“They’re almost all terrible-hideous, out of date and boring - and the last place you’d go to find anything of use.”

What could ‘Music Magazine of the Year’, The Word, be talking about in their Worst Things About The Internet feature, this month? A crime so hideous that it’s up there with spam, pointless registration pages, talking smileys, premericals, and intro screens that take ten minutes to download before you can get at the site.

Well folks it’s the humble Artist Website. The Word reckon that “Fansites, done for nothing by mad people, beat them (the official site) hands down pretty much every time”

With such large sums of money being spent on artist websites these days, why do so many of them still get it wrong?

Well, we had fun in Dubai. The city is a fantastic example of the Adidas phrase “Impossible is Nothing”.

I have not been to Dubai for some years now and the transformation is incredible. Really enjoyed the visit.

I was kindly invited to speak to over 300 people at the OMD Creative Masterclass, organised by media agency OMD and my friends at CSquared. It was a really enjoyable conference.

The themes for the day were Mobile, Music and Movies, and there a few posts on the citizenbay blog over here.

My task was to address the new models of music and consider where brands fit into these new models.

The starting point was to challenge the audience on how much they contemplate the Sound of their Brands…

Very engaging audience. Back there soon…

Thanks to all at OMD ME and CSquared for the invite…

We finally got hold of the recording of our DIY: Do or Die session at this year’s Venice Festival Of Media. You can listen to it here or by downloading it to listen to on your computer, iPod or MP3 player. Again a big thanks to Maarten Steinkamp, Jon Webster, Martin Stiksel and John Ingham for making it a fascinating session…

To listen now:

To download the podcast:

For those of you who are PC users, or are not iTunes users, the MP3 version can be downloaded by right clicking your mouse, here

Alan Yentob’s excellent documentary on the work of Oliver Sacks, reminded me to share one of the insights that I picked up at a WARC conference I attended a few weeks ago on Sponsorship Marketing. The event chaired by a good friend of citizensound, Mark Palmer, brought together some excellent speakers including Sally Cowdry, Marketing Director of O2 and Max Bonpain, Head of Brand Management at Samsung UK.

One of the speakers at the event was Peter Walshe from Millward Brown who talked about the PARTNERZ programme that they had been developing with fellow WPP agencies, including Mindshare, Mediacom and Mediaedge:CIA. The work aimed to match brands with the myriad of sponsorship opportunities available to them.

One of the key bits of their research examined a range of key ‘cultural’ activities and the level of fit with consumers. They asked consumers all over the world ‘what activity do you LOVE?” Peter asked the audience what we thought would come out top. Most people banked on sport, but a small number of us shouted out music, and guess what we were right…

Music 36%
Film 28%
TV and Entertainment 17%
Sport 15%
Gaming 13%
Good Causes 11%
Arts 9%

Source: Millwood Brown/WPP

So if your were under any illusion that Film, TV, Sport, the Arts or even Gaming were more important to human beings than Music, forget it, you don’t have to imagine any longer!

.A well-placed TV sync can provide a great deal of exposure for an artist’s music, and they get paid for the privilege! So why do so many of these opportunities go unrealised?

Could it be that brands don’t fully appreciate the impact that music can have on their brands?

Or is it that the labels can’t work out how to sync their short-term priorities with the brand’s longer-term needs?

After all, wouldn’t a hit record benefit both brand and label?

It’s certainly true to say that too few brands realise the importance of music in their brand strategy. In such a cluttered visual environment a sonic strategy would help them differentiate their brands from their competition. However, most advertising is steadfastly visual. Music is too often often seen as adjunct to an ad campaign, rather than a key part of the communication. But brands are learning fast, and are showing an increased willingness to experiment, IF the right opportunities come along.

For the record business, sync deals offer up not only a significant promotional opportunity if worked correctly, it also provides an increasingly important revenue stream for labels, music publishers and artists alike. And a good sync deal can not only help break a new act, it can also revitalise an artist or a labels back catalogue. I’m sure Phil Collins was as surprised as the rest of us to see “In The Air Tonight” go back into the Top 20, some 26 years after its first release. All off the back of a Cadbury’s advert.

Many of the best sync companies have become ‘crate-diggers’, seeking out new artists, independent music and esoteric oldies, rather than pushing household names like Phil. And it’s not just because his music isn’t very cool these days! This trend look sets to continue as brands marketing budgets continue to come under fire. As much as brands would love to have access to household names to promote their products, few have the budgets to compete, especially with procurement folk trying to drive down the cost of everything, including the cost of syncs. And as the music industry continues to favour short term wins over long-term gains, things are unlikely to change. The use of the Rolling Stones “She’s A Rainbow” by Sony Bravia could become an increasingly rare example of a brand spending big bucks on a sync deal, unless it is part of a far broader deal with the brand.

The advent of hundreds of new cable and satellite TV channels had offered up new opportunities for sync, with many small brands (and programme makers) entering the TV advertising marketplace for the first time. And many of them will need music. But these new entrants into the marketplace simply can’t afford top dollar, playing into the hands of anyone that can be more creative than the major labels and their publishers.

citizensound says:

For the music industry to really take advantage of the sync opportunities on offer they need a real shift in their mindset, and find new ways to do business with brands. They need to think more long-term and be more strategic, they need to understand that brands planning cycles are very different from their own, and learn to compensate for that. And they also need to able to turnkey their offerings to deliver real partnerships that work for both themselves and their new brand partners. And as we’ve seen brands will find another way to source music if the big boys wont play ball.

The current ad campaign for VW Golf used the sound of the car to develop the sync track for the brands latest ad campaign. However, car manufaturers, unlike many other brands, have always understood the sonic importance of their products.

Car companies, especially at the high end of the market, have always traded on the ‘noise’ that their cars make, or in some cases the lack of it, as a major selling point.

The sound of a closing car door is not objectively related to the intrinsic qualities of a car, it’s an important subjective parameter for many consumers when they are looking to buy. That solid ‘thunk’ when the door closes, emphasises the quality that manufacturers such as BMW and Mercedes are fanatical about.

Equally, you only have to put your foot on the accelerator of a supercar like the Bugatti Veyron to know that the roar that comes from the engine is a lot more satisfying to the average pertolhead, than the noise made by your average 4-door family saloon. While some luxury car makers even go in the opposite direction, making the driving experience of their cars as silent and as stress free as possible. The latest Rolls Royce Phantom may have a V12 48 valve 6.7 litre engine under the bonnet, but the noise inside the car, even at speed, would be unlikely to wake the snoozing billionaire in the back seat of his limo.

Car companies spend a lot of time and effort in trying to effectively dampen the sound of ‘environmental’ noise. The car’s engine makes noise, the wind rushing over the car makes noise, tyres generate noise, and other vehicles make noise. So to create a comfortable environment, car companies have to use lots of techniques to reduce and dampen the ’sonic clutter’ that can enter into your car.

But while we want to keep that ’sonic clutter’ outside, many of us want a great sounding noise coming from our in-car hifi systems. And cars, as you won’t be surprised to learn are not great when it comes to delivering great acoustics. The interior of a car is made up of a mix of reflecting surfaces and absorptive surfaces, that can helpfully impact on the sound entering the car, but also unfortunately on sound within the car itself. So it should come as no surprise that the car designers and in-car hifi manufacturers continue to look for ways to improve our in-car listening experience.

citizensound says:

With so many car companies allowing consumers an extended test drive these days, you’d expect car manufacturers to be doing everything possible to make their cars live up to their potential buyers expectations from not just a driving point of view, but also by delivering a great sonic expereince!

citizensound have put together a number of sync deals over the last few months for a range of brands, including a tropical soft drink and a nails enhancement product.

And we’ve had the most success by sourcing music from a range of indie labels, and artists who are are keen to exploit their unreleased catalogue. Which is why having an experienced A&R man with a great set of ears and a good contact book has been crucial to our recent success. The success we’ve had was not only down to the music perfectly fitting the creative brief, but we also being able to deliver within what were sometimes tight budget constraints. Which it is not always an easy job these day.

We recently approached one publisher for a the clearance on a track from a still relatively unknown, but up-and-coming, UK artist. Both the label and the artists publisher were keen for the deal to happen as they valued the potential exposure to extend sales of the current album, but the publisher responsible for the co-write on the track wanted over three times the total budget for the finished advert, killing the deal stone dead. The final track picked by the agency and client for this campaign came from a small US indie label Standard Recordings, and their artist Marla Hansen (whose name you might recognise if you’re a Sufjan Stevens fan). They were not only a whole lot more realistic when it came to doing a deal for themselves and their artist, but it was also a real kick to get a totally unknown US artist onto a UK ad campaign.

citizensound says:

The next step is to extend these synch deals into real partnerships, bringing together the brands and their agencies with the artists, managers and labels, to deliver something that truly benefits everyone, even the music fan!

When I stood up to start the panel at Venice, I was looking for a way to immediately frame the topic so that the audience understood what they were about to sit through.

So I mentioned a journey I took on the 137 bus in south London one day…

There were five kids on the back of the bus. One had recorded some beats on his laptop the night before. He had uploaded them to his phone to play them to his friends on the bus on the way to school. The friends told him which beats they liked and which ones they didn’t. The kid then deleted the ones from his phone that his friends didn’t like. The ones they liked, he bluetoothed the tunes to them all.

Now for me this summed up what is DIY culture, and why for me the rise of DIY music culture is so much more than a mere fad. Right on the back of the bus, I witnessed the CREATION, DISTRIBUTION, MARKETING and CONSUMPTION of music amongst those five kids.

And it happened without the help of anyone from the ‘music industry’. The help of handset and laptop manufacturers maybe, but no-one from the ‘music industry’. This is as pure a version of DIY music as one could imagine.

This is the challenge for the music industry to work through. How are they relevant to the kids on the back of that bus?

It is also for brands to work out if they wish to get involved in music in ways other than writing a massive cheque to a major artist and hoping that the celebrity factor rubs off on the brand. (Don’t get me wrong, such deals can be highly successful, benefiting fan, artist and the brand, but involvement within the DIY culture can provide different benefits for the brand, artist and fan).

Seeing this DIY music culture in action really excited me. This gave me the inspiration to dig deeper into DIY music culture. First, I carried out some research in 2007 with Dr. Gauti Sigthorsson, lecturer at Greenwich University, and now an honorary citizen of citizensound. Anyone interested in finding out more on this, I will post up some interesting snippets we found out in later posts.

Nick and I also ran a panel at In The City in 2007 on this very topic, exploring what artists need as support functions in order to survive as a DIY artist. As an example of DIY music culture, we invited Rob McCulloch to join us on stage, a guy who invited his fans to pay what they want for his CD…18 months before Radiohead. Average price for his CD was £11/€15/$22! Admittedly smaller audience, but impressive nevertheless.

This and more inspired citizensound to choose this topic for the panel. But it all started with those 5 kids on the 137 bus in London…

Come back to the blog as we will be sharing more on this.

Well, our panel at the venice Festival of Media 2008 went really well.

The topic was a great one (if we say so ourselves), but what made the session were the great panellists and the audience.

There is nothing worse for me than a panel that answers with Yes, No or Maybe. We all want a panel that is inspired to really let loose. We were blessed with four people who didn’t hold back at all.

So a huge thank you to:
John Ingham, CEO of ESP and MOG blogger extraordinaire;
Maarten Steinkamp, SonyBMG CEO Continental Europe and a man who speaks his mind;
Martin Stiksel, Last FM CEO and someone who forgets more about how people relate to music than I know;
Jon Webster, Chairman of the Music Managers Forum, and a man who held back from sharing too many stories on stage.

One person in the audience told me after that he couldn’t mistake this panel as a music panel as everyone swore freely, but more importantly, expressed themselves very openly.

It seemed to inspire the audience too, as they were fantastic. When we over-ran by 15 minutes, I invited the audience to attend the next session in the main hall. I said I was happy to stay, so did the panelists. The audience stayed put, leading to overrun by 40 minutes…causing chaos for the organisers! (Sorry Clare, Charlie and everyone at CSquared!)

The questions just kept coming. It was fantastic. So thanks to Lucy from Diesel, Steve King and John Taylor from ZenithOptimedia, Graham Duff from Universal McCann, the guys from Nokia Procurement (I know you were out there!), the fantastic lady from Future Magazines (contact me please!!!), Olivia from Media and Marketing, Mariana from CSquared, Martin Sambrook from Billetts and Tom Bowman from BBC Worldwide, the guy at the back who asked about Apple, and everyone else who I have forgotten!

One minute we are on the stage at the Venice festival of media discussing the impact of a DIY revolution on the music business, and a few days later the Sunday Times Style magazine is running an article about the very same topic!

And as if by serendipity, the article is about Manchester band the Ting Tings, who recent signed to Sony BMG, whose European CEO Maarten Steinkamp was one of our speakers at Venice. We promise that neither of these two events were connected.

The key for the Ting Tings was to ensure that no matter who the signed to, they would retain complete creative control of there music. This may seem to an outsider as only a small concession on the label’s part, but this a a big leap of faith for any major record company when it comes to a totally unproven new act.

And in true DIY spirit, the album cost pretty much nothing to make. No expensive recording studio in the south of France for these guy’s, with the band using Pro Tools and Garageband (an application that comes free with your Mac laptop) to record the album in their own home studio. While they also decided to use their home-made lo-fi video for their single, That’s Not My Name, in preference to the usual big budget record company promo.

Encouragingly the Sunday Times not only suggested that the DIY revolution would allow artists to take control of their own destiny, but also suggested we should all go out and make our own DIY music, movies, fanzines, novels and fashion labels. Let’s hope this hasn’t given Peaches Geldof or Paris Hilton any new ideas!