A Little Knowledge… #19

📬 BULLETIN NEWS: New study explores impact of user-centric music payouts

There has been lots of debate about whether ‘user-centric’ payouts, where the royalties from each individual music-streaming subscriber would only go to the music they listen to, would be an improvement for the music industry. And crucially, for musicians.

• The latest study attempting to understand the potential impact of this model was commissioned by Pro Musik, a German organisation representing freelance musicians. Called ‘Payment Option Transparency’, you can read it online here.
• Among the headline findings: across the 18 countries studied for the research, its authors estimate that as much as 32.6% of the total royalties from music subscriptions could be redistributed under a user-centric system.
• By its reckoning, 29.3% of artists would see their royalties increase by 40% or more under any such change from the current ‘pro rata’ model, including 19% who would double their streaming earnings.
• But: Pro Musik’s report estimates that 38.8% of artist profiles would see their royalties decrease by more than 40% under a change to user-centric.
• It’s complex, and not as simple as ‘big artists lose and small artists win’ or ‘major-label artists lose and independent artists win’ or even ‘pop and hip-hop artists lose and jazz/classical/rock artists win’.

It’s a long and detailed report – and there are some slider bars that artists can play with on the report’s website as a way of understanding how user-centric payouts might affect their income.

👉 Music Ally archive: User-centric

🛠️ TOOLS: Free tools to help you grow an audience on TikTok

We’ve dug into the archive and pulled out something useful for anyone looking to gain traction, impact – and an audience – on TikTok. You can’t simply throw a load of content at TikTok and hope: strategy is key and music marketers have a growing number of tools available to refine their artist’s strategy. This issue of Tools walks you through a few super-useful free tools you can utilise, including some expert advice for getting the most from TikTok's Creative Center:

• In Creative Centre, you'll find a link to related videos using a hashtag, insights into the age range of the audience as well as their related interests, the top regions for the hashtag, related hashtags, and trending creators who are also using it. 
• In this way, you’ll be able to be much more strategic with your artist’s usage of any given hashtag. 
• Song insights work in a similar fashion, providing a list of the Top 100 songs on TikTok in a given country. 
• Bear in mind that this does not include user-generated sounds. In order to find these, we recommend the apps TrendTok or vidIQ for TikTok.

There’s a lot more in-depth information in this issue of Tools, as well as profiles of vidIQ for TikTok and TikBuddy.

👉 Read the full Tools piece here 

🤔 A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA...

And finally… our daily Bulletin newsletter is loved by subscribers for its instant industry analysis - but secretly, the part they like most is the ‘A Little Something Extra’ section at the bottom of the email. Here's a few of the best recent links:

• Wanna be servin' somethin'? Michael Jackson plays tennis.
• We want to sip like common people! We want to brew whatever common people brew! And now we can, as Britpop veterans Pulp are launching their own tea.
• Good news if you're one of our MANY readers still playing an Atari 2600 from the late seventies. It's getting its first official new cartridge game since 1990!

This is only a glimpse into this week's newsletter – subscribe for FREE to The Knowledge and every Friday it’ll arrive in your inbox, with:

🎓 Updates on the latest courses in our LEARNING HUB 🛠️ The best new platforms in TOOLS, 🌍 Highlights from our latest COUNTRY PROFILE REPORTS 😵 💫 Some great and/or strange music in SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND, 🕰 A look back in TIME MACHINE, 🎧 The Music Ally Focus PODCAST, and 🤔 more links to our favourite unusual stuff in A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA.