Music Downloads Traffic Building

The Digital Music Industry Reviewing traffic building techniques used by the online music services iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and Last FM

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Contents

Contents

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Introduction

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Expert Opinions

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Primary Research

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Market Situation

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Search Engine Marketing

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Online PR

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Social Media

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Email

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Mobile

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Online Adverts

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Viral Marketing

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Affiliate Marketing

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Conclusions and Recommomendations

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References

The Editors

Jay Varney

Kyle Stewart

Alistair Samasuwo

Charlotte Rhodes

Message from the Editors JACK Downloads is a team of four Buckinghamshire New University students studying Business & Management.

The digital music industry was chosen because of the teams interest in how the music industry has been changed by music streaming and dowloads.

The report we have constructed aims to inform the reader on how traffic building techniques have been used in the music downloads and streaming industry.

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Introduction

Introduction

The Report The aim of this report is to examine the traffic building techniques used by businesses in the music downloads and streaming industry. This report will point out both the weaknesses and strenghts in the traffic building techniques employed by different businesses.

Traffic Building Traffic building is vital if a business is to maximise the amount of visitors to its website.

Website traffic can be increased through many different techniques, the main techniques are: Search engine marketing, online PR, social media, email, mobile, online adverts, viral marketing and finally affiliate marketing.

There are 3 key aspects of traffic building as outlined by Chaffey, these are: • Targets - before a company can begin a traffic building technique it needs to develop specific objectives.

• Techniques - online digital media channels need to be combined with traditional offline communicationication techniques in the correct way in order to be affective in increasing web visits.

• Timing - specific campaigns such as launching a new site, product or promotion is an appropriate time to start traffic building. e-marketers should also make investment in a continous process of attracting visitors such as affiliate marketing, this allows the business to attract traffic after the traffic building campaign has ended This report will combine textbook theories and expert opinions to analyse traffic building techniques. Real life examples from the music industry will be used to examine traffic building techniques and applied to the theory.

expert opinions

Expert Opinions Sonny Takhar - MD SYCO Entertainment Takhars thoughts on the success of 1 Direction and the role social media had to play “first, we had a group with a point of difference and a clear identity that reinvented the boy band for this generation of teenagers. second, we had a breakthrough track with What Makes You Beautiful that was a seminal pop song. third, we had a powerful route to market [social media] that simply didn’t exist 10 years ago.”

J Scavo - SVP Interactive Marketing & E-commerce at Warner Bros. records Scavo discussing a recent traffic building campaign with band Linkin Park to draw in fans that weren’t connected through the web. “linkin park has wide appeal and a large fan base that loves to hear their music on the radio and stream their tracks, but which is not directly connected to the band on the web. we super-served the core fans first, the folks who will evangelise about the record, to create a gigantic halo effect.”

Bruce Houghton - Music Industry Professional Houghton identifies 9 SEO steps musicians can follow in order to build traffic to their sites, they are identified below: Keyword Research, Meta Tags, Link Exchange, Social Networking, Be Active, Use Real Words, Use Analytics and Statistics, Have the right Domain name and Update Often.

He highlights the importance of carrying out SEO regurly not just at the website launch to retain a consistent traffic flow.

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Primary research

Primary Research The Questionnairre The following questionnairre was distributed online through the free service survey monkey. The purpose of this questionnairre was to find out peoples opinions on traffic building techniques used by the music downloads and streaming industry. It also asked respondents for qualitative answers to find out how these service could improve the way in which they operate.

Respondents: 33

Primary research Results The questionnairre gave us answers to questions based around how users obtain and find music as well as the ways in which organisations build traffic to their sites.

One of our questions asked respondents how they preffered to download/ listen to music, the results showed that 50% of people preffered laptops closely followed by mobiles, games consoles and then tablets.

This showed us that traffic building based around laptops and mobiles such as search engines have a lot of importance to the music download industry.

Social media was the most common way that people found new music and this shows the importance and power of social media in leading to peoples buying habits. Secondly was search engines followed by artists websites, this shows the importance of artists regularly updating content.

People were twice as likely to visit sites based on a friend recommendation instead of a search engine, this again links in with social media and its importance.

60% of respondents preffered to download music as apposed to streaming it but there is certaintly increased popularity of streaming. respondents also noted that when they attended live music events only 27% of artists used it as a chance to promote their apps/website, this shows potential for offline traffic building, especially as people could instantly access these from their mobile phones at the venue.

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Market situation

Market Situation Market Share Music Downloads - iTunes is the dominant force in music downloads in terms of market share. “iTunes accounted for 66.2% of the paid digital music download market in the third quarter, up from 63.2% in the year-ago quarter, according to the latest data from NPD” (Starrett, 2010). With such a large market share there is no other business that even comes close to rivalling iTunes, the closet is Amazon, “The market share of Amazon.com Inc.’s digital download arm, AmazonMP3, grew by four percentage points to 12%” (Keizer, 2010).

Music Streaming -The leading company in terms of market share for the music streaming industry is Spotify. Vilpponen (2012) states that “According to reports by IFPI and some other data available, it seems that Spotify doubled its market share in 2011 as compared to 2010.” As can been seen in the visual below (themusicvoid.com, 2012) Spotify holds a 45% market share, LastFM would be found in the 7% section labelled ‘other services’.

Market Trends Both the music download and the music streaming industry are gaining popularity and growing in size, this is due to the birth of the technological era and the boom in ways to access music, streaming and downloading is faster and cheaper than any method to come before it which shows that these methods are here to stay and could soon become the accepted norm amongst customers purchasing music.

The IFPI’s digital music report (2012) states that “Download services are seeing continued strong consumer demand and are expanding their customer base, particularly in previously untapped developing markets. Meanwhile, a fast-growing number of consumers are using subscription services and other models. ‘There’s a race among the services to go global and plant the flag in new territories’ says Stephen Bryan, executive vice president, digital strategy and business development, Warner Music Group. ‘We’re seeing services that are generating

revenues and growth. There is high engagement with these services. Consumers love them and spend hours using them.’”

The IFPI’s digital music report (2012) also goes on to state that “Digital music revenues to record companies grew by 8 per cent globally in 2011” this puts the number at close to $5billionUS. It continues by saying that “Digital channels now account for an estimated 32 per cent of record company revenues globally” which is up from 2010 and clearly shows the industry growth. Finally, the IFPI report also states that “Some markets now see more than half of their revenues derive from digital channels, including the US (52%), South Korea (53%) and China (71%). IFPI estimates that 3.6 billion downloads were purchased globally in 2011.”

Issues in the market – Piracy Despite the best efforts of some, digital piracy remains the biggest critical issue in the music industry and is a constant threat to the growth and investment by the record companies. “More than a quarter of internet users globally (28 per cent) access unauthorised services on a monthly basis” according to IFPI (2012).

“You cannot play down the significance of piracy,” says Wells for Universal. “Spain, which should be the powerhouse of repertoire for Latin America and the US Latin market, is effectively a dead market. Yet in South Korea, where we have new anti-piracy laws, the market is surging and now spreading its repertoire far beyond its own borders.”

There is however important progress on the fight against music piracy as the report goes on to suggest that “France has successfully implemented its ‘Hadopi’ law, introducing education and warning measures and the threat of sanctions to help migrate users to legal sites. Research shows this is helping change consumer behaviour, while the number of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharers fell by 26 per cent within the space of a year.”

Market situation

http://www.themusicvoid.com/ Digital Music vs Other Digital The infographic on the right hand side illustrates the success of the music downloads industry compared with other digital formats available for download such as books and movies. 32% of music sales were digital downloads in 2012 compared with only 5% of newspaper sales being done through downloads. This shows the importance of downloads within the music industry

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online pr

Online PR

Online PR With the world becoming more and more connected through the internet, online PR is very important in managing public perception of what the brand stands for. Online PR aims to build brands, manage brands and reinforce the brand. With the harsh economical times the music industry has been hit resulting in the increase of online music. Online PR reaches a vast targeted audience and commands a powerful online presence which then converts leads into sales.

It is vital in marketing as every targeted effort and successes are traceable. Online PR has the power to change how people feel and relate toward your brand through tried and tested strategies.

Tactics Within the Online music industry brand image is very important and online PR uses different methods with the aim of giving an online edge. This is achieved by the combining of internet marketing, online brand management content marketing and public relations to create and nurture a connection between the consumer and the business. Here are ways to promote the business using Online Public Relations • Press release and news release • Articles and blogging • Email marketing, which allows marketers to send newsletters and informative mail to the subscribers.

• Search Engine optimization • Social media, using social blogs, podcasts, micro blogging, videos, pictures • Viral PR which allows you to send content to those untapped resources Advantages of Online PR When successful the benefits of Online PR can have a long term effect on the business, these are: • Enhanced brand awareness from the customer to customer • Increased traffic to a website therefore resulting in increased web conversion rates • Enhances website authority by contributing to Search Engine Optimization by generating links back

to the website • Improve the position a company has within their industry • Helps provide ways to improve customer relations by allowing a company to directly engage with individuals interested in their brand • Helps provide a platform to communicate information to the target audience ITunes Online PR uses a range of tactics to keep up its brand and further enhance its reputation as the market leader in online music downloads. ITunes has 25 million likes on facebook and uses a range of tactics to stay on top : • Press release and news release to enhance brand awareness from ITunes to each targeted customer • Search Engine optimization which increases traffic to a website therefore results in increased web conversion rates • Social media, using social blogs, podcasts, micro blogging, videos, pictures. This helps ITunes provide ways to improve customer relations by allowing a company to directly engage with individuals interested in their brand • Email marketing, which allows marketers to send newsletters and informative mail to the subscribers. Helps provide a platform to communicate information to the target audience • Viral PR enhances brand awareness between customer to customer

online pr Amazon Mp3 has 250 thousand likes on facebook and 1.6 million followers on twitter. It is not as well known as brand leader iTunes. Amazon Mp3 needs to up their current Online PR campaign to compete. Their current tactics are limited and are: • Social media, using social blogs, podcasts, micro blogging, videos, pictures. This helps Amazon mp3 provide ways to improve customer relations by allowing a company to directly engage with individuals interested in their brand like getting editor picks and finding deals on music.

• Email marketing, which allows marketers to send newsletters and informative mail Spotify has 444 thousand followers on twitter and 2 million likes of facebook. The main problem with Spotify for the user would be not having much of a homepage.

Instead Spotify is used through downloading a desktop application or android, iPhone and Blackberry application.

Their online PR is done using these tactics: • Social media, using social blogs, podcasts, micro blogging, videos, pictures. This helps Spotify provide ways to improve customer relations by allowing a company to directly engage with individuals interested in their brand like getting editor picks and finding deals on music.

• Email marketing, which allows marketers to send newsletters and informative mail

to the subscribers. Helps provide a platform to communicate information to the target audience.

• Press release and news release to enhance brand awareness from Amazon MP3 to each targeted customer informing them about what offers are available and any upcoming offers on music.

to the subscribers. Helps provide a platform to communicate information to the target audience.

• Press release and news release to enhance brand awareness from Spotify to each targeted customer informing them about what offers are available and any upcoming offers on music.

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Social Media

Social Media

Social media is a useful tool for businesses because it allows them to build customer profiles as well as instantly communicate messages to their target audience.

A marketing campaign can be launched through social media with feedback from consumers being instant.

Consumers may choose to ‘like’, comment on or share your campaign and organisations can view exactly which consumers are doing this.

Campaigns launched through facebook can quickly generate momemntum as people are extremely active on the site, at the beginning of 2012 the site boasted daily active users of over 483m (Reisinger, D,.2012).

Traffic is built as customers like and share posts. Posts can go viral and be exposed to a larger audience, this then builds traffic to the business’s site.

There are 3 key factors that allow organisations to increase sharing and social refferal, these are: How fascinating, valuable, informative or entertaining your content is.

How easy it is to share your content using other social networks not just Facebook.

How much time time you spend on social

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Social Media

media and third party sites interacting with your current and potential target audience.

Twitter

There are 5 approaches to making content more shareable: Make tagging, bookmarking and sharing easy - use ‘Share This’ or ‘Retweet’ widgets.

Enable others to help your content travel further - if you have great content it will naturally be shared by people.

Form a connection - once users are registered they are likely to spend more time on your site.

Encourage Interaction - incentivise users to comment on your posts.

Remember the real purpose - align your business goals with customer needs.

The music download and streaming industry makes use of social media by trying to integrate their products within social media sites. An example of this is spotify allows users to log in using their facebook details which then allows them to share easily on facebook and listen to songs from facebooks spotify app. That example shows how making a service quick and easy to use can drive traffic to your site and make people return on a regular basis. Artists that set up facebook pages can increase traffic to their site because people will see links they post on the page as long as they regurlarly do this.

Twitter allows an organisation to send regular tweets with messages and marketing material to the organisation’s ‘followers’. Twitter is often used by customers to complain or praise the company, complaints are responded to quickly over twitter but they are visible for everyone to see.

Organisations are extra careful to resolve all issues to avoid tweets frrom customers damaging their reputation.

Twitter is one of the quickest ways to spread a message, if people are interested in a tweet they can then retweet this to all of their followers. If for example spotify tweets saying that some new music has been added to the service this will drive twitter users to the site. Social media is also used to enhance customer service, if someone tweets or posts on an organisations page they are likely to get a response because the organisation will want to make sure it’s responsive to its users.

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Email

email

Email Marketing for Amazon, iTunes, Spotify and Last FM Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of internet marketing even though there are more advanced methods around. In order to increase traffic to the website implementing the right approach and tools in very important. Opt in email marketing involves distribution of mail to subscribers that have agreed to receive it. It is very beneficial to online music retailers such as Amazon, Spotify, last FM and ITunes as it delivers highly targeted messages at low costs to specific customers. Newsletters and web marketing are general and forms of blanket marketing and not as personalised. Whereas with opt in Email Marketing customers are kept up to date on the latest products or services, as well as special offers and discounts which in turn builds brand loyalty. Jackson and DeCormier (1999) recognised that email provided marketers with communication that permitted relationship building and real-time interaction with customers.

Advantages of Email Marketing • Low Cost: cuts the cost for design, testing and sending out printed newsletters and email marketing supports the green initiative and is paperless • Easy to track: the customers are tracked via analytics, bounce messages, un-subscribers and click throughs. These can be used to measure open rates, positive or negative responses which correlates sales with marketing.

• Targeted marketing: the business can target a specific audience based on geography, age or sex.

These can be personalized to each individual and their needs • Interactive: the business can initiate campaigns using videos, graphics, music, quizzes, a game, or anything that will get your targeted customer drawn in. Email marketing lets you push a message to your customers, as opposed to a website that waits for customers to come in.

Disadvantages of Email Marketing

• Email response decay: recipients are most responsive when they first subscribe to an email, it is difficult to keep them engaged.

• Deliverability: the difficulty of getting messages delivered through various internet service providers, firewalls and webmail systems.

• Communications preferences. Recipients will have different preferences for email offers, content and frequency which affect engagement and response.

These have to be managed through communications preferences.

Essential Email Marketing factors Marketing objectives: ensure contact database includes opted in people so the data is relevant and not seen as irrelevant spam as this will result in higher response rates.

Effective segmentation: emailing a large database with the belief that a greater number will produce greater performance is wrong as more specific and targeted data through highly targeted data segments to a specific audience is more effective.

Look and feel: good email content to grab the recipient’s attention is important through clear and understandable design and font.

Landing Page : the effectiveness of email marketing relies on the landing page being properly optimized to receive traffic and is clear and easy to navigate with relevant information.

Delivery: in order for email marketing to work effectively it is important to integrate it with other forms of communication such as telemarketing or

email print to ensure recipient didn’t miss the content of the email.

Performance Metrics: give feedback through metrics to measure open and click through rates, bounce rate and unsubscribes.

Spotify Spotify offer an opt in monthly newsletter to their members which is offered to members as they join Spotify to which they can opt out or unsubscribe.

This newsletter is interactive and highlights offers the user a chance to sample top songs and top playlists in their city which they can listen to and share on their facebook or twitter.

This provides subscribers with a monthly chart of what tracks are currently popular within their city which is utilizing effective segmentation based on the geographical location of the subscriber. This gives the newsletter a personal feel which makes the user feel valued.

Itunes Emails Itunes offers customers an optional weekly newsletter in the form of an email. This has offers and discounts that may interest the customer. Only past customers who opted in and suscribe to the newsletter recieve the different types of offers available depending on what time of the year, what previous purchases the customer made and recommendations.

The targeted marketing email greets the customer with their first name which makes it personal and grabs the readers attention. The email is designed with bright vivid interactive images and once clicked take the user to the landing page were the offers and discounts are

shown in accordance to the users previous purchases.

This adds value to te users experience as they feel valued and increases traffic to the webpage.

Amazon Music Emails The MP3 Newsletter is the best way to hear about top weekly offers. When the user signs up they receive 25% off their next MP3 purchase. The target marketing newsletter is personalized with the name of the subscriber which gives the customer more value and grabs their attention. The offers that are offered are based on previous purchases which give the customer a sense of security and trust. The 25% offer serves as reward and grabs the attention of the user to clock on the newsletter. This leads to the Amazon MP3 Landing page which is exactly like the newsletter cover which utilizes great data quality and page creative as the layout is the same the user feels more at ease when navigating. This has the user browse and stay on the website loner purchasing other items not highlighted on the newsletter.

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mobile

Mobile

Mobile marketing Mobile marketing is changing so rapidly that each day has new developments and trends starting. With consumers becoming even more tech savvy with every day, mobile marketing will grow and develop as consumers continue to search for savings and offers on music not found on the high street. This will in turn help businesses as they can have a better understanding and more ways of monitoring buyer behaviour so as to deliver the best product or service were required.

With a lot of digital natives growing up with tablets, PCs and smart phones, mobile is growing as they are not just being used for phoning and sending texts, mobile has become a genre of its own with more and more places having free wifi this will have a resounding effect on mobile marketing for ITunes, Spotify, Last FM and Amazon MP3. Mobile has increased customer awareness and affected buyer behaviour as they are no longer limited to what is in the shops but now the world is at their doorstep.

Direct marketing Mobile platform can be used by marketers to directly interact with users any were and at anytime. This promotes and nurtures a personalised interaction and using this as benefit marketers can start a direct dialogue with the user in order to get direct feedback.

Tracking User response Using GPS users can be tracked instantly. This in turn helps marketers to analyze and understand user buying behaviour so as to know what to offer the customer next time.

Mass communication made easy The marketer through mobile marketing can reach a wider and more diverse audience. An advantage to the marketer would be through Bluetooth and GPS they can send location specific messages to users.

Micro blogging Benefits Mobile platform users are increasingly using micro blogging sites such as twitter and tumblr from the mobile devices. This feature can be beneficial to the marketer as they can spread offers and discounts to their followers or friends thus increasing traffic to the page.

Mobile payments These are very convenient, quick and safe for users and are a good way to collect buyer data for the marketer on how much the buyer spends and on what products so as to know what to target them with in future.

Advantages of Mobile marketing Convenient to use With the smaller screen sizes on mobile devices this limits the amount of information that can be displayed. This results in simpler more basic content which can be adapted onto various mobile devices.

The consumer is not limited to using their devices at set times or at a certain place they can use them 24/7 whenever they want.

Negatives of Mobile Marketing Diverse platforms There are a lot of different platforms to cover and this may result in it becoming difficult and expensive covering every single platform customers use.

Privacy issues The invasion of privacy or browsing without the users permission can put off users on mobile devices. Users may feel too many personal details are being entered and kept by a third party.

mobile and one were the user pays £4.99 a month • Based on the users tastes and listening habits, recommendations are made to help the user • Users can use the streaming radio stations in order to enjoy their favourite songs • Upcoming music events a listed on the app based on the location • Recommendations are made by most favourite songs, new top tracks through up to date live charts • Available on all platforms

Spotify mobile • It is available for iOS, Windows, Blackberry, android and many other platforms.

• To download it user needs to subscription to Spotify premium which costs £9.99 • Offers unlimited, on demand streaming to mobile devices from a huge music library • It links in and includes social networking and personalised radio features Accessibility Spotify boasts an impressive music selection which can be accessed at any time and any song. The mobile interface allows for easy discovery and sharing of albums, songs and artists. The user can use the search function to find music or browse new release and current top songs available on Spotify. This allows the marketer to get rich data as they are paying users therefore they will use the App a lot more than free users. Spotify is available in 17 countries and touts more than 20 million active users across all platforms.

Results Spotify Mobile markets songs , offers and suggestions to its paying subscribers based on their tastes in music. This helps setting up a marketing campaign simpler as the subscribers’ are paying therefore have a vested interest in what Spotify offers them. Internet access is required to use Spotify unless previously syncing music onto the device before.

Last.fm Features • There are two memberships offered, a free one

Accesibility Last fm has a professional design that isn’t lacking personality. The user experience is stream lined which allows users to navigate freely without obstacles and start picking their favourite songs for their own radio station. Last Fm markets to the user via recommendations and link is to facebook, twitter and shazam were users can interface and share their music. Last Fm requires the internet or wifi to work or the user can upload music from their PC, desktop account.

Results For anyone who enjoys listening to music through a mobile device, Last Fm is excellent as the application includes a number of convenient tools that track the listening habits of the user and allow them to enjoy music in a number of ways. Users can also interact with other users using social networking and all of this for a cheap low cost of £4.99 a month

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Online aDS

Online Ads What are banner ads?

A banner ad is defined by Chaffey & Smith (2013, pp.

585) as “a typically rectangular graphic displayed on a web page for purposes of brand building or driving traffic to a site. It is normally possible to perform a clickthrough to access further information from another website.”

The two main functions of a banner ad are to; 1. Create awareness of a company, product or brand.

2. Attract potential customers to visit the company website and make a purchase.

Interactive/Animated banner ads vs. static Chaffey & Smith (2013, pp.585) states that an animated banner ad “will typically involve several different frames which are displayed in sequence to attract attention to the banner and build up a theme, often ending with a call-to-action to click on the banner.” An interactive banner ad will involve the user having to scroll the mouse over the ad in order

Banner ads placement Placement of any kind of ad is very important and it is no different with banner ads, having the right placement can be the difference between getting lots of clicks and visitors to your site or little to no click and visitors. In a research paper by Casale Media (2011) looking at the link between ad placement and performance they state that “Our analysis revealed that when displayed above-the-fold, ads are almost 7 times more effective at generating a click than ads delivered below the fold.” This shows that the most effective place for advertising is above the website fold, this is due to the fact that it is the first thing to load, the first thing the user sees and no scrolling is required to find it.

to start a sequence where the user can interact by click or dragging parts of the ad. Both interactive and animated banner ads are preferable to static ads due to the fact that the animation or interaction will catch the user’s eye and gage their interest making them more likely to click on the ad and end up on the company website where they may go on to purchase several products.

(Example of an above-the-fold banner ad by O2 on website Youtube.com)

Viral Marketing

viral marketing

Viral marketing takes advantage of the way in which people interact over the internet, its uses something that is shocking, interesting, funny or thought provoking that then spreads through the internet and social media. Viral marketing can make use of a video clip, image, news story or anything that people are likely to be compelled to share.

According to Chaffey there are 2 main forms of viral marketing: Word of Mouth Word of Mouse These both rely on the way people interact whether its in person or online. Kirby 2003 highlights 3 things that are needed to make a viral campaign effective:

Facebook is valuable for viral marketing because as soon as someone ‘likes’ or ‘shares’ a video or image it becomes visible to all of their friends which may then do the same themselves creating a snowball effect where a video can quickly pick up hundreds of thousands of views in a short space of time, an example of a viral video would be Psy’s Gangnam style music video. Gangnam styleonly had a few english words in it but still managed to achieve 1 billion views in less than 5 months.

The advantage of viral marketing is that a large number of people can be reached for a relatively low cost.

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The flipside of this is that your campaign may only become viral because it contains innuendo or makes me people laugh for the wrong reason. If this happens there is nothing a business can do as its alresady been shared all over the internet.

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affiliate marketing

Affiliate Marketing Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is described as “A commission-based arrangement where referring sites are paid a fee for sales, leads or visitors. It is potentially a large source of quality traffic for e-retailers.� (Chaffey & Smith, 2013, p. 392).

There are several different types of affiliate marketing categories, these are; aggregators, review sites, rewards sites, voucher code sites, Ăźberbloggers, others. The advantages and disadvantages of using affiliate marketing are;

iTunes have an affiliate marketing relationship with global video sharing website YouTube.com. as can be seen in the image below is that whilst watching a music video on YouTube there is a direct like below which you can click which will take you to iTunes store and allow you to purchase the song you are listening to.n

Conclusion

conclusion

Market Situation Music downloads and music streaming sites have been seeing increasing popularity due to increasing use of technology. Sales have been growing but so has music piracy, downloads sites are worse affected by this as they miss out on direct sales, that said streaming services are still affected by the increasing levels of piracy. Peoples attitudes towards piracy are begin to change and there has been a clampdown on pirate sites worldwide.

Search Engine Marketing There are high levels of search engine marketing in this industry because all of their sales are achieved online, a mixture of pay per click and search engine optimisation help sites in the market appear higher in the listings.

Online PR Music download and streaming sites interact with customers through many different channels, the combination of email, ads and social media allow them to excercise PR duties. Any activity with their target market that is visible online adds to peoples perceptions of the organisation.

Social Media Social media is extremely important for organisations in the music downloads and streaming market as it allows them to instantly connect with consumers.

Social media allows people to share posts interesting to them among friends without the organisation having to pay for this exposure. Social media also allows an organisation to enhance customer service as any complaints are handled quick and efficiently.

Email Emails can be an effective way of keeping your target audience informed of new products available. Weekly news letters are commonly used by music download sites as it can inform the consumer of new songs that have been added to the library. The problem with newsletters is a large number of people choose to opt out or just won’t check their emails regurlarly enough.

Mobile Mobile is extremely important for these types of business because most people now use their phones to listen to music. Having an easy to use app will ensure that customers use your site. The mobile app for any business should reflect its core values and fit in well with their desktop website.

Online Ads Online ads such a banner ads are a good way for music download sites to market themselves. They can pay for a banner ad to appear at the bottom of a relevant youtube video such as a music video to drive customers to their site to make a purchase.

Viral Marketing This is a cheap method of gaining mass exposure for your brand, as long as the campaign is done properly consumers will share your campaign and it will quickly reach a large audience.

Affiliate Marketing This works well when similar sites are used, for a segement of commision a site will have external links on it to similar organisations. Affiliate links on YouTube for iTunes show customers where they can download tracks and make the purchasing process easier for consumers Recommendations One of the best ways for music downloads and streaming sites is to make use of social media, there are opportunities to create apps that link straight into facebook allowing consumers to share music among friends. Any site that missed this opportunity could be losing potential exposure.

People spend much more time away from their computers and this is why mobile apps need to be easy to use, organisations must ensure they spend money on developing a good app for their consumers or they will lose customers to the many competitors already out there

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References

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