FutureHit.DNA

I’m currently in the Nashville airport about to board my flight to Denmark to speak at the SPOT festival on Friday. As happens in these conferences, I get hit up by bands asking me to listen and see them play. Normally I ignore these but this time I decided to listen to the artists…but with rules.

I would take all the bands who contacted me and give them all an hour to impress me. This is similar to timeframes that average listeners have. Their time is limited and precious. I am no different. Then I put the songs I heard thru the Futurehit.DNA filter, specifically the quick engaging intro. I ended up giving the bands two hours, so I actually became generous. Want to know the results?

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I’d like to think that Futurehit.DNA had something to do with the song “I Pray For You” by Jaron and the Long Road To Love. And for sure, it’s at least a LITTLE something, as Jaron was kind enough to include the book as a cameo in the first video for the song. As I recall it, Jaron and I had drinks one night where we discussed the book and the energy practically was bursting out of him as we talked. Less than a month later, he emailed me an MP3 of “I Pray For You” which did have a ton of the Futurehit elements. The creativity is all Jaron, but I think Futurehit.DNA had some influence and here’s how:

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Last week, several articles came out decrying a flattening of digital track sales as a sign of an ever worsening music business. Indeed, you can’t argue the overall numbers which don’t look healthy. But on the flip side, the skeptic in me is certainly dubious of such immediate doom and gloom. And an in depth look at the numbers has proven me right. Certain sectors are in trouble but the digital business remains healthy.

Indeed, Soundscan is reporting a 1% drop in track sales for Q1 2010 over 2009. The likely culprit, as reported, is the adoption of variable pricing bringing the impulse purchase down. In the face of a price hurdle, one could view the decline as a slowdown rather than a trend towards doomsday.

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UPDATE: The below post originally appeared on Hypebot earlier this week and big thanks to Bruce for allowing me the space to discuss. Since then I’ve gotten a fantastic response from the music industry, especially around more frequent releases. Even execs who can’t yet convince their labels to release more music more often are agreeing. This will be the wave of the future. To emphasize that point, the day after the original post Island released yet another single and video for Justin. That’s 4 videos in 10 months. Also, My World 2.0 not only debuted at #1, but sold about 25% more than expected AND the first record increased in sales by 30%. Here’s the original post:

Justin Bieber mania has arrived. With the release of his new album, My World 2.0, and a sure thing #1 debut, many people are wondering how it happened. Teen phenomenons can certainly happen fast, but rarely without the help of a Disney show in recent years. By my rough calculations, after the first week sales of his new album are accounted for, Justin will have grossed approximately $15 million in total recorded music sales, not including ringtones, streaming revenue, T-shirts or posters in less than 9 months. And that’s just in the United States. For a music business in “trouble” and an artist aimed clearly at teenagers and below, this is a success, especially because the train is really just leaving the station.

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This week, there is a controversy brewing over new Boston rapper Sam Adams. He released a new EP called Boston’s Boy that quickly shot up to #1 on the iTunes Hip Hop album charts and even debuted in the Top 75 of the overall Billboard album chart. Immediately, people have been questioning if the artist/management bought the tracks themselves which Adams not only denies, but provided a 3500 page document showing all the individual sales the song has gotten. It’s been a hot topic of discussions amongst labels and one conversation I had on it has since been immortalized by Bob Lefsetz.

So the question remains…is it real? Let’s look at the evidence:

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This week, RIAA VP of Research Joshua Friedlander wrote a blog entry entitled “Nobody Stole The Pie”. He equated the downfall of the music business to the children’s story of the same name. The story is one where a townsfolk slowly eat away at a celebrated pie before a festival. When it’s all gone by the time of the festival, the residents claim it was “not I” who stole the pie. The parallel is that filetraders have eaten away at the music business pie, and are now claiming it’s not their fault that the music business is in trouble.

Nice story. Nice easy parallel to make for some headlines. If only the analogy were correct. But unfortunately, in order to make his case, Joshua doesn’t quite look at it from the proper angle, in my opinion. He is correct that the pie has whittled away and is working its way down. But while the piemakers (ie record labels) have bemoaned the loss of pie sales, they haven’t fully embraced the true issue.

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Hello there! Ariel Hyatt and Jay Frank here. We’ve been friends for the better part of the past decade. We’ve also enjoyed brainstorming with each other over the future of music, where it’s going, and how do we get there. The funny thing is that our conversations were never doom and gloom. They were always full of hope and possibilities. We’ve always seen the potential for where new artists can go if they only had the right tools. Now, both of us are asked to speak about this around the world, including Canadian Music Week next month in Toronto.

But we also know how difficult it is to pin either of us into any meaningful conversation after a panel when you have 30 seconds to ask your question. And some of you are pretty damn smart and driven. So, the two of us have decided to team up for something pretty damn special…we’d like to take YOU to dinner!

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I took a look at the top 10 selling downloads for January 2010. I was definitely curious to see how my theories of the book were stacking up. Did the theories hold up past the #1 song? Here’s what I found:

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I’ve been asked several times since the release of Futurehit.DNA to show some examples of recent hits and how the book can point out why the song was so successful. No better place to start than the beginning of the year with new pop phenom Ke$ha. While she briefly appeared as a guest on Flo Rida’s “Right Round” hit last year, she basically came from nowhere to being #1 in 5 months with her hit “TiK ToK”. In that span, she sold 2 million downloads, was streamed 45 million times on YouTube alone, and looks poised to have a chart-topping album debut. What made it get so insanely popular so quickly?

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A lot of digital ink has been spilled this week about Google’s new music search. As per usual, the commentary has been how it will affect business, competition, etc. What gets lost is what it actually DOES for your music. If the prognostication proves true that major amounts of music discovery will shift to Google, then what one needs to do to make sure their music gets discovered must also shift. Interestingly, most of what needs to be done has already been outlined in Futurehit.DNA.

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