Growth Hacking in the Music Industry

Thinking orthogonally again, a really great trend that comes more from the technology world but is a great one to also bring into the music world is this concept called growth hacking. The overlying idea behind growth hacking is this sense of taking areas of marketing and creating things that we’ve always described as completely disparate things. For example, being in the studio, getting my message out, advertising, doing data analyses, looking at who is resonating with my stuff — we’ve traditionally thought of these as separate phases and that they each happen only once.

Growth Hacking in Music Education

Growth hacking says, “Not so fast.” That process can be cyclical and going on all the time. If I have enough songs and am putting out a song today, I can look at how people resonate with it and who’s resonating with it, and that can influence the song that I’m putting out next month.

And we just keep going around. It doesn’t have to be so isolated. A really great example of who’s done growth hacking well is anyone who makes a change to their product that sort of does the marketing for them. Remember this as you continue your online music education.

Guarantee Your Plays with Quant-Based Marketing

Before releasing work in the music industry, something really important I recommend doing is called “quant-based marketing.” It’s basically this idea of literally plotting out how you’re going to get the amount of traffic that you would like to get before ever releasing music. What we really want to avoid is putting out a song, and then first starting to market it, and getting a certain amount of traffic. A music journalist or an influencer wants to feel like they’re getting to cover something new.

The first thing to do is to establish a goal. Let’s say you want to put out a song soon. Say you would like in the first four weeks to get, say, 50,000 streams. That’s totally cool. We just need to reverse engineer how you’re going to get that. So what I’m going to do is pick a few outlets, influencers, things I either have relationships to or people that I’m starting to build relationships with, and I’m going to look at their audience size. If you’re a student at a university, a great place to start is to see if there’s a school paper or a school blog at your university, even if you’re in online music education. Would it be relatively easy to look up the editor’s email address and send them a message, asking to be covered in it?

Next, I would look up the traffic amount; what is the audience size of that school paper? In music education, you’ll find there’s a great website called SimilarWeb. Amazon has a tool called Alexa, where you can check the traffic counts of different websites. So, let’s say your school is getting 100,000 unique visitors a month. Basically, you can think of it like this: if the school paper writes an article about me, in theory, 100,000 people could be seeing that article about you and your song.

The next part of it is sort of trying to guess how many people would actually convert from that. So even though 100,000 people might see that article, maybe only 10% will click on it. So that gets us down to 10,000 people actually seeing your article. Now, they’re reading your article. The question is how many of those people are actually going to click on the song? That was your goal all along. Maybe 10% of that 10,000, so let’s say a thousand people end up being converted to your song if you’re featured in your school paper. That’s amazing.

We know that beforehand, even if our goal is 50,000 hits and we just got a thousand, we’re on our way. Now, we just need to do that five, six, ten, fifteen more times with different kinds of outlets. Doing all that before deciding what the release date is is huge, because then the release date comes, and you know what? You can sleep really soundly knowing you’re not guessing. You’ve pretty much guaranteed the amount of traffic you’re going to get. This is going to be a very big difference between artists that are really disheartened by the response they get versus ones who know that it’s starting at a certain point and hopefully grows from there.

Hospitality Riders and Preparing for a Music Show

When you’re booking a show, there are a whole lot of actions you need to take before you actually get into the venue on the day of the show, and one of those actions is called advancing. To do this, you write an email to the venue in preparation for your show with your tech rider, your hospitality rider, your questions about the run of the show, and any other information you may have, including your stage plot as well as your input list.

The hospitality rider is often what the band sends to the venue to make sure that they’re hydrated, and that they have everything they need in terms of a backstage setup. That includes water, drink tickets, towels, a mirror, chairs, and other things you might need to make sure that you take care of yourself in order to put on the best performance that you can.

In some cases, hospitality riders can actually be pretty funny. Some people will put that they only want green M&Ms. Some people will put that on Monday, they would like Doritos, and on Tuesday, they would like Ruffles. Some people have puzzles on their riders. They like to keep things fresh backstage and have something to do. A lot of people have newspapers from the area on their riders. Some people have even put kittens and puppies on their riders and actually received them.

One of the most important things to remember when you walk into a venue is that you are in control of your show. I don’t mean that you need to be overconfident about the way that you take up space in the room. What I do mean is that your kindness to your bandmates, your kindness to the employees of the venue, the front-of-house engineer, and everyone else who’s working is really paramount to everything else. You are in control by the way that you treat everybody and the way that your generosity comes through while playing the show.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how artists interact with venues, in addition to many concepts and lessons about working and succeeding in the music industry, think about giving online music education a try. This is the only form of music education that requires nothing more than an internet connection, and ideally a passion for the subject.

The Stay: Luxury Shared Spaces

It isn’t only Airbnb. Other brands have attempted to enter the sharing space—the sharing economy for lodging.

Oasis Collection is one of them. Oasis has attempted to accomplish something similar to Airbnb by utilizing unused capacity. They’ve attempted to design it in a manner that is distinct from Airbnb. While Airbnb tries to offer any type of rental goods, Oasis has defined the kind of product they want to sell on their platform, which is why they call it the Oasis Collection.

Another intriguing aspect of Oasis is the variety of destinations available. They also strive to build a member club where individuals can go if they rent one of their products in a specific location. So, for example, you might rent a curated apartment in Marbella, Spain. Marbella is well-known as a hotspot for nightlife enthusiasts. So you’d go there, rent the Oasis apartment, and at the same time, you’d be able to go to the Oasis club once a week for an all-night party. And you’re only permitted to visit because you’ve rented an Oasis.

Another notable feature of that concept is those apartment owners who rent on Oasis are also club members. If you’re an owner who puts your property on the Oasis platform and your apartment is in Marbella, Spain, but you’re traveling to Paris, you can enjoy the club in Paris because you’re an Oasis Collection owner. As a result, they’ve attempted to build a community of owners and guests who prefer to utilize curated apartments rather than Airbnb-style services.

The Stay: The Future Is Personalization

What made all of this development happen was—and Amazon and Google were part of it, but other companies are also part of it—is the move towards the cloud. Cloud-based data and transactions enable things today that you couldn’t do when the cloud didn’t exist.
Back then, you had to store data in many locations. Now everyone can store data in the cloud. As a result, companies like Google and others can use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other sorts of capabilities to mine the data and really get to a granular level of understanding of the entire wheel of travel.
That’s what makes it happen. It’s the cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. You can expect to see several new jobs emerging from that in the future, not only in terms of data mining or engineering but also jobs at the property level.
Marriott launched the internal capability of mining its loyal customer’s social media to understand what is happening in their lives so that when they get to a property, Marriott can personalize the experience.
Think about someone posting a picture and saying, we’ve just had an anniversary. We celebrated our son’s 10-year anniversary, and we’re taking a vacation down to Florida. We stayed at Marriott.
Marriott knows at the property level that your kid had celebrated its 10-year anniversary. They can tailor the amenities they will leave in the room, or they can tailor the welcoming that they give you. Say, “Hey, welcome. By the way, we are glad you’re coming here for your 10-year anniversary.” That’s the level of personalization you can expect at the service delivery level, but also during the entire planning phase in the coming years.

The Stay: The Sharing Economy

What makes the Uber’s. Birds, Turo’s, and Air BnB’s of the world stand out in their innate ability to offer unparalleled experiences for consumers. People have discovered ways to monetize off everything: plots of land for one-of-a-kind glamping experiences, relatively unused real estate, and even personal cars that can be rented to travelers. Whatever the case, the sharing economy has become an effective avenue to give consumers an off-the-beaten-path or one-of-a-kind experience, directly from consumers for consumers. This has changed the game for the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries.
Due to the localization of the experience on sharing economy platforms–individuals now have the upper hand when it comes to offering something unique, anywhere and anytime. You can set your own parameters to be matched with the exact amenities you are looking for; a hot tub, 10 bedrooms, nearby a grocery store, ski-in ski-out access. Renters can tap into unused potentials–such as capacity–to help others, and in doing so help themselves through the extraction of money from said space or thing.
You can’t book a one-of-a-kind place in most traditional hotels–they all look the same. Hotels are built to be standardized and are relatively singular in offerings. The way traditional hotels are structured makes it incredibly challenging for them to offer a truly genuine type of lodging experience. Due to this major economic shift, hotels are forced to rethink their strategies in terms of offerings and customization. Some hotels are moving towards allowing customers to book a specific room in a given hotel, though that room will likely be very similar to another room in the same property.
With all that being said, safety and security are often overlooked when it comes to the sharing economy– something that hotels offer that the sharing economy can’t, yet. While there are rating systems that give you a sense of security on whom the buyer is and what others have experienced when interacting with that buyer’s good, home, or service, it is hard to assess overall safety when actually utilizing whatever said customer has rented. How do you know who’s sleeping in the apartment next door? How do you know the area is safe in general? These are answers you can’t really find via these sharing platforms. While the hospitality industry needs to play catch up on unique offerings, the sharing economy needs to rev up their security and safety metrics.

Transportation: The Airline Industry

Transportation is an important component of the travel experience. It’s what gets us to our destination. The airline industry has many different service options, each offering various levels of hospitality to their customers, as follows:
* The full-service airline
These types of airlines, such as Delta or United, typically offer a variety of routes and destinations. Different seating classes are offered at different price points, including economy, premium economy, business class, and first class. These seating classes may have different seat sizes or leg room space, boarding priority, and in-flight food and beverage options.
* The low-cost airline
These types of airlines, such as Spirit Airlines, offer discounted prices and are barer boned compared to the traditional full-service airlines. There is no first-class seating, routes may be more limited, and in-flight food and beverage options may also be limited.
* The luxury airline
These airlines focus on the high-end luxury customer. They have first class facilities that are above and beyond, including cabins that have fully flat beds, personalized services, and a full meal menu with metal cutlery.
The airline Etihad takes luxury to a whole new level with their product called ‘The Residence’. Your 12-hour flight becomes even more luxurious in your own apartment on the plane, complete with a small living room, a bedroom, and even a shower.
* Charter flights
With charter flights you negotiate the price for the entire plane. Package tour operators such as Thomas Cook and TUI will charter a plane for their guests.
Technology has also supported the development of the chartered airplane industry. Apps such as Fly Victor, NetJets, Blade, or Wheels Up allow you to book your private plane or helicopter as simply as you book an Uber.
* Private jets
Some people have their own private jets, which is realistically not within reach for everybody. If you need or want a private jet for a particular trip, a charter flight may be your better option.

Transportation: Traditional Transportation Options

Traditionally, typical travel-related companies, such as airlines, cruise lines, buses, or trains, focused only on taking people from point A to B.

Currently, there is a greater emphasis on the traveler’s experience. Safety and fuel efficiency are top priorities at the airline level. But, the in-flight experience for passengers looks more focused.

Seats are getting better. Airlines are also working to improve the servicescape. These are the factors that influence how you feel, breathe, sleep, and digest.

Airlines are emphasizing the importance of the passenger experience with meaningful changes. They are looking for an onboard lighting solution to help passengers cope with jet lag. Travelers are unable to stand often, and food is difficult to digest. Airlines are now considering thoughtful meal options to help you feel better while traveling and avoid getting overstuffed.

Are you curious about these changes? Passengers arriving for a trip or in transit between two aircraft can use the new Changi Airport terminal in Singapore. This enhancement also attempts to appeal to the local community. As a result, they’ve created a one-stop shopping, entertainment, and event destination for all travelers. Airports, for instance, are no longer only concerned with safety and efficiency. They want to make a lasting impression on visitors.

Transportation: Whatever Floats Your Boat

Just like some people have their own private planes, other people have their own private yachts. If you want a taste of that life but you don’t have the funds to buy a yacht, there is technology that can help you including apps like GetMyBoat and YachtLife. There is a way for you to taste that life at sea.

When we think of cruise lines, there’s quite a difference between the Caribbean cruise that you might be familiar with and a river cruise. Caribbean cruises are extremely popular. So popular that some cruise lines now have their own islands. Royal Caribbean, for example, has developed an island that is called CocoCay. Cruises arrive there, the passengers disembark for the day, nobody stays there at night, and everyone goes back on the ship.

It’s a clever business model because all the money that is spent on that island goes straight back to the cruise line. There is no escaping the cruise line entertainment or food. It’s a great way to make sure that all the spending stays within the company.

Another type of cruise that has gained in popularity is river cruises. You might have seen these boats. They look quite different. Rather than the very high ships, they are flatter. They have large windows on the side, when people lie in bed, they can see the shoreline go past. It’s a really popular model in Europe and is now developing in other continents around the world.

When we think about how cruise lines make money, particularly the mass cruises like, Royal Caribbean, a lot of it actually doesn’t come from the price you pay for your room. A lot of it comes from other activities and most importantly, the casino. Because the ship is in international waters, casinos can operate freely on board. That’s one of the biggest money generators for the company as well as retail, food, and beverages. You can think of it as a modern version of the riverboats that went down the Mississippi that also had casinos on them.

Trends In Travel and Tourism: How Technology Is Transforming the Travel Industry

Technology has transformed the way we travel. If we think about it, we use technology from the moment we leave until the moment we return. When you think about what inspires you to travel, many of us will say it’s because of Facebook or Instagram. We will think of these destination accounts, such as beautiful destinations that show inspiring photographs of places we’d love to travel to.
Once we’ve been inspired, we have to plan our trip. We might use the airline or travel agent apps, but also apps such as TripIt, that provide all that information in one clear package so that we know where we’re going and where need to be. When we book for the best price, we might use price comparison websites like Trivago. This is a very interesting model because a price comparison website doesn’t book a room for you. It only gives you price comparisons. You have to click on the company you want to book with.
So, how does Trivago make money? Well, every time you click, it receives a commission from the person that completes your booking. After returning from the trip, we might leave a review. Travel reviews are incredibly important because they have a great influence on future travelers.
TripAdvisor is by far the largest travel review app and has recently moved into providing travel bookings. Technology surrounds the whole wheel of travel, as we call it, and is with us almost every step of the way. The way technology has transformed the travel industry means that there are now more professional opportunities for people that we didn’t see in the past. For example, how Instagram influences our travel decisions. There are influencers there that get paid for posting certain photos, ads, and videos about properties and destinations.
Google Guides is also a great way for people to review and influence other people’s traveling. Another area where technology has helped people in developing their own business ideas and becoming a part of a community is reviews. Google Local Guides is an excellent example of how people leave reviews that influence where other people go. And that might lead to professional opportunities down the line. Someone might hire you based on the reviews you have written.