Results tagged “iTunes” from Life's a Pitch

Monday is the new black/Friday.  Each week, I'll post an interview with a special person far more knowledgeable than myself on specific marketing and publicity subjects. This week, label New Media Manager Denise McGovern on pitching placement, digital-only releases and what we're going to do when the record stores close for good.

Denise McGovern is the New Media Manager at Universal Music Classical/Decca Label Group. She is responsible for digital sales to accounts such as iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster.
 







How long have you been at Universal?
 
Five years.

 
How has your job changed along with the technology since you started?

I started working in marketing (when marketing meant simply booking ads), but I had come from an online classical music site so I kept interjecting ideas about email marketing and banner ads into the mix. Right about that time iTunes launched, and they needed someone Stateside to look after how our music was featured there. It soon became a full-time job and now I'm in charge of most of our digital music accounts.
 
 
Which digital music platforms does Universal service?

We're just about everywhere - from iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster to mobile OTA providers and new deals like MySpace Music.
 
 
Are certain platforms ever given exclusives? Pre-"street" date releases? Who initiates those kinds of deals, Universal or iTunes/Rhapsody/etc.?
 
Yes, we do provide exclusives. Sometimes that means a window of time where they are the only place where that album is available (like a pre-release exclusive) and sometimes it means bonus content (like an extra track, a video or an artist interview).
 
Who initiates the deal usually varies depending on the project. In many cases, I know what kind of content is available so I'll offer it up to see what kind of interest there is. In other cases, the artist is of such interest to the account that they will ask if there's something special we can do with the new release.
 
 
Obviously, good placement on  iTunes is extremely important for album sales. How is placement on the main page, the main page of the genre section, etc. decided? Is it pitched like a story is pitched, or bought like an ad?
 
It's pitched like a story. And just like a publication, there are layers of editors/programmers. The entire team looks at what's available that week and programs based on what they think will be of the most interest to their users and what will sell the best.
 

What iTunes placement is considered The Placement Holy Grail? What's the best placement you've ever gotten for an album, and what kinds of sales resulted?
 
For classical, the Holy Grail is to be considered on the same level as a pop album. I'd say that's positioning on the first page and a descriptive page about the record with art that really gets the audience interested in that release. But it's not an exact science. Sometimes you get that Holy Grail and it turns out to just be a cup - at the end of the day, the release has to be interesting and connect with the people who see it.
 
I'd say there are a few placements that were pretty spectacular. Lang Lang's Beethoven release in particular had a banner on the main page right next to Tim McGraw and 50 Cent. The combination of many things (within and outside of iTunes) made that record have a stellar first week with over half of the scans coming from digital.
 
But talking about placement, you have to realize that all of this positioning comes down to conversations and relationships with people over there. That one week shot of fantastic placement usually takes weeks of talks with different people and having folks on the iTunes side really carry your flag. It's very much a team effort on both sides of the game.
 

Some iTunes pages look ridiculously nice and designed,

and others look normal:


Again, is that something artists/record labels can pay for, or does iTunes just decide which albums get special aesthetic treatment and which don't?

They absolutely decide themselves and no one buys anything. We provide them with the publicity shots and any art available and their designers go to work. It's an iTunes editorial decision.
 

Do you feel increased pressure to sell albums digitally every time another record store closes?

I feel increased pressure to make sure that the digital accounts do the best that they can and sell what's best for their audience. When we first started selling digitally, people really saw this as a marketing tool rather than a sales vehicle. More exposure than sales. As time has gone on, you don't get a pat on the head for the exposure. The sales figures are really looked at. But I'd say that since I've started doing this, we've learned what works for each account, and we've learned what titles can do strong digital figures. This is true of any sales vehicle or publicity outlet - if you know your market and your audience, you can make things a success in that particular outlet, even if it's not the expected.
 
 
Was it exciting when Deutsche Grammophon's digital-only La Philharmonic recording debuted at number 1 on the Billboard classical chart a few months back? Do you think that will encourage/has encouraged labels toward producing more digital-only releases?
 
It was incredibly exciting! We had been working on the DG Concerts program for awhile, and the very first one would have charted if the rules were different. Then Billboard changed the rules and digital-only releases were now eligible. It was only the second week after the rule change that the concert hit #1. It was so gratifying for all of us who had been working in the digital space to see these products on the chart.
 
Labels were already looking at digital-only releases, but this certainly gave digital-only releases legitimacy. The charts are a stamp of approval. You don't see marketing copy that says "The #1 Classical Album if Only Digital Albums Could Chart!"
 

Let's say I'm an artist and I'm going it alone: I have no manager, no publicist, no marketing team and no record label, but I've worked very hard on recording and self-producing my own album. How do I even begin to place it digitally?

There are a number of digital aggregators that help independents get their music on to digital services. That makes the music available. After that, it's just marketing -- generating interest through your website, emails, publicity hits and live appearances.
 
 
Worst thing to happen to the record industry in the past five years?

Enhanced CD products like SACD - there was so much time spent for so little adoption.
 
 
Best thing to happen to the record industry in the past five years?

More and more music online through discovery and retail services - from iMeem to iTunes. You have no idea how many albums I've purchased from artists I had never heard of a year ago. Or passed on purchasing super-hyped albums because they truly sucked.

It seems like years since I've posted an interview here, which, I assure you, is my fault and not my subjects'. The good news is, we have an exquisite line-up for the next few Fridays. For those of you just joining us now, on Fridays I'll (try to) post an interview with someone far more knowledgeable than myself on specific marketing and publicity subjects. This week, FatCat USA label manager Anna Bond on record placement in iTunes vs. stores, being a girl, and how the industry needs to reinvent itself.


Anna Bond has been co-label manager of FatCat USA for two years. She has worked in the music industry in NYC for just over five years, and has spent time in artist management and retail in addition to record labels. The only things she likes more than records are vegetables.







Can you please tell the scores of Life's a Pitch readers about the classical imprint on the label? First, what is an "imprint"? What was the reasoning behind creating it?

130701 was created in order for FatCat to release modern composition records that didn't fit with the aesthetic of FatCat proper. Artists released on the label include Max Richter, Sylvain Chaveau, Set Fire To Flames, and Hauschka. "Imprint" means different things, technically, depending on where you are, but for FatCat, it's simply a genre marker - the same folks work on promoting and selling the records as for all FatCat releases. At a major, an imprint might be a subsidiary label with an entirely separate staff and office.


Do you think record labels have become literally-labels? For example, if pianist Max Richter was on Decca, he would be classical, but because he's on FatCat, he's "indie"? Conversely (or, similarly, depending on how you look at it), when an artist on a classical label does anything in another genre sphere, they are immediately labeled as (and often criticized for being) "crossover".

This is a tough question. To an extent, I think the answer is yes. Some music buyers notice and even follow labels, but I think the importance is more in the industry realm - retail, press, and radio, who will all influence the way an artist is perceived by the music-buying public, are more likely to know different labels and their rosters, and therefore have notions of what to expect from them. Labels who become closely identified with one very specific type of music, like Americana or heavy rock, may have a tough time shaking those preconceptions, and releases outside their mold may suffer.


How do you submit an artist like Max Richter to iTunes? To record stores? Are we dealing with different genre labels for those different platforms?

Lots of record stores don't have classical sections, or if they do, they don't carry modern composers - just your Carmina Burana, all the big guns, La Boheme, and the holiday stuff, because that's all that will sell in a lot of markets - so we use our wiggle room as an "indie" or rock label to classify Max Richter as "rock" for retail solicitations, so that those stores who don't buy classical don't ignore the record. Once store buyers do read our solicitation materials, they'll know what the music is, but in order to get them to that point, we can't be under the classical heading. And honestly, that's an appropriate genre classification for a lot of the buyers of his music: sure, avant-garde heads will pick up the CD, but a lot of our sales will be to folks who are also looking for Sufjan Stevens, Yeasayer, or Godspeed.

The digital realm, on the other hand, presents its own challenges and opportunities. Placement on sites like iTunes and eMusic is very competitive for rock releases, especially for crowded fall release dates, but less so for classical, so in the digital realm, we find it more advantageous to group it with classical releases, where we have a much greater chance of featured new-release placement - and a greater chance of reaching curious fans of classical music. With digital, we don't have to worry about a retailer choosing not to carry the release due to its genre classification.


Are indie record sales as bad as classical record sales? Do you think the whole industry will actually croak? When? Exact date and time, please.

Sales overall have obviously decreased, but there are pockets of hope everywhere, especially with vinyl and special packaging. I think the music industry will continue to change radically - to the extent that it may be unrecognizable to many in, say, ten years - but it's hard for me to believe it will dissolve entirely. That could be wishful thinking, though.


How many rock/electronica critics are women? How many managers? Publicists?

I'm not sure exactly, but I'd estimate roughly that no more than 25% of the writers we send to are women. I have long noticed that women are disproportionately represented as managers and publicists vs. in other areas of the industry, which I can't help but attribute to our acculturation as nourishers and communicators.
 

How many women artists are on FatCat? The indie rock industry seems very male-dominated to me, but then again, so does the classical music industry. And...life in general.

FatCat has several women on the active roster, including two of our highest-profile artists, Vashti Bunyan (she is on FatCat in the UK only) and Nina Nastasia. Also Silje Nes, members of Múm, Welcome, and Vetiver (again, Vetiver is on FatCat in the UK only)... once you include the inactive roster and the split series, there are lots more. But there are definitely more male artists, by a wide margin.

Yes, the music world is quite male-dominated, but so is pretty much everything except like, elementary school education and social work. My theory about this would take pages to expound, but I think one reason most popular bands are male is because the most passionate music followers are male.

This is not because men are innately more passionate about music than women, but because women are pressured to cast aside hobbies and passions like record-collecting or insatiable music-listening earlier than men are, in favor of practical responsibilities like, say, getting one's career sorted before it's time to have babies.

On the same token, it's likely that these pressures also discourage musical women from pursuing the slow grind toward making music as a career.

It's hard to make this claim without sounding flippant or reductive, but it's certainly been my experience, and that of my close women friends, both in and out of the music industry.


Between you and me and whomever's reading, do you ever leak albums? Like, send them to bloggers from a secret Gmail account or whatever?

Nah, they leak soon enough on their own. Though I have noticed that the lag between mailing and leak, even for relatively high-profile releases, has increased. Maybe leaking for leaking's sake has gotten old? I'm not sure.


What press is considered the Holy Grail for your albums? Pitchfork? Why does everyone keep saying Pitchfork is over? I'd really like to know...

Pitchfork is a big one, but I don't think there is a Holy Grail. It's a combination of attention across the board from print and online press. For a couple of years - 2004-2005 maybe? - Pitchfork was a massive sales driver, with the ability to launch careers seemingly out of nowhere. But the record had to appeal to enough people who sought it out after the Pitchfork review to become a real phenomenon like the Arcade Fire or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - I'm pretty sure William Basinski's Disintegration Loops didn't sell 100K after getting Pitchfork's Best New Music, and I know that Max Richter didn't. Though both releases undoubtedly received more attention due to the Pitchfork review than they otherwise would have.

Now there are simply so many review sites, mp3 blogs - so many sources for reading about music - that it's impossible for one site to have as much impact anymore. Getting a high Pitchfork rating is still a boon in terms of press attention and sales, but it's definitely not going to guarantee success, especially for artists who are more left-field.


Our friends at Sequenza21 offered three free Max Richter track downloads, but, to my knowledge, that was one of the first times a classical blog has ever done that. Do the blogs you usually work with offer free downloads all the time? How does giving away product for free like that affect album sales?

Rock sites do a lot of mp3 download giveaways and streaming audio samples - it's standard at this point. We generally offer one or two mp3 download giveaway tracks for each record, and we consider the attention drawn to the music by these early previews an upside greater than any downside in terms of sales.


Have you found an online equivalent to flipping through CDs/records/tapes in bins at record stores, or do you think that's irreplaceable?

I am going to be totally honest with you: I can count on the fingers of one hand how many albums I have ever downloaded. I'm a dinosaur. I work at computers - why would I want to shop for records at one? I love record stores, possibly to a fault in terms of my marketing perspective, and definitely to a fault in terms of my wallet. There is no substitute for walking into a friendly place, checking out the new release rack, looking at employee suggestions, asking the person behind the counter what's good and new...I know it's not how everyone prefers to shop for music, but to me, it's absolutely irreplaceable.