frontline M
uch has happened across the music business globally since the first UK lockdown back in March 2020. I’ve written about many
of the core issues, challenges and innovations here in my columns over the past 12 months, but as the entire world moved activities online this past year I wanted to share a few challenges and innovations that I believe will impact the music industry marketing and advertising landscape in 2021 and beyond. Firstly, we can’t look at the year ahead without discussing content. Content has always been important but the pandemic made it almost vital as consumption levels and doom-scrolling rocketed around the globe. The coming months will add extra pressure to sustain this content creation, but the industry must also be very mindful of the context and our artists’ mental health. We can already see the images of packed
arena shows flying out of New Zealand, but in many parts of the world there is continued chaos, death and destruction. The challenge for teams this year will be carrying on the new normal and making sure their artists don’t burn out having to constantly churn out content while they deal with the weight of the situation themselves, often alone and with some on their knees financially. Support your artists, folks. A decent and maintainable content creation schedule is key, but teams also need to make sure that the context of that content can sit well across the ever-changing landscape, globally. Many big names have already fallen foul of boasting about their luxury lifestyles, private Covid tests and holidays while their fans around the world are losing their jobs, their minds and their loved ones. Music has an undeniable ability to make people feel better, make sure your content is not making people feel worse. There are also some pretty big changes afoot in the advertising world. The importance of first party data is about to be (I hope) fully recognised across our industry. For too long now many labels have relied far too heavily on access to third party data – and paid a pretty penny for the privilege. Incoming challenges include the new Apple iOS 14 update. This latest version of Apple’s operating system includes a new prompt and information format for all apps. Since the arrival of GDPR, digital (and legal) departments everywhere will now be very familiar with opt-in restrictions and implications, but for the first time this new iOS update will make users aware of what an app will track before they install it, followed by a permission opt-in for the tracking upon install. While this is a pretty big development,
restrictions and privacy concerns across the digital landscape have long been a topic of discussion and source of fear for advertisers,
musicweek.com
Deviate Digital CEO Sammy Andrews guides you through the ever-changing tech world...
THE FUTURE OF ADVERTISING AND MARKETING
outperform expensive, polished ads. We’re increasingly hired by labels and managers to run complex content marketing campaigns as the industry starts to realise that in order to grow a fanbase in an algorithmic world, you need a strategic, sustained approach across all core platforms. This is not only important for advertising, but also organic success widely. Higher engagement and retention has the ability to transform into sales/streams far better than only whacking out polished videos for promo campaigns. We’ll see lots more people grasp this in coming months. Elsewhere in the e-commerce world,
predominantly across Asia, we’re seeing a continued surge in shoppable video, and specifically shoppable livestream video. Many people think of those awful shopping channels selling shit no one needs at 2am, but trust me when I say this will be adopted more widely here soon, not least with a massive influx of new influencers. But which platform will successfully roll it out first? I have my bets placed on three at the moment, some of whom have already dabbled in the shoppable format and ad products; Amazon, Facebook (Instagram) and TikTok. Across all platforms, we’re also seeing
Stream queen: Huang Wei aka Viya has been hailed as “the queen of livestream shopping” in China
“Many of us think that the next few years
will revolutionise
all data use” SAMMY ANDREWS DEVIATE DIGITAL
but really need not be if you understand the restrictions and prepare your business for them properly. Many of us think the next few years will actually revolutionise all data use, including trust, ownership and access for the better, but this is not a new conversation. Things like the death of the third-party cookie have long been on the table with browsers like Google’s Chrome aiming to shutter them by 2022. Artists, labels and brands are also starting to realise something we have known at Deviate since we started the company: that lo-fi content can often
increased music industry adoption of fanbase monetisation routes outside of direct e-commerce solutions. Again, many of these are directly inherited from established markets in Asia – things like ‘bits’ and ‘cheers’ on Twitch, ‘super-chat’ and ‘super-stickers’ on YouTube and ‘stars’ on Facebook, as well as the increased roll out of Facebook fan subscription tools. Many of these tools were unavailable (and, where available, underused) by musicians until 2020 but have seen heavy pick up throughout the pandemic. I have no doubt they’ll continue to grow in 2021. Last on my list is the undeniable power of incoming podcast advertising capabilities. At Deviate we’ve successfully placed ads for our clients across podcasts for years, and are well aware of their power if harnessed correctly, but until now the ability to place across multiple platforms and titles with ease has been limited as the options, frankly, didn’t exist on many major platforms. That’s about to change in a big way and advertisers
are not the only ones happy about that fact. The unstoppable growth of podcast consumption and the ability to monetise this signals big wins for those who invested heavily in the last few years and those who make them.
Music Week | 13
PHOTOS: Paul Harries/Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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