🎧 For Music, Context is Everything

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Happy Friday everyone!

Back in 1985, if you would have told English artist that her newly dropped single ‘Running Up The Hill’- which hit Top 3 in the UK Singles Chart, would not only remain relevant 40 years later, but earn her $200,000 on a weekly basis from streaming royalties, she would’ve probably asked you what you were smoking 🍁

In the post-streaming era, when artists are finding it increasingly tough to break out from the noise of the 60,000 odd songs released on platforms like Spotify on a daily basis, a 63-year old artist’s song going viral without doing a weird dance routine on TikTok seems to not make any sense 🤷‍♂️

However, that’s exactly what happened.

What do I even mean?

And it indicates a massive shift in how music can be marketed, and how more importantly- ‘Context is Everything’, when it comes to songs going viral in 2022.

When the Netflix show ‘Stranger Things’ included the song ‘Running Up The Hill’ in a pivotal scene for its Season 4 that dropped recently, the song started seeing an uptick in streaming numbers all of a sudden, and unlike usual TV-Show syncs which blow up and then die down, this one seems to not lose fire, just yet 📈

The influence of her song gaining new found fandom isn’t just reflected in the streaming numbers that it has been racking up, but also in that it made the Official Charts Company (OCC)- the organisation that compiles the famous ‘UK Top 40 Chart’ change its rules for how streams are calculated 📊

Running Up the Hill has been gaining streams ever since its Netflix Sync

What exactly was the rule change?

Called the Accelerated Chart Ratio (ACR), it’s a formula designed to make it harder for tracks that have already had a successful run on the UK charts from competing with newer released songs.

Since Running Up That Hill has already had a crack at the UK Top 40 charts back in the 80s, it is now being punished with an ACR penalty.

As a result: it’s premium streams on the UK chart this week were worth 1 ‘sale’ for every 200 plays; while its ad-funded streams were worth 1 ‘sale’ for every 1,200 plays.

In contrast, ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles, which dropped earlier this year, earned 1 ‘sale’ for every 100 premium streams, and 1 ‘sale’ for every 600 ad-funded streams.

In other words, Kate Bush’s track had to attract 2x the streams of Harry Styles’ track to earn the same ‘sale’ units that contribute to the UK weekly chart.

Doesn’t make any sense right?

Thankfully, common sense soon prevailed, and after an official protest lodged by Kate Bush’s team, the rule was manually reset this week, allowing her streams to be counted the same as the newer songs on the chart 👇🏻

https://twitter.com/sdedition/status/1536701175914979329?s=20&t=BoaiNUOpAQ7OUtBqa9P0gw

Context is Everything

In times where artists have found it tough to break out of the noise, classic songs have suddenly become relevant again, in part thanks to Hollywood.

Nirvana released its grunge-rock album ‘ Nevermind’ back in 1991, and changed the course of Rock Music in the 90s, but it’s song ‘Something in the Way’ featured in the latest Batman film, broke into the ‘Billboard Hot 100’, 31 years after it originally released.

Or, take Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ — which racked up over in the fortnight after it became a TikTok sensation via a skateboarding man & a bottle of cranberry juice.

The pure joy radiating from influencer @doggface208 riding a skateboard and drinking cranberry juice with ‘Dreams’ playing in the background, helped a 50 year old song become relevant again 🤷‍♂️

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Our take on this?

There are almost 80 Million songs on streaming platforms on the Internet, with 60,000 songs getting added every single day.

However, it hasn’t been easy for artists to figure out how exactly their music can be marketed organically to help reach the right audience, especially those without Record Labels backing them.

The Top 1% of artists, get more than 90% of the streams, and for independent artists, it’s becoming tougher to break out from this noise.

More than 80% of artists on Spotify have less than 100 monthly listeners

However, as with most things in life, music can mean different things to different people, and context and setting in which a particular song is heard can make a world of difference.

Kate Bush’s 1985 single was probably dusting off the shelf, and being listened to sporadically by an older age-group, before being featured on ‘Stranger Things’.

However, the newly added context behind the song exposed it to a generation that wouldn’t have ever heard it before, and the rest is history. The same holds true for Nirvana’s ‘Something in the Way’ and ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac as well.

In today’s era of more music being available than ever before, curation and context is starting to play an important role in discovery.

Would you be more inclined to listening to a song that a random Spotify suggestion throws, or one that your friend whose music taste you vibe with strongly recommends?

I bet it’s the latter for most of us.

Renowned Music Curator for HBO TV Shows Scott Vener seems to agree with us on this too

Be it music appearing in movies, being used on TikTok or Instagram Reels, or getting featured in the right playlist curated by someone who’s taste you vibe with, the same song can mean entirely something else- given the right context.

And the sooner artists and marketing mangers of these artists can figure what context works best for their clients, instead of everyone trying to blow up on TikTok, it can probably help them reach the right audience.

We at Incentify are building a platform that enables just that, and takes away bias from the recommendations on streaming platforms, with our unique user generated ‘ Clubs’

Clubs let you share & chat about all things music with other users sharing similar tastes, giving much needed ‘Context’ around songs Sign Up for Early Access now 👇🏻

That’s it for this week folks, have a good weekend 🍻

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Originally published at https://incentify.substack.com on June 24, 2022.