State Champ Radio marketing
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From 2001 to 2004, the music industry produced a steady stream of new artists with big hits: At least 30 first-timers landed in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 each year. In 2022, only 12 new acts managed the feat (plus a pair of songs from the Encanto cast). “This is the hardest time to break through and market music,” one manager tells Billboard.
It’s not for lack of trying: In recent years, labels have been signing acts at whirlwind speed, yet this surge of new signings hasn’t yet amounted to a surge of new stars. And some executives worry that the dry spell is partly due to the recent wave of signings, claiming that the majors have inked deals at a rate beyond their ability to provide service.
“The over-signing of [the] COVID [era] is now a pain point at every label,” says one manager with multiple acts on majors. If staff growth doesn’t keep up with roster growth, artists don’t necessarily get the care they need to level up. “No one has enough product managers. So they’re all getting crushed.”
“It is not humanly possible for a product manager — the person responsible for the story of the artists, the story of the music — to creatively, strategically and efficiently implement marketing for 20 artists at one time,” says Craig Baylis, a former major-label product manager who runs the boutique publishing company Eighth & Groove. Record companies often “aren’t getting the best out of [their staff] because they are ramming them with all of these artists that they’re not even getting the chance to know.”
All the major-label groups have broken new artists in the last few years, of course, whether it’s Olivia Rodrigo (Universal Music Group), Steve Lacy (Sony Music) or Zach Bryan (Warner Music Group). In a January letter to staff, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge reaffirmed the company’s commitment to this task, writing, “We diligently work, day in and day out, to break our artists and songwriters.” While speaking with investors last year, Sony Music chairman Rob Stringer said “creative staff,” which encompasses A&R, marketing, product managers and artist relations, had increased at a faster rate than artist roster size, helping launch new acts onto the streaming charts.
Roster size numbers are difficult to come by, but in 2017, a study organized by the RIAA found that major labels had signed 658 artists that year, up from 589 in 2014. Although the RIAA hasn’t released a follow-up, many lawyers and executives say the rate of signings has climbed since that report. Two senior executives believe the number of deals is now as high or higher than it has ever been; Sony Music told investors that new signings rose 32.4% between 2017 and 2021.
The recent wave of signings is in part a byproduct of streaming becoming the main revenue source at the majors. The biggest streaming services pay rights holders according to their share of total plays on the platform. But low-cost distribution has brought a “vast and unnavigable number of tracks” into the music ecosystem, as Grainge put it in his staff memo. Streams for those tracks eat into big record companies’ piece of the pie. If tens of thousands of new tracks are added to streaming services daily, “then [major-label] market share is going to be diluted by default,” Stringer explained last year.
Signing more is a way of fighting back. “For major labels, independents and distributors, it’s all about volume of signings now,” says Andreas Katsambas, who was a senior vp at BMG before joining the analytics company Chartmetric as president/COO.
This puts major labels in a bind: They need to sign and release more to keep market share up, but this makes it harder for each artist signed to get the attention they need to break through.
“Intelligent marketing is not going to be a facet of developing artists today if record companies are going to continue doling out artists, singles and projects at the frequency that they do,” says Baylis. “There is a high level of fatigue that product managers are experiencing.”
A former major-label employee who left to go into management agrees that product managers and marketers tend to be “completely overworked.” “A digital person may have 60 projects,” he adds. “It’s crazy.”
Mike Caren, founder of the publishing company and independent label APG (and former president of global A&R at WMG), points out that “even the best marketer is limited by the number of hours in the day and days in the week.” He adds: “Executing an artist’s vision is time-intensive, and the best artists challenge their teams with unique ideas that take a lot of time to properly deliver. Capacity is a key metric to determine when choosing a label or team.”
This may be especially true today, when the ability to grow audiences seems increasingly like the most important service a label can offer. Artists no longer need to turn to majors for national and international distribution or studio-quality recording equipment; now, anyone can get those things from their laptop while sprawled on the couch. Instead, “gaining awareness is the most challenging thing for anyone that releases music,” Katsambas says. “Awareness more than anything else, and then engagement and retention.”
Are those goals compatible with high-volume signing? “It’s hard creating a game plan for longevity for some of these artists that are really talented and deserving,” Baylis says, “because executives are charged with just feeding the beast called the DSPs.”
TikTok is known for compulsively addictive short-form video, and for the past three years, much of the music industry has been hooked. By now, the platform is widely viewed as the most potent driver of streaming activity; marketing strategies often center on trying to harness the app’s users to touch off hits.
Lately, however, there’s been a noticeable shift in the way the music business talks about TikTok. One major-label executive with experience running campaigns on the platform recently mused to colleagues that he thought it was “dead” for breaking new songs. Another calls it “not workable.” “Does TikTok break hits now?” asks an A&R executive. “There’s a bunch of stuff going off there that’s not even a hit. We’re running on the inertia of what it was.”
“TikTok is eating itself,” declares Max Bernstein, who founded the marketing agency Muuser. “It still drives consumption if you get it right, but it’s much harder to maneuver now. Trends are siloed when they used to be community-wide, and influencer media is becoming prohibitively expensive.”
A number of A&Rs and marketers feel similarly, and they are trying to adjust strategies when it comes to signing artists and allocating marketing dollars. It’s the music business’ version of algorithmic anxiety: An industry accustomed to figuring out how to leverage promotional tools to favor its artists is learning that TikTok is increasingly tough to control.
Not everyone agrees, of course. Tyler Blatchley, co-founder of the label Black 17 Media, which has had success on TikTok, calls the idea that the platform is “not workable” “absurd.” The app’s users helped singles like Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” soar on streaming services; at this point, it’s hard to think of a recent hit that wasn’t aided and abetted by TikTok. “The biggest game in town is TikTok,” says Chris Anokute, an A&R exec-turned-manager. “Everyone who wants to tell you otherwise is delusional, they don’t understand it, or they missed the boat.”
But even some of those who believe, as one rap label-head puts it, that TikTok “is the main platform to focus on for marketing,” still acknowledge that the industry’s attitude towards it has shifted. “People are frustrated because they can’t finesse the system so easily anymore,” the hip-hop executive says.
This frustration relates to larger anxieties in the music industry. Managers, A&R executives and marketers say it’s harder than ever to command listener attention, and they believe TikTok’s position as the preeminent music discovery platform is partially to blame. “If we’re asking, ‘how do people find new great artists that they’re going to fall in love with,’ hearing a nine-second snippet of a song is probably not the answer that any of us would give,” says Justin Lehmann, founder of Mischief Management (Aminé, Khai Dreams).
Still, TikTok is where people are spending their time — more than 90 minutes a day, according to the data analytics company Sensor Tower, nearly twice as much as they spend on Instagram. The music industry has no choice but to try to reach those potential listeners. It’s just getting harder and harder to do.
“There are a lot of songs that pop quickly [on TikTok], but it doesn’t have the same effect,” says Talya Elitzer, co-founder of the indie label and management company Godmode. “It’s not the golden era of TikTok by any means,” confirms another veteran digital marketer. “Things aren’t performing the way they used to.”
And executives say the impact of their marketing budgets is waning. According to a recent report by music consulting agency ContraBrand, based on analysis of TikTok’s top 200 from the first half of 2022, “paid-for tactics, such as influencers and ads, accounted for success in under 12% of the platform’s viral tracks.” “You can do your best to manufacture something on [TikTok], but I haven’t seen too many people be super successful,” says Cassie Petrey, CEO of the social media company and management firm Crowd Surf. “There’s an illusion of control people think they have over TikTok because we can pay influencers and push more video usage.”
As awareness of that illusion grows, “a lot of major companies, the savvy ones, are not spending as much on TikTok as they once were,” according to Elitzer. Another marketer says that he’s cut TikTok spending in many cases by more than 50%.
Labels may be shifting their signing strategies around TikTok as well. Whereas record companies have been signing acts off a single viral explosion, hoping for quick returns on their investment, a bevy of one-hit wonders has caused some to contemplate changing course. “I’ve heard a lot more A&Rs that I’ve been speaking with go back to signing artists based on musicality, which is exciting,” says Tim Collins, co-founder of Creed Media, an entertainment marketing agency.
“Too many people got caught with empty bags — labels overpaid for these deals, and the artist never delivered a better song or couldn’t rise to the occasion,” Anokute adds. “People were making multi-million dollar offers without even meeting the artist! The race to jump on everything moving on TikTok has slowed down.”
After a period where the app seemed to overshadow everything in music, executives seem more open to the idea that focusing all resources solely on TikTok may not be a viable long-term strategy. Petrey preaches a zen attitude about it all. “You’ll have moments on social media that are big, and you’ll have other times where you thought that song was the one and it didn’t go,” she says. “Continue to make good work.”
Thundercat‘s “Them Changes” is steeped in funk history, with drums that nod to The Isley Brothers‘ “Footsteps in the Dark,” stutter-stepping at 82 beats per minute, and a wobbling bass line. On Sept. 22, the TikTok account Ezzsounds posted a simple remix of the track, pushing the tempo until the song catches the jitters. This new version was a world away from the slow-and-low original — at 114 beats per minute, it’s like a train threatening to jump the tracks. TikTokers loved it.
“By the next Monday, we had already seen the streams double,” says Will Slattery, vp of North American marketing operations for the independent label Ninja Tune. The company sent an official sped-up rendition of “Them Changes” to streaming services and worked with marketing companies to increase the new version’s exposure on TikTok. The single cracked Billboard‘s Hot R&B Songs chart in October, a first for Thundercat as a lead artist.
“Sped-up tracks feel like a thing, but I was not expecting it to happen to Thundercat,” says Josh Berman, who leads marketing efforts for the artist’s management company, Really Happening. “I’ve seen trends happen and they’re gone in 72 hours. We’re really blessed that this one’s still going.”
Sped-up versions of songs, especially older ones, have thrived on TikTok for years — Cafuné’s “Tek It,” Demi Lovato‘s “Cool for the Summer,” Ellie Goulding‘s “Lights,” Sam Smith‘s “I’m Not the Only One,” and Nelly Furtado‘s “Say It Right,” for example, all enjoyed streaming bumps thanks to the success of uptempo reworks. This style now appears to be on the verge of reaching a new level of mainstream exposure. “Sped up songs are becoming insanely popular,” says Tyler Blatchley, co-founder of the label Black 17 Media, which has producers working on pell-mell renditions of many major-label tracks.
“Back in the day, we used club remixes to diversify the visibility of a record,” explains Nima Nasseri, global head of A&R strategy for Universal Music Group’s music strategy and tactics team. “The purpose was to bring back visibility to the main version. Now people are discovering the main version from the sped-up or slowed one. Instead of spending $50,000 for a remix from a big-name DJ, you’re spending relatively minimal amounts [on a sped-up rendition] and getting much more return and reach.”
“These remixes have been a thing for a while,” adds 20-year-old Tristan Olsen (xxtristanxo on TikTok), who has amassed more than 3 million followers on the app with videos of him playing tempo-shifted edits, usually in a red-lit room, while sporting dark sunglasses. Happily for him, “the industry is catching up now.”
It’s easy to survey TikTok or scan streaming charts and conclude that songs which zip along at a breakneck pace are popular on the app. It’s much harder to explain why.
The genre known as nightcore, which also centers on music that’s sped up and pitched up, was popular long before the debut of TikTok. Nightcore eventually filtered into the PC Music scene, which spawned artists like SOPHIE and A.G. Cook, who went on to work with pop stars (Charli XCX, Madonna). But its hit-making power was negligible compared to TikTok’s sped-up song ecosystem.
Steven Pardo, digital marketing director at Secretly Group, believes that “in a video platform that prioritizes catching attention immediately, being able to get the impact of the lyrics across more quickly is advantageous.” On top of that, “dancers [on TikTok] love the chipmunk versions” of songs, according to Kuya Magik, a producer and DJ with more than 11 million TikTok followers.
Part of TikTok’s power also stems from the way it makes room for users to fiddle with songs and upload their versions of popular sounds, changing the stakes of fan engagement. “We’re seeing in consumer surveys how much Gen Z wants to actively participate in music,” notes Tatiana Cirisano, an analyst at MIDiA Research and former Billboard reporter. “They don’t just listen and consume passively; they make their own videos, remix the song.”
This ethos doesn’t only impact TikTok through sped-up tracks. The platform is awash in “sped-up versions, slowed-down versions, clap-track versions, versions that are super heavy on reverb, like turned-all-the-way-up-to-11 kind of sh–,” says Johnny Cloherty, co-founder of the digital marketing company Songfluencer. “Everyone’s experimenting with this stuff.” Jacob Byrnes, director of creator relations and content strategy for Universal Music Group’s music strategy and tactics team, recently had a meeting with a TikTok marketing company that informed him that 80% of the top 100 sounds on the app were tempo-altered; some sprint, while others crawl. (A rep for TikTok declined to comment.)
There are a number of popular TikTok pages that specialize in this material — not only KuyaMagik and xxtristanxo, but also Itsjovynn (9.7 million followers), Spxedupsongs (5 million followers), Speedysongs (2.7 million followers), and Bestspedup (2 million followers). Now artists and labels are paying some the creators in this niche to edit their tracks, seeking to harness their promotional firepower; these accounts seem to have captured some of the king-making abilities once reserved for top influencers like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae.
While some of these pages post remixes along with eye-catching visual clips, others don’t do much more than post a new version of a track next to its lyrics. Ezzsounds, which helped launch Thundercat’s “Them Changes” onto the Hot R&B Songs chart, hails from the latter camp; the account is more than 700,000 followers strong. Pardo from Secretly Group has his eye on the page Ex7stence (4.4 million followers), which recently helped popularize sped-up versions of songs by Phoebe Bridgers and Bon Iver. “The velocity of sounds that come off that page in the past couple of weeks has been fascinating,” Pardo says.
Historically, the music industry has not been comfortable with unauthorized remixes. Nasseri and Byrnes even initially encountered some resistance from artists’ teams when they started pushing to release official tempo-altered versions of singles. “It was six months of explaining to people what this is and begging them to approve it,” Nasseri says.
“There was a long period of ‘trust us on this,’” Byrnes adds. His pitch: “This is the new remix. This is better than a remix.”
Suffice it to say that “long period” of doubt has come to an end. “I see artists dropping the sped-up version with the official one on release date to try to see if that catches on and points back to the original,” says Johnny Minardi, vp of A&R at Elektra Music Group. “It’s become one of those alternate looks to try to start the song or get a little bit more life out of it.” Two marketers say it’s routine for them to pay TikTok accounts to put out edits of songs they’re promoting; the cost is usually between $50 and $200.
Interscope just released an accelerated version of Summer Walker‘s entire Last Day of Summer project, billing it as the “first sped-up album.” UMG does “bulk agreements” with Xxtristanxo for remixes of its music, according to Byrnes. “He has 3 million monthly listeners [on Spotify] from these remixes — they generate so much money for us and for these artists,” the executive says.
The Spotify account Sped Up Nightcore, which only posts uptempo remixes of songs from Warner Music Group, is earning close to 2 million plays a day, according to the Spotify for Artists app — numbers many acts would hack off an arm for. (While none of Sped Up Nightcore’s releases on Spotify have any public credit information, Warner is claiming ownership of most of these songs on YouTube; a rep for Warner did not respond to a question about the label’s relationship with the account.)
Kuya Magik, who also does remixes for UMG, says messing with a track’s tempo and posting it on TikTok “doesn’t always work — but if that sound goes in front of the right person, you’ve got a gold mine in terms of a viral song.” Case in point: Cafuné’s “Tek It – Sped Up” has more than 95 million Spotify streams, almost as many as there are on the original, which surely makes it one of the most commercially successful singles in this style. (Minardi signed the band to Elektra.) The popularity of the jittery “Them Changes” on TikTok led weekly streams of the original to triple from mid-September to mid-October, according to Luminate. Slattery from Ninja Tune says streams of the rest of Thundercat’s catalog increased as well.
Most executives who have engaged with the sped-up ecosystem agree that it’s particularly effective for reviving songs that are more than 18 months old. “It’s a great avenue for promoting catalog tracks,” says Slattery. “People enjoy sped-up versions of songs that they already know” — like “Them Changes,” which already had more than 150 million Spotify streams before its recent surge. “When there’s familiarity with the song to begin with,” Slattery continues, “it helps it go farther and increases demand.”
That means there’s a potential opportunity for record companies. “If I was a label with a big catalog, I would start creating three to five versions of all my biggest hits with different tempos,” Cloherty says. “I would just have a producer on staff creating them nonstop all day every day.”
“What would ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ sound like sped up?” he wonders. “I don’t know. But that could be the next TikTok hit.”
Following Adidas’ highly publicized split from Kanye “Ye” West last month after he espoused antisemitic sentiments on a multi-stop media tour, the sportswear company has plans to do what many predicted might happen: rebrand Yeezy products in order to continue selling them without Ye.
On a quarterly earnings call this morning (Nov. 9), according to Insider, Adidas shared that it intends to release more Yeezys without the artist, who began his business partnership with the company in 2013. Adidas CFO Harm Ohlmeyer confirmed what the company’s public statement, released in late October, said: “Adidas is the sole owner of all design rights registered to existing product. We intend to make use of these rights as early as 2023.”
Following Adidas’ highly publicized split from Kanye “Ye” West last month after he espoused antisemitic sentiments on a multi-stop media tour, the sportswear company has plans to do what many predicted might happen: rebrand Yeezy products in order to continue selling them without Ye.
On a quarterly earnings call this morning, according to Insider, Adidas shared that it intends to release more Yeezys without the artist, who began his business partnership with the company in 2013. Adidas CFO Harm Ohlmeyer confirmed what the company’s public statement, released in late October, said: “Adidas is the sole owner of all design rights registered to existing product. We intend to make use of these rights as early as 2023.”
In announcing their split from Ye last month, the company explained, “Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech. Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Artist and brand manager Craig Dunn has launched One Spark Entertainment, in partnership with mtheory. Dunn’s longtime client Sara Evans will join One Spark Entertainment, while Broken Bow Records duo Everette also joins the new roster.
Dunn has more than two decades of experience in areas including artist management as well as digital marketing, merchandising, label operations and revenue development. Prior to launching One Spark Entertainment, Dunn served as vice president at Collective Artist Management beginning in 2012, and worked as sr. vp at digital marketing and merchandise company Music City Networks, where he oversaw digital marketing, websites, fanclubs and more for artists including Lady A, Eric Church, Dierks Bentley, Little Big Town and Toby Keith.
“The idea behind the name of One Spark Entertainment came to me in the middle of the night as I was unable to sleep, excited about starting the new chapter of leading my own management company. The phrase of ‘it only takes one spark to start a fire’ popped into my head and just wouldn’t leave, no matter how many other ideas I considered,” Dunn said via a statement. “It just takes one spark of imagination or an idea to start a fire. I’m excited to bring my years of artist management, digital, event management, merchandise, road experience, and revenue generation across music, touring, TV and literary to One Spark Entertainment as we service the current roster and grow the company strategically, partnering with multi-talented artists that share the same creative passion and drive to create, innovate and grow as a team to reach the next level of success. Having known and previously worked with most of the senior team at mtheory, I’m thrilled to call them partners and bring their expertise and creative thinking to the roster.”
Founded in 2010, mtheory handles artist development, marketing, strategy and operations infrastructure designed for artist managers. Recently, mtheory also teamed with CMT to launch the Equal Access Development Program, year-long program designed to provide access and training for underrepresented demographics — including Black, Native and Indigenous, Latino, LGBTQ+ and female artists and managers — in the country music industry.
“The senior Nashville team at mtheory have known Craig for more than a decade and could not be more excited to be part of his new venture,” added mtheory CEO Cameo Carlson. “His forward-thinking approach to management and spirit of teamwork are exactly what we look for in our manager partnerships. Being able to add strategy and marketing resources to the incomparable Sara Evans and up-and-coming superstars Everette is just icing on the cake!”
In addition to new clients, One Spark Entertainment also welcomes Nicole Lewis as management coordinator.
