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How to determine if a song has potential

Started by Dagge, March 28, 2017, 02:20:46 PM

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Dagge

I wonder if this is a specific way to determine if a song has commercial potential, is it likeable etc. On Youtube Top stars songs have between 0.3 and 1% likes on average, very rarely does it go above 1% and sometimes this number is even less than 0.3%. On a Soundcloud this number goes between 1 and 2% for Top stars and between 0.5 and 1.5% for enthusiasts.

What those numbers say to you. Does it mean that if a song has small number of views but same percentage of likes, that there is only a matter of marketing and PR effort to make it equally successful.

Another thing, if certain songs have so massive number of views we may suppose that people like them. But why the percentags of likes stays the same. Why people that really like a song don't click on a Like more often. I for example always click Like on a song that I feel appealing. Is this all really only about marketing?

SongsByGROVER

Very interesting proposition, using video stats mathematically to find patterns... investigate and lemme know if there's strong correlations :D

Though, at the point it's already released, one should already know if it has commercial potential... it's too late by then to start polling. You'd really just have to show it to a focus group to be certain.. or more easily, to a small number of tastemakers.

Also, i have it on good authority that often the first million or so plays on major label youtube releases are by bots... was speaking to a guy who was the guy the labels employed to build these bots! Have you ever seen a major label pop video on youtube more than a month old without at least a million views, even by artists you've never heard of? Me neither. So i never believe any play counts or likes as being real (and same goes for spotify, soundcloud, everything)

Neal Sabel

That's interesting but you are placing a lot of emphasis on whether the song is statistically significant to deem it has potential.  The truth is the artist or songwriter must know themselves whether they have created a truly great song or not, they have to use their own intuition and be honest at all times.  I would even recommend a songwriter or artist technically trying to evaluate their own song.  For example they can ask themselves questions such as is the mix of the song reflective of the sound they want to create? Do the lyrics capture the essence of the song? Is the melody ear catching or interesting enough? 

Then the rest is up to marketing.  Who are your fans? How can you reach them? Bots are one way to get your song up the search rankings but what good is having millions of plays from people who aren't really interested in your music but just happen to click on your song/video.  In my book, it's always better to try and create real fans even if that means a lot fewer plays, but real fans will support you, potentially even forever. 

A lot of what record labels do is manufactured.  I wonder if it wasn't for mass marketing how many real fans would these "manufactured" artists really have?


SongsByGROVER

Quote from: Neal Sabel on April 12, 2017, 09:34:15 PM
Bots are one way to get your song up the search rankings but what good is having millions of plays from people who aren't really interested in your music but just happen to click on your song/video.   


Rather than SEO, it's actually a concept called "social proof"... if a song has millions of plays people are more likely to click on it... only hipsters like bands that don't ALREADY have fans (pretty much, in marketing terms at least). It's exactly the same as "the boyband effect" where if they show girls (actresses) screaming at the boyband in all the music videos, then girls in real life will start to do the same. That was a big part of 90s marketing, so in a way kinda responsible for starting the careers of Max et al, haha!

Neal Sabel

" if a song has millions of plays people are more likely to click on it"

Yes you have a point but if I was looking for something specific than the actual title itself would attract me more rather than the number of views or plays it had.  For example if you were looking for apple trees which would you click on first?  The title "Trees from around the world" with a million views or "Apple trees from around the world" with only 10 views.  If you have 5 minutes to spare to quickly check out a video then you might not get the specific information you need by clicking on the first title, but you know just from the title that the second video will be more useful.  Also social proof is more oriented to popularity but people have many unique different tastes that aren't always covered by what is popular.  If you want to hear "French disco music with exotic wind instruments" is there necessarily going to be a popular video with millions of hits that covers that, I think not. 

To elaborate, there's no substitution in creating your own musical brand that identifies you uniquely from the pack.  The better you are at branding yourself with a unique musical identify, the more specific fans you can attract and the more real fans you have the more sales you can expect to achieve.