Pinterest: The Next Social Frontier for Music, From ReadWriteWeb

Social Media is forever changing and evolving directly in front of us. For a band and we as a label, keeping up with the online trends, is par for course. Little more than a few months ago, SoundCloud is working with Pinterest on letting users embed streaming music within boards. This is indeed a great thing and we have already built a full streaming section into the Rusty Knuckles Pinterest page. 

For more information on what this holds for the future of streaming music within Pinterest, dive in deeper to the article below.

Check out the original article on ReadWriteWeb.com

Rusty Knuckles Music is now streaming through Pinterest - click here

"Pinterest is steadily growing out of the stereotype that it's just for sharing recipes and planning weddings. The social scrapbook already plays a central role in the social media strategies of visual artists, publishers and certain types of businesses. Now, with the addition of features for pinning music and video, musicians are catching on. 

Just as early-adopter bands and artists flocked to Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram, some are experimenting with visual bookmarking on Pinterest. Conventions are emerging as those brave enough to dive in head-first experiment with different approaches. 

The most obvious way musicians are using Pinterest is as a collection of visual artifacts from across the Web. This includes everything from photos of recent gigs, artists they admire or gear they love playing with to visual art that matches their music. This approach is akin to the way bands have used Tumblr.

Alanis Morissette uses Pinterest both as a promotional vehicle for her own work and as a way to connect with fans in a more meaningful way. That includes not only a scrapbook of personal photos but also a pinboard dedicated to sharing favorite quotes and a board titled "Alanis Recommends" containing mostly self-help books. These features add a personal flavor to her social media presence, something Pinterest is uniquely positioned to help facilitate.  

Beyond Pictures: Sound and Video

Despite its roots, Pinterest is no longer just about imagery. It also happens to be a good way to share sounds and videos, a fact that makes it increasingly appealing to musicians looking to promote their work. Music videos from sources like YouTube, Vimeo and others can be embedded directly into Pinterest pages and, not unlike Twitter or Tumblr, can be "repinned" by others, creating the potential for content to go viral. 

Last week, the site officially integrated with SoundCloud, a partnership that makes Pinterest an even more natural fit for bands and musicians. Until now, the most effective way to share a song on Pinterest was to pin a YouTube video containing the track. This new feature simplifies things a bit and provides an additional avenue for distributing audio files. 

Yoko Ono was quick to take advantage of SoundCloud support. The artist and wife of the late John Lennon uses the feature to embed new songs as well as audio clips from radio appearances. The "SoundCloud" board on Ono's account includes everything from music recorded with her late husband to a recent episode of a radio program on which Ono appeared with her son Sean Lennon. Her Pinterest account also serves as a home to past visual art projects, writings and activism-related links. 

Music outlets like The Fader, HypeBot, VH1 and MTV have also jumped on the Pinterest stage.Record labels are also using the service to promote artists and new releases. Many labels create boards specific to popular artists in their roster, effectively giving those artists a semi-official presence on the site without requiring them to manage it. This approach offers less opportunity for deep engagement with fans, but it's a start. 

Success Is Hard to Measure

As popular as Pinterest is becoming generally, for musicians it's still a realm of early adopters. Relatively few artists have official accounts on the site. Even Amanda Palmer, who is often noted for effective use of Twitter and other social platforms, hasn't pinned anything. 

How can an artist know whether Pinterest is paying off? Success can be difficult to gauge. Certainly, artists with a large following on Pinterest should expect to see an increase in video views, listens and click-throughs to related media and articles. For smaller acts, the payoff may not be as dramatic at first. In either case, metrics don't exist that would help artists and managers determine the effectiveness of a particular strategy. Did pinning those new tracks from SoundCloud help get them heard by more people? Maybe, but neither SoundCloud nor Pinterest offers analytics granular enough to know for sure. 

Pinterest doesn't yet have a huge community of bands and musicians, but features like SoundCloud integration will likely encourage more to take advantage of the service. What it does have is a sizable - and growing - user base, something artists would be wise to tap into early." 

Does Giving Away Your Music Equal New Fans?

Everyone has an opinion on what they feel is the best way to get their music to the masses. We are of the mindset that with hard work, perseverance and hammering away at all the angles, it is still a crap shoot of what band will get attention or become yesterday's news. This scenario for the most part sucks. Not that everyone should succeed or else we would all be winners and that isn't how the story goes.

But there are many ideas which have validity and it just comes down to how much do you believe in the music you are creating. Take for example the article below about the electronic artist Pretty Lights. He is of the mindset to give away his music for free and it will drive more individuals to come to his shows.

Their free song give away plan of attack has literally paid out and thus you are reading about the story. Personally, we feel that if the music is good enough to cut through the mass of bands begging for attention, then folks will buy it in one form or another. Is giving away your hard earned songs worth it? Entirely up to you as a band, but we think ya have to do something unique and different to be heard or be as talented as Adele to be heard on a large scale. Should this deter your plan of attack, no way in hell. Just figure out what works best for your band and dig in. We need debauchery back in Rock N' Roll and we need some danger. Rock has been stale for a long while unless you happen to listen to some of the bands we work with. Go out and bend the world to your liking, the masses are waiting for the next great band and why shouldn't it be you.

Link to original article on Hypebot

Here's a question: What digital media download service has access to hundreds of millions of people, who are extremely engaged in the content available through that network? That would be Bit Torrent (and U Torrent, which is essentially the same thing, just a separate approach from a branding perspective). If PL is giving away music for free already; and essentially ONLY utilizes his site to do so, why not break down the barriers of access? 

• Put every track he has available on SoundCloud as a free stream - want the download? OK, to go to the website.
• Put every track available on a Mobile Roadie application (iPhone version available now, Android coming soon) for free streaming anywhere and everywhere - want the download? OK, go to his website.
• Make a download bundle of his 3 popular EPs (“Glowing in The Darkest Night,” “Making Up A Changing Mind,” and “Spilling Over Every Side”) + his newest single “I Know The Truth,” and a video from his Bonnaroo Show, then distribute those assets to 4 million people in 2 months, increase email sign ups by 60,000+ people, increase web traffic by 700%, and Facebook Likes by 30,000+?  
• BitTorrent... check.

And now the power of PL’s music-for-free model has just increased by A LOT. 

The PL Bit Torrent Bundle was, and still is (as of this writing), featured on the Bit Torrent website:

The bundle was additionally an opt-in inclusion for anyone who downloaded the Bit Torrent software:

 

The Results

Millions of downloads in a short time period = top of Pirate Bay’s overall downloads section, and Audio section for over a month (as of this writing, it’s actually still up there):

I picked up the phone and called Red Light Management (manager for PL) as soon as I saw that the BitTorrent bundle had hit #1 on Pirate Bay. Think of Pirate Bay as the underground / music pirate’s version of the Billboard Top 100. In fact, I would say the Pirate Bay’s Top 100 might be the BEST indication of what digital content is reaching the masses on the Internet, because it includes the metrics for the millions of people “illegally” downloading content; and those top downloaded items are fairly similar to the top audio, TV, and movie downloads on iTunes and other “legal” paid services. 

UPDATE: As of 1/22/12, The Pretty Lights / BitTorrent media bundle has surpassed 6 million downloads worldwide.

 Randy Reed, PL’s manager, put it perfectly:

“Here we are celebrating hitting #1 on Pirate Bay, while major labels would be kicking, cursing, and sending take-down notices.”

The Reaction

Hitting #1 on Pirate Bay lead to reactions such as:

…and then ushered in more downloads.

And:

The Metrics

Effect of BitTorrent Promotion on PL web traffic:

Then the promotion went down for a bit...

Then BitTorrent loved PL so much, they re-ignited it:

PL is HUGE in the US, but we are definitely working on spreading his name to other countries, and this promotion certainly helped. 

Last month and a half, traffic to PrettyLightsMusic.com:

...compare to the previous month and a half period:

Traffic from sources overseas also saw massive spikes, as BitTorrent has a large user-base in Europe.

Soundcloud plays (each spike represents when the promotion went live, twice):

 ...and YouTube: 

NextBigSound Big Picture Data:

Some Press: 

 

Monetization

My co-worker, and frequent Hypebot contributor Hisham Dahud, put it well when he said Pretty Lights’ business model is “embracing the chaos” of the current state of the music industry. And the ever-apparent, and frequently asked question is “well, how does he make money if he gives all of his music away for free?” 

Take a look at this video and see if you can answer for yourself how Pretty Lights is one of the biggest and fastest growing acts in the electronic dance music scene, and how he monetizes his business while giving all of his music away for free:

And then check out this video and see if you can guess how he creates multiple revenue streams:

 ...and finally check out his webstore.

If you haven’t answered the question yet, you’re stupid… just kidding. 

Big buzz in a specific geographic region (Denver) among college kids, pursuant to great live shows and free music… leads to free great music to larger and larger audiences as time goes on… leads to more shows in more places = massive distribution of a FREE valuable product = increasing interest = $ for shows = $ for merch, then at a certain level = $ from brands. 

Bob Lefsetz said it perfectly:

"Just because you give away your main product for free does not mean you can't make money. We live in an attention economy, your biggest chore is getting people to listen, not to pay for your music."

Selling music?  Who cares anymore?

- Michael Fiebach (@mfiebach), Founder of Fame House LLC

Working with Randy Reed and Adam Foley of Red Light Management

MORE: Pretty Lights & BitTorrent Release Free Media Bundle

Disclosure: In addition to writing for Hypebot, Hisham Dahud is also employed by Fame House.