 it's the mat work. Wow what's up everybody welcome to music news that matters we're on the first of each month we help you sift through the noise to bring you the most important industry news. We know there's so much information out there but we're going to focus on topics that matter most to you guys and as always we'll give you our perspective as well it'll come as no surprise today that we're talking about coronavirus and if that's going to have on you guys and the music industry as a whole. Yeah and of course before we get started since these videos only go up once a month make sure you sign up to our newsletter and even more importantly to get notified of with the latest news of these clips and other clips hit the notification bell. And we're also on Spotify and on other streaming platforms as well now you can listen to us on the go in podcast format finally you can listen back to a few of the episodes and of course any future ones as well. There we go there we go man so what do we have today because obviously there's been just a lot going on I mean actually before we even get into how the industry is being affected by corona and some of the dope things you see some companies doing that artists can be affected and infected by how has corona affected your lifestyle. Well I had supposed to be on holiday this week and and the previous week as well so that's all been impacted especially doing a travel around Europe so that was obviously off the cards and then had a few other problems with you know living with other friends who've lost their jobs and things and it's just a quite serious time for everyone. Man so in I don't what is it like in the UK period as far as the climate I want obviously I'm in the US mostly in Georgia but I've been in LA and Atlanta back and forth throughout this particular period and over here LA seems to be ahead of everybody right I watch LA for what's probably going to happen next or where I'm at in Atlanta right just because I mean that's just where most of the concentration of cases I've been seeing and I made it out in time just before they got super crazy with the airports there was one period where they started to test a lot of everybody but had them standing up and close together right in closed quarters as they waited in line to get tested which just seemed antithetical to the whole purpose of all this but but yeah man they've shut things down pretty quickly in comparison LA or California but I guess LA specifically and in Washington those are the two states that seem to be getting hit the hardest. Yeah so we're here in London we've been on full lockdown since last Monday so about 10 days now you can only go out like once a day and you go out to the only the essential shops are open for like food and things. Once a day how did they know if you went out more than one time that's crazy. Well there's a lot of police presence around but I guess obviously they're just keeping an eye out in like the public areas like parks and stuff to make sure you don't see people going out for more than one walk. I'm not really sure how it's quite going but it's very very quiet everywhere around here and I was already on lockdown the week before that because like two people in my office at work got coronavirus so but I got the all clear like in terms of isolation like last Friday so I didn't get it luckily but yeah so it's been like it's been in this room for a while now yeah. How many times have you gone out of the house every day? You said once a day? Yeah once a day you're allowed to yeah at the moment but for how long? But before that I couldn't go out anyway because I potentially had it so I couldn't actually go out until like last Friday so I've only been able to go out for the last few days. Sheesh is there like a time period on how long you can actually be out? Not that I'm aware of it it always isn't really being pleased too heavily I know there's been some more there's been some strong words from the government recently about you know clamping down on it because a lot of people obviously have been you know taking the face of it but yeah so I think you might get more serious now as we you know because we're getting more and more cases like and yesterday we had the most deaths in a day so. Whoa how many was that number? Well he tested me now I don't know I'll have to offer my head. Okay but I do know unfortunately that yeah like a 13 year old died from yesterday so it's affecting the young people as well you know you're not invincible if you're yeah yeah. Yeah man this thing is definitely serious I have some people close to me that might be affected it's not official um do the test that's the crazy part about it it's an odd time right because it's also in line with allergy season here and on top of that pollen has been crazier than it's been in years so you don't know where why people are sneezing are you sneezing because of pollen or are you sneezing because of corona or you know of course there's more than just sneezing but all these different types of symptoms and anything you do right people were like oh okay what's going on you know don't look at me too much right um but this uh it's definitely an interesting time to say the least obviously it's a factor to the uh industry um and of course as we were talking about before the call there's quite a few companies taking some interesting approaches to it which which you know it can be good and bad you know depending on how you look at things but you know capitalism always rears its ugly head here and there so what do you have for us today? Well I thought we'd start maybe more from like an artist and independent musician perspective about what you can do because obviously I know the irony is that time is always the biggest enemy for you know for artists and yet suddenly you presented with all this time to really like sort of re-evaluate and focus on certain things you were wanting to do so you've always been you've always wanted to get on tiktok or you've always wanted to learn a particular instrument you know now is a good time is there to do that but at the same time you do need to you know be able to live and that's the problem of a lot of musicians that statement about tiktok man not just the artists though that's everybody so I think like so tiktok it's like seeing a a rise in this period because there's been this time where tiktok has been marketed and branded to people for a while now and they've started to see it on instagram popping up but it's just this app this is it takes it's a barrier right to convert to something and change your behavior especially when you're in your normal pattern don't have time to really get into something like that now that time is there and people are going to go in ahead and creating their first tiktoks a lot of their first tiktoks are actually coronavirus related tiktoks because there were some challenges that have been popping but it's been interesting to see that rise to your point even with artists now having time to create there's having there's a lot of time for people to act on not just watching certain videos but actually act on joining platforms or other things that they didn't have the time to do so with before it's important to say that music streaming is down and video consumption is up so that is where you should be telling your attention to you right now obviously it's not down drastic music streaming is down in terms of like you know the rates but video consumption is on the app it's not drastic why do you think that is well I think a lot of people listen to music on their commutes and also we're not getting that anymore yeah think of all the workers who do that and at the same time obviously you're at home you never use to get the opportunity to watch videos while you're at work normally but now seeing a lot of people have been had used your mind in the background or have had Netflix on or on tiktok yeah that's exactly my theory man outside of also the clubs and events and things of that nature music gets played just the fact that so much of it gets played while people are at work and now hey since my boss isn't over my shoulder I could turn on a full-blown video like that that yeah that part has has helped Netflix out more than it's helped Spotify and also on the um on the music streaming platform like front obviously people are looking to cut costs now like so especially businesses and you know music subscriptions can be one of the first things that goes because it's not essential it's gonna be one of the first things they cut out right it's not essential but Netflix is I mean I'm not that from a business point of view they're gonna cut yeah they're gonna yeah I mean from from people's point of views probably not but yeah from obviously you're gonna lose a lot of a lot of subscriptions and you know and business from that yeah yeah I was thinking about that the other day I wonder what those numbers look like it'll be cool to maybe check out on some of those numbers before we meet up next time yeah because I was saying I saw today that globally streaming is actually up again but in the US it's been falling every week for the past like three weeks interesting yeah I have no thoughts or like even ideas on where to start why the US versus other places are having that pattern yeah kind of do some deep diving yeah exactly but going back to tiktok yeah I'll see a lot of they're getting way way way more downloads now and a lot more celebrities have been joining in the past a couple of weeks and that's what that's where all the attention is right now yeah hey man a conspiracy theorist would say tiktok started this right may have china time yeah there's a few yeah there's a few theories like there's one as well disney plus just launched in europe a couple of weeks ago so yeah that's another good one yeah oh man that's hilarious all right so what do we have I see this Spotify you said they're making they're helping people raise money or helping artists raise money because you know we were talking last episode a lot about you know adding like tipping feature and how that would you know how it could be good but it would also be really bad but um right but now I decided it's freaking sorry my bad no you're all good um so they've decided to add a little fundraising option like a link into your like artist profile it's not come out yet but it's been rolling out very soon so the idea is that where you have the social media links you'll see now like a fundraising link so I guess you can link to your patreon or to record your supporting or a charity or another form of donation okay because when I first heard that I assumed to be honest that that link would still be something that Spotify had ownership of but I'm not sure okay I don't know it's gonna be I assume it's gonna be next sterling takes you away from the platform because Spotify aren't taking a cut of any of this that's that's what I said yeah that's been confirmed they're not taking a cut that's so I think it's gonna take you off-platform other than inside the app got you okay so then that might hmm that could be I wonder if it's gonna be pre-approved at urls is gonna be partnership like hey we're doing this with patreon and you do it on patreon because then there's still some kind of you know way there's benefit right just you know just as a business from Spotify it's understandable you're a business you have to act as a business so I don't I don't fault it but also with that in mind it is not through specific partnerships it also seems that people can use that url if it's just a like a url capability then people can use that url for anything you know just go to the their ig versus the fundraising so I'm interested to see how that acts exactly I was thinking it might be you could even put a patreon link or link to your store on your website or link to a cause or charity you can do I'll get I think you can be I think you'll be able to do what you'd like with it um but my biggest issue with this is that on the mobile app you don't you have to go into the you click their bio to get to those social media links and I reckon you'd have to go there to get the link as well because there are no links or shortcuts on the actual main profile page of an artist profile so where is this link going to be right true yeah that you know the execution of it maybe it'll be the thought that count the thought that counts because obviously it's hard for that to just interrupt the user behavior for people to actually click on it and see it naturally with so it'll probably be artists having to just vocally make it a thing or maybe Spotify in some sense can make it a thing and announce it so then people would actively look forward you know what I would like is you know when you go in the profile it's got like um follow there should be like a support me button next to it maybe and also you know where you get the new thing you can now like do a little um message it says like my new single out now that come you know their little message you come up above a single you can promote maybe they maybe they can promote the funding through that instead rather than just a new single announcement or album announcement wait so explain that one more time so you know on a profile page you can get um a little message you come up saying my new single is out now like and it'll be like a promotion maybe you could do you know the funding call to call to action there instead but I think what I'd like to see is you know artist name you know where it says follow I have another button next to it it says like support me got that that's what I'd like to see but that I think I can agree with your thoughts on that I haven't seen any of Spotify's fleshed out thoughts on this one yet so I'll just have to assume they haven't said anything like that yet based on what you're saying huh no it just sounds like it's my interpretation is it's going to be like a link external link so like you know when you go on to Facebook Twitter or Instagram you know clicking it takes you to their profile which is in their bio section of the of the app I reckon it's going to be in there has there been anybody that you like their approach in terms of the music world in response to coronavirus I loved I loved um band camp you know during the day where they removed all you know they removed their cut their percentage because obviously a lot a lot more people went on supported all the artists on there artists put exclusive stuff on there release a lot of stems and and merchant things and you know they had they had an insane amount of traffic on their site that day how much of a cut does band camp take typically I think it might be it's at least 15 percent I think um off of streams or or other I think it's I think it's all I think it's all sales I think okay I'm now looking just to confirm don't want to get it wrong um when this eventually loads but yeah I really like that idea of having that that Friday where they you know they removed all the remove the barriers essentially and and the fans are not as responded so yeah and it's simple fun rating to help support the live sector and record stores yeah that's dope I mean I for one I love how simple that is just because this these type of things right it's hard to do a rollout for right it's kind of like look you do you have to do it give people the period to benefit from it and if people have an education curve on making that happen they're it can miss you know miss the mark not only from the fans being willing to support on a certain level but even artists even understanding the the complete value of it and how to mobilize their fans to support them yeah just go back to band camp so it's 15 cut usually but the way they move down this day and they usually so they usually sell about 47 000 items um they bought fans bought nearly 800 000 items that day which is like 4.3 million dollars worth of music and merch 4.3 million dollars 15 times our normal Friday at the peak fans are buying 11 items per second on this one day good lord that is beautiful yeah you might want to figure out how to do something like that once a year or I don't know maybe not that specifically yeah they said we're going from 10 percent I mean for 15 percent to like 2 percent yeah many of the labels also gave 100 percent of the proceeds to the artists that day as well so it really was a case of the whole industry coming together um we had to go from 47 000 to 800 000 items in a day 4.3 million dollars yeah I was well done I know that sound cloud are doing a lot as well a lot of partnerships with like twitch and reducing the sound cloud pro membership by 50 percent and things um there's so many different causes going on it's good to see you know them they're more reacting and and responding I know there's a lot of criticism for Spotify right now not doing enough that there's a lot of calls for them to at least triple the royalty rate at the moment yeah Spotify is typically slow to respond to everything it seems like they're they're figuring it out there's so many stakeholders in Spotify I think that's what makes it so difficult at times hmm we should see this feature within the next couple of weeks I'd imagine because they made an impressive release about it on 25th of March about this um feature so it should come out soon you can you can fill out this type form form and it'll notify you when it's going to be available um I'll put a link to that in the newsletter well so that's where they're at with that right now we'll have to see but it's just interesting we were talking about tipping you know one month ago all this has happened since then and now it looks like it might be getting rushed forward very quickly but not quite in the way we imagined all right I think that's a happy medium right there actually um for Spotify to just do that now they say look we allow you to get out there and use it this way we don't have anything to do with what you do over there yeah exactly yeah and and no cut either they don't not take a yeah like that that way they like our hands are completely clean exactly and another another one um loom have uh increased their they also they launched the virtual currency notes back in January which you talked about in the podcast before um they're now offering 200 free notes to all users and artists like everyone everyone who joins everyone's already on there right now and a note is equivalent to slightly higher than the royalty rate I'm mostly in platforms so I'm not quite sure these act like number is I guess it's like 0.04 I don't know something like that so 200 notes is how many dollars um let me look at the you gotta do the math yeah I have um the maths it always slows us down if I take I'm gonna that's gonna take a look at Spotify's current royalty rate because I know we know it's slightly more than that but so that's okay we'll do we'll take the higher one so okay so that would be about $1.1 200 notes is one yeah got it um what they're also doing is any notes you then buy on the app they're gonna give you an extra uh I think it's they're gonna match up to 20% of that to say you bought yeah if you bought 100 notes you'd actually have 120 notes which is I mean it's really awesome of them man I love what they are all they're because they've been trying to figure out ways to benefit artists um you know just from the advent like we already talked to had that conversation which is really cool because now it seems like the rest of the industry is kind of catching up with what they are already doing what I'm curious to see is will they be the only ones who just happen to continue to do it or will some people make this a permanent um aspect of their business in some form of fashion maybe not to the extremity of hey we're going to do no cut of your sales for a day um every year every month or whatever that may be but if they still incorporate some version of that it would be interesting to see if these other companies or it alone ends up being the only one after all the deaths that was because it's important to stress that although obviously you know it's not a lot it's only one dollar but it's important to stress that leave me know they're a very small company they only launched like last july they're only on iphone in the u.s right now um they've just got they've got a few minutes on there but they're for going all profits to fund this they're there you know they're that's what they're that's what they're doing right now so you have to give them full credit it's a little bit but every little helps saying yeah 100 and again this is this is more ingrained into their culture than any other other app so i'm always rooting for the the whole mission that they have and i'm just curious to see how artists leverage well not actually not even only leveraging and react to this particular statement or this moment went with the loom but even just the whole the app the app as a whole all right um i know of course they don't have android yet and android is still the greatest market share all your apple users i know i know you know you think and apple is so much cooler but the reality is still that the vast majority of the market shares is android although most apps usually come out first on my apple so that might might play huge until their growth um trajectory as well so there's a lot to kind of continue to watch i want to get deeper into like the loom analysis and things like that but yeah it's it's it's dope that they that they're you know benefiting in their own way i'm just happy to see these artists none of these artists these companies actually doing something a lot faster than i thought they would have have any others that you've noticed that you've been quite impressed with uh did i've been impressed with well how about not so impressed with how about yeah how about we go down that route then well so far it's just Spotify in terms of not so impressed with just um in just the time but i they're still on the clock i don't i'm not counting them completely out just shit i didn't i actually haven't known about most of these when it comes to soundcloud and bancap i didn't know about those i forgot with what audio boom did i believe they did something audio boom audio what is it i can't remember the name of that platform oh man um but no i haven't there hasn't been anybody that i've been wholly impressed with to some reason i've missed a lot of the news with people's reaction i've been watching more the labels specifically than the and you know the middleman company that kind of working between artists and label yes i'll see it consumers and labels it's been interesting that there's been a lot of announcements like last week and this week about you know sort of label deals and stuff because obviously 10 cent just bought 10 percent in year in universal music group that's now gone lies yeah i would say that 10 cent was opportunistic and took advantage of a sale you know a discount but you know those those deals don't necessarily happen overnight they were already kind of probably having those conversations this just made made things move a little faster still i imagine so you said 10 cent owns 10 percent of universal yeah they already own a percentage of other labels already didn't they another i can't remember i don't think not not of not of warner or um sony but okay or maybe i would i had just been hearing about the universal thing early on or something like that then obviously they own a lot of they own a lot of the age you know the Asian market a lot of these are like equity swaps too it seems like when you see record labels do business with these types of companies so i wonder if universal has any of 10 cent maybe less of a share or something like that but i wonder um because that seems to be the mo for a lot of these types of deals that's clearly a move to get into the Asian market more isn't it tough more represents there um yeah yeah i mean also just preservation because the reality is i've been saying for a minute it's going to be a tech driven company that over comes like the traditional music industry those labels right those are the threat labels only really have their intellectual property and that allows them to buy time and to prevent people right from really forgetting about them and out evolving that old model that most people pretty much don't agree makes sense anymore so with that being their leverage though they still can't fight what technology companies do because they don't even think the same right this is more about protection and profit maximization versus technology which is like i have to innovate i have to innovate i have to get into the market i have to build be consumer facing think consumer first versus the the other method so there's always this conflict where it's going to be a tech company that you know gets down the get they'll get down the field a label will get involved slow it down and maybe they'll overtake it right and then while they're slowing down this company another tech company is going to get out there and they're like oh wait where did that one come from right and then in some way form of fashion they'll get involved and like that'll there'll be that cycle just because of how labels think and kind of how their business is set up unless there becomes a point where they fully accept and mold themselves into what new industry looks like but i think being involved with companies like 10 cent allows them to be more agile and more receptive to front end change so that was just one of three big announcements from labels this week another one is that tiktok's now got a temporary license with the three major labels universal warner and sony so they've been operating without a license for like the least since last summer at least because it ran out yeah in last summer you said a temporary license or an appointment yeah temporary license they've been operating without one since i'm not quite sure how long but um they haven't had one that's the bottom line since like last spring yeah so they've been so this has finally been smoothed over because they don't want to do a deal with them because they weren't happy about the payment they were getting they thought they were getting shafted yeah yeah i mean it was smart i i think that it was a smart move because at the end of the day they did it with what we tell so many artists to do right like build your leverage continue to grow now we're pretty much too big to fail in the music industry's eyes there's too much going on there's too much impact that you're making we have to get involved and do business with this company um in some form of fashion and although we would have screwed them before they didn't take that early deal continue their growth now we have leverage you have to respect us a little bit more so it's it's interesting that they did that because i i remember hearing that they didn't have a license i didn't know that they were i actually didn't think that they were gonna have a license this soon but that's probably just my ignorance of some of the process of um yeah and and some of the legal implications but it was probably worth it all right yeah well fighting yeah well yeah yeah and and the other one is that warner and spotify finally patched things up their son a new deal has been a bit of tension between them since it all goes back to like last january when spotify launched in india and spotify went ahead and put warner's catalog on there about them striking a deal so warner took spotify to court it went all the way to court um claiming that you know that i'm trying to get it shut down and um spotify ended up coming out on top on in that battle even though they even know they'd taken it about warns permission so it's been a very frosty relationship since then but now they've finally patched things up somewhat so so what was the patching of things like where did that look like i like i'm not entirely sure but i know it was a massive thing like like yeah last january they had a real bust up because spotify got ahead and launched with all the major catalogs in india and warner chapel and warner you know hadn't reached an agreement so since then they've continued to have the catalog but um they were taught you know last spring someone that warner were gonna pull their catalog from spotify and things it was always big um okay they weren't on good terms essentially got it now they have reached a new agreement and signed a new deal so got you see again there's that leverage that spotify us because yeah exactly hey it's like are you really going to miss out on this money they had they had your dasi to launch we know about the permission of their catalog before so yeah that's how that's how strong they feel and they got away with it so yeah and they probably they you know i'm sure there are some calculations that it's not like they just they knew that exactly yeah it's interesting because obviously these yeah all these three deals got announced this week seems very strange timing what's going on in the world to have these big announcements be finalized but it's like you know everyone's feeling a bit more generous and a bit of goodwill right now i don't know no no no no not at all it's everybody's a little bit more scared yeah well it is it is it is strange but yeah that's that's all happening in the space of one week so yeah some of these things aren't worth continuing in this period i believe i think it's more than that and it's more protection yeah at this point like yo you know let's go ahead and figure this out because we have bigger fish to fry right now yeah so that's what's going on on labels right now um and yeah i get i guess another thing to touch upon is you know what i can do right now in this period we know we'd be proud of a few tips on yourself from quarry in the newsletter to wonder what your main thoughts were on what the most important things to focus on are right now right well number one my primary thing that i must say is actually do not get caught up in these opportunistic ideas hey this market is doing this this market is doing that you need to invest over here don't split up the money that you probably barely had to go towards your career into these things that you really don't know about it looks good it looks like it's cheap or you should get in now people are saying this people are marketing to you so they can take their money the experts will win you who know nothing and should have been studying five to ten years before this moment in whatever that industry is will be a loser outside of being lucky which is something that you can't plan for so you know and heads down continue to move forward and grow and and focus on how you can win and gain through what you're already working on in this case we hope and we hope that it's art right um your music and if you started running campaigns like there is opportunity when we talk about facebook and youtube having you know um a lower cost because in certain aspects and depending on what your targeting looks like that's a very real thing but again although you don't have to have as long as a start in terms of learning the industry like you would have to go learn those other spaces you still need to be going through your process of i'm going to run this ad test this ad optimize it and then i can say yo let me go crazy and take advantage of um you know lower cost of advertising because you don't want to scale a bad ad still that's cheap but no exactly targeted so those are my like primary things to focus on is more like philosophical and mentality wise that's first and foremost of course we talk about some other things in this letter as well you know i'll just say take this time to sort of you know educate yourself a bit more rather than you know jumping straight into your things obviously it's so tempting you know now you've got this time but you also have got this time now to learn certain areas of marketing that have interested you before in the past you haven't deep dived into necessarily right and obviously there's plenty of material out there plenty of courses plenty of videos like this one um but yeah just take just take some time and also you need to strike that balance as well of also taking some relaxation time also reassessing your most important goals in life as well where you're at now and obviously financial is also very important time and there is plenty of support out there as well as plenty of support groups out there and plenty of like networking groups and also quite a lot of like um covid 19 relief funds for in the music industry if you have you've been touring a lot recently your tours have been cancelled you know you can apply for help there's plenty of information out there to help you with that yeah that's dope let's definitely take advantage of those types of programs you've got one in the news letter from um music cares and also put a few links as well into other other sites as well other funds that are also giving out financial support if you're eligible so definitely look into that and i'll see a lot of people right now see jumping on you know live streams um see else is it goes about saying you know you can you can reach new audiences now and you can form for your you can nurture your current fans you know nurture those relationships and have a bit of fun with it basically you know be creative yeah yeah figure out how to do that for you try to get more creative than just going live you can do the regular lives but i urge artists please be artsy creative still please be creative and figure out what to do deeper than just what everybody else is doing how can you make your life an experience yeah totally agree with that because obviously it's such a congested market or that right now it's just how can you stand out what can you do in obviously within obviously you know limitation inspired creativity you know inspiration so you know you may be stuck in your apartment but you have the opportunity to you know what you can make you can make music you know with sounds and and think utilities like in your house so you can be you can make use of the space and you know just and have fun with it most importantly people want to see some some joy at the moment really in this time that's what they're looking for 100 100 percent and also it's a good time to write music as well right now you know no little distractions so can't go in the studio but you can certainly write yeah yeah yeah i mean i know some people are doing collapse over zoom so that's also them to consider also i've been seeing a lot of this i don't know it's big in the u.s but house party is really becoming very popular right now wait what the movie no house party is in the platform like you play it's like zoom but you play quizzes on there but your friends and stuff it's one of those type of yeah i was wondering about one of those kind of platforms because i can't remember the one that i used to play um use when i was in high school but it was one that i used to play so many cool games with people that that you know were either i never met before or just some people my friends while i was at home so i'm gonna check out house party and i hope i hope it scratches my itch i think it's the second most downloaded app in the uk right now oh wow so it's great i haven't even checked out myself yet but it is yeah it's taking off as there's also some concerns about security though there's been a lot of coverage in the news this week how safe is it yeah always yeah even zooms had the problems with that as well so and i'll see a lot of people a lot of businesses are using that at the moment but right it's a very interesting time i didn't i didn't think one month ago we'd be recording this type of episode that's for sure obviously i know it obviously is a big deal then but it wasn't quite where it's like now yeah yeah it wasn't world changing just yet no but um certainly it goes without saying everyone just you know stay safe and follow the you know the authorities advice cool well that was yet another episode of music news that matters pre-check you guys are tuning in whether you're on Spotify or YouTube make sure again you hit that notification bell so you'd be notified of future episodes and also the other brand-name network content look forward to speaking with you next month josh you have your t-shirt on yep take care everyone peace it's the matwork