences. With regards to the last point, every time a message is sent, the user needs to add receivers one by one to the group (which is not saved).

On a similar note, there are no Snapchat public profiles – so you can’t publish a Snap à la Twitter for the whole web to see. The platform’s growing popularity, however, supports its potential for using it as a way to reward fans, like granting a personal Snapchat conversation as a prize. Evidencing Snapchat’s keen interest in music moving forward, the company recently introduced its new ‘Stories’ feature (24-hour collections of Snaps) with US band Smallpools as well as having experimented with tap-to-buy buttons leading to the act on iTunes.


BEHIND THE CAMPAIGN Mat Zo

Aft er a lengthy series of track productions, remixes and mash-ups, British electronic producer and DJ Mat Zo released his debut album at the start of November. Lucy Blair, digital marketing manager at Anjunabeats, explains why Damage Control was launched with SoundCloud as a key partner, why iTunes is still critical for dance music releases and how artist can divide their social media channels into diff erent modes of communicating with fans.

The album and its marketing is conducted as a JV

Mat Zo is the second biggest act on Anjunabeats after Above & Beyond, who own the label. Ever since he did a collaboration last year with Porter Robinson [‘Easy’], his stock has been rising. The album is a joint venture with Astralwerks in America and they are distributing it in both the US and Canada. The whole marketing campaign has been a JV with them too.

Although he is popular in the UK, he is much bigger in the US. Generally speaking it has been quite a global campaign and it has mainly been online. There hasn’t really been much o� line activity.

SoundCloud is his natural home online so the campaign started there

SoundCloud is a platform we have been quite keen to make the most of with this campaign. He has always had a strong fanbase on there. With that in mind, we launched a partner profile with an upload of the first single from his album – ‘Pyramid Scheme’, which features Chuck D. We premiered the track on Rolling Stone on 30th July using a SoundCloud embed. It is now his most played track on SoundCloud, with over 281,000 plays to date.

We did upload the audio of the track to his YouTube channel on the same day but that hasn’t had nearly as many plays as it has had

on SoundCloud. There has been a PR angle of using key partners to premiere content and it has been really e� ective through the campaign. We premiered his first single, ‘Pyramid Scheme’, but also the actual album itself late in the campaign on 1st November. That was with a Spotify embed rather than a SoundCloud one.

He has always had a big fanbase on SoundCloud and his tracks are always spread virally through it naturally – mainly because it is such a dance music platform and there is such a strong dance music community there.

He also launched a new radio show that wasn’t part of the album campaign as such.

It’s a biweekly radio show that goes out on SiriusXM in the US. Since that started in August, we have uploaded every show to his SoundCloud profile. We have also created a playlist of his radio sets as well. We are also making sure we are uploading his live sets, wherever possible, just to keep up the activity, interest and engagement between releases. That’s been really e� ective.

Building his video profi le is a key part of the campaign

Part of our plan for next year is to boost his YouTube [presence] as well. It hasn’t had as much activity. Online video plays for this


campaign have been split a little bit between the Anjunabeats channel, the Mat Zo channel (Zo TV) and Mat Zo’s Vevo channel – which was something Astralwerks set up for the o� icial video for ‘Pyramid Scheme’. We are going to have the o� icial video for the second single, ‘Lucid Dreams’, coming soon. That is also going to be on Vevo, whereas any other content tends to go on Zo TV, his YouTube channel.

As part of this campaign, we held an album launch party at Ministry Of Sound [in London] in October and made an episode for Zo TV out of that. There have only been two episodes so far. Some content has gone on Anjunabeats’ YouTube channel as well, such as the audio-only for ‘Pyramid Scheme’. Generally anything that has been uploaded to Zo TV has done much better in terms of views compared to

uploading to the label channel.

We created an animated promo video to make the most of the visuals and the artwork for the campaign. We uploaded it to the Anjunabeats channel and it has had nearly 20,000 views.

The ‘Lucid Dreams’ audio track went on Zo TV on 10th October and that has had 80,000 plays [so far]. Personally I’d like to concentrate more, in the next year or so, on putting content on Mat’s channel and have less on the label channel.

The audio-only upload of ‘Lucid Dreams’ on Zo TV saw a huge spike in viewers, with almost 12k plays in its first 24 hours since upload. There was a 700% increase in minutes watched and a 1500% leap in subscribers compared to the 2013 average.

The upload of the o� icial album promo video to Anjunabeats on 5th November also drove a huge spike in views, with almost 18k plays during the first 48 hours. There was a 600% spike in minutes watched and a 760% increase in subscribers compared to the 2013 average.

We always make sure we have annotations in the video programming and playlists to cross-reference the content across the di� erent channels. We always take care to cross-reference as much as possible.

We are partnered with Base79 as well so we make sure they give us a hand in terms of boosting all our videos and all the Mat Zo content that is across their network and on YouTube as well.

iTunes still dominates for pre-orders despite the existence of specialist dance download stores

We tend to find that for a big release like this, iTunes will be the key retailer and we push that as our number 1 priority for the pre-order and for the release. Mat will post on his Facebook saying that the album is out [on di� erent stores]. For a big release where we can a� ord to do several di� erent ‘out now’ posts without annoying the fans too much we will try and keep each retailer happy. So there will be one with iTunes, one with Beatport, one with SoundCloud or Spotify to stream it [and so on].

iTunes has been our number 1 priority. The pre-order is one of the most interesting parts of the campaign and we wanted to push the iTunes pre-orders in particular. I have been inspired by a lot of the SoundCloud

campaigns that have created ‘pre-order to unlock’ initiatives using the SoundCloud API on their website. We had not done something like that before for one of our artists. We tend to build similar landing pages for every campaign and put pre-order buttons on them – but you are not actually driving engagement or having a specific call to action rather than o� ering a button to click through to buy the album.

Astralwerks found an agency called Restless Generator in New York to build the page for us. On 29th October, we launched an album page on matzomusic.com and put the pre-order live on iTunes.

Then the album unlock page went live on his site. We used the SoundCloud API and the exclusive pieces of content we gave away were a mini-mix of the album and a previously unheard version of one of the album tracks. As the number of pre-orders grew, if you went back to the website you could see what percentage of pre-orders were left before the content would be unlocked.

When that page launched, there was a huge spike in tra� ic to his website – 3,000 visits that day and 2,500 on the following days, which was much higher than normal. We don’t do a lot with his website at the moment apart from a specific initiative like this; but that will change in the future.

campaign have been split a little bit between the Anjunabeats channel, the Mat Zo channel

uploading to the label channel.

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Next steps: Soundrop and building his Spotify profi le

He is touring until the end of the year. The ‘Lucid Dreams’ video is still to come out and we might have another single as well. We are also going to do a Soundrop Q&A with him. We were going to do it in early November when he was in LA but it was just too short notice. We will do it later in the tour towards the end of November or early December. It is also a good way to boost his Spotify streams. In the meantime, we are going to focus on building his Spotify profile and followers. Previously there hasn’t really been that much activity on it but we will start creating proper playlists and driving fans via social networks to start listening to his Spotify profile more and updating playlists on a regular basis.

click-through rate is 15%. That is pretty high. Email has been very e� ective for us. A lot of artists don’t spend enough time building and gathering data on their website for their mailing list or building up audiences on their own platforms. If Facebook goes the way of Myspace tomorrow, you have lost that audience. It is still really important to build audiences on your own platforms where you can.

Tumblr can be used to create a space for content that needs somewhere separate to exist

In October, we set up a tour Tumblr. It is to showcase the photo content he is getting from his tour. We wanted something that was quite separate from his other platforms for that. Mat is a big fan of Tumblr and it’s a great place to showcase high-quality photo content. We didn’t want to put it on his website as there is a very particular focus at the moment on there on pre-orders and sales.

simple as possible.

Throughout the campaign he has done fairly basic posts like “My latest single, ‘Lucid Dreams’, is out now on Beatport”, put a link in and that’s it. He is very straightforward and simple. But it is amazing how the fans still respond to that. He will still get over 1,000 likes on a post that is incredibly basic.

He does do more personal posts from time to time. He has quite a dry sense of humour. He can be quite outspoken too, but that tends to be on his Twitter. He does that all himself. His manager doesn’t do that for him. He keeps the promotion on Twitter to a bare minimum. He is happier doing that on Facebook. On Twitter

he just likes voicing his opinions, having a general chat with his fans and enjoying that proper direct connection.

Mailing lists remain essential

He hasn’t had a mailing list before. It has performed really well throughout the campaign. The open rate is over 50% and the average

Facebook is for promotion and Twitter is more personal

On his Facebook page we saw a big spike around the album release and also when we did the pre-order initiative. That really helped us to drive the engagement as well as the pre-orders.

Facebook is something we haven’t done anything particularly outstanding with. Mat is one of those artists who very much likes to do it himself if he can. If he can’t do it, his manager will do it for him. She will know exactly what style and tone of voice to use. He doesn’t really like doing too much obvious promotion and when he does he likes to keep it as short and

simple as possible.

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MUSIC CHARTSOnline in numbers

Lily AllenDespite the fact that her last album was released in February 2009, an active Twitter account (4.3m followers) has ensured Lily Allen has not faded into obscurity.

Her two-pronged return to music is interesting in that the most recent spikes for fans happened on 10th November and 13th November*.

The former was when her cover of ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ aired in the John Lewis Christmas TV ad in the UK (now on 7.3m YouTube views) but the latter (and

James ArthurLast year’s X Factor winner has had a turbulent week, getting embroiled in an online spat with rapper MC Micky Worthless that culminated in Arthur posting a “diss video” that saw him accused of homophobia. He denied that there was any homophobic intent, apologised for any o� ence and then ‘resigned’ from Twitter. “#LOVE to my fans but I’m coming o� twitter for good,” he tweeted. “HQ will be doing all my tweets from now on. PEACE!” His fan numbers were still diving on

All data is taken from Musicmetric: www.musicmetric.com

by far biggest) spike was the day after the YouTube debut of her brand new song, ‘Hard Out Here’ (6.4m views so far).

While TV might put her in front of a mass audience, it was YouTube (and, more specifically, the social media debates about both gender and race that surrounded the video) that really accelerated her fan uptake.

As both are released as singles almost simultaneously, it will be interesting to see which has the most impact on actual sales rather than just harvesting fans.

15th November (the day after he posted the “diss video”) but then media coverage of the dispute started to kick in on 16th as his fan numbers were rising. This is arguably down to a degree of social media rubbernecking (those curious to see what his latest response to the escalating dispute would be). The fact that fan numbers were still growing even after he left Twitter is an curious twist but how that growth continues (or not) in the coming weeks will be the real decider.

*There was also an aberrant spike on 3rd November that was not tied to any news event.

■ Fans - total ■ Fans - Facebook ■ Fans - Twitter

Lily Allen: Fans – Total

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Campaign support services:• Strategy

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