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Welcome to Trakr!! Here’s your monthly dose of what we at DigitalRadioTracker.com are finding interesting this month. Hope these articles help you improve your music industry life and your life in the world as a whole. And remember, DigitalRadioTracker.com can help you see where any song is being played, worldwide, at digital (internet) radio...and some terrestrial stations too, as an added plus!  Did we mention Worldwide??  Woo hoo!! Allow the awesomeness to make your toes wiggle... What Makes A Hit? 60 Years Of #1 Songs ... When it comes to climbing the charts, research suggests that it pays to be different. From Brenda Lee to Beyoncé, here’s how the top songs stood out from the crowd. For a multi-billion dollar industry, popular music gets a bad rap. Pop music is often derided as insipid and endlessly recycled, and critics of the Top 40 often suggest that the key to making a hit is to copy and paste an earlier success with nothing more than some superficial variation. But recent research suggests that the opposite may be true [more...click here] https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/projects/what-makes-a-hit/ How Musicians Make Money — Or Don’t at All — in 2018 The buzziest word in music this year is the one that used to be the most utterly boring.  Copyright — ownership of songs and albums as creative works — is a riotous knot of rules and processes in the music industry, with the players much more numerous and entangled than the ordinary fan might think. But between Congress mulling over the much-anticipated Music Modernization Act, plagiarism battles between major songwriters raging and Wall Street scrutinizing Spotify’s lack of profitability as a public company, it’s helpful to have at least a basic understanding of music’s U.S. financial system in order to ponder its future. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-musicians-make-money-or-dont-at-all-in-2018-706745/ How To Optimize Your Soundcloud Tracks If you want your tracks to be heard by the widest possible audience it’s important to make them easy to find on SoundCloud as well as the wider web. Read on for pro tips on how to get your tracks in front of the right people. Keep your track, album, and playlist titles clean. We’re not talking about censorship here. We’re talking about all those time you were told as a kid to tidy your room. The same principle applies. A tidy track title helps fans know exactly what they’re listening to. Avoid duplicating information that’s displayed elsewhere. There’s no need to add track numbers to your title when uploading an album. https://blog.soundcloud.com/2018/05/08/optimize-soundcloud-tracks/ 6 Tips to Land on Playlists & Retain Placement More than ever before, indie artists are pushing the envelope to rise above the noise, navigating discovery in the DSP era. The 10s of millions of tracks accessible through Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms begs a key question: How do you compete for attention in such a crowded space? Suffice to say, playlisting has become the go-to answer. Spotify users now spend half their time listening to playlists they create themselves, are algorithmically generated, or are curated by tastemakers. A spot on a playlist with a large following can help boost a track beyond just organic growth. https://www.awal.com/blog/playlisting-tips  How Radio Found New Life On The Internet And Changed Music Discovery Forever Forget established stations and music journalists; if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of music and the creative underground, online is the place to go. DJs and presenters on internet radio are often part of a network of local artists and music creative – many even are artists themselves – with access to new and interesting music, free from playlists and pluggers. Internet stations are global in one sense by existing the web, but they are very much rooted in their communities and cities, operating in a DIY space (often in make-shift studios in public spaces) depending on team-work and local know-how to function – giving listeners a genuine flavour of the place from which they transmit. https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/articles/how-internet-radio-is-creating-a-whole-new-online-world-of-music-discovery Musicians, Here’s How To Use Your Data  The concept of “data” is often an abstract one for artists and musicians (and even labels). You know that you have data in the form of email addresses and perhaps access to insights from social media and your website. However, the applications of this data are not clear. https://medium.com/ghstrategic/musicians-heres-how-to-use-your-data-b50bd9ba834b Music Scores A Gold Record on The Social Media Charts In a world where fame is fleeting, musicians have influence and staying power on social media. In an era when politicians are renowned for their use of Twitter, music is a primary driver of our interactions with social media. A new study from MusicWatch highlighted the contribution of music to engagement on social media platforms (1). In fact, 9 out of 10 regular social media users partake in some music- or artist-related activity on the most popular social applications. http://www.musicwatchinc.com/blog/music-scores-a-gold-record-on-the-social-media-charts/ Music Metadata: The Secret Ingredient To Getting Discovered in Music Libraries Getting discovered in music libraries is not a game of luck. Increasing your chances of being returned in search results comes down to defining relevant and descriptive music metadata for the songs you upload. Music libraries can be a great music licensing opportunity for independent musicians. That said, getting discovered in a sea of thousands of licensable tracks can feel near impossible — like the proverbial needle in a haystack. How can you stand out when there are so many other great songs and tracks vying for the attention of music supervisors? http://blog.discmakers.com/2018/08/music-metadata-getting-discovered-in-music-libraries/ Crowd-Sauce: How Memes Are Helping Rappers Reach Number One Memes aren’t a new phenomenon, In fact they’re older than the internet itself. The word was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ‘The Selfish Gene’ and was intended to be used to describe human behaviors that spread though society by imitation. Whilst the term now refers specifically to internet jokes that are spread rapidly (and usually organically), the general principle remains the same. The relationship of memes to popular music isn’t new either, you can look back to tracks like Baauer’s ‘Harlem Shake’ to see that. But what is new is memes driving not just a single song’s popularity, but also boosting the associated artist to stratospheric new heights.  https://www.clashmusic.com/features/crowd-sauce-how-memes-are-helping-rappers-reach-number-one Instagram Ads: Your Easy 7-Step Tutorial Fun fact: Instagram ads are booming on the platform right now. Did you know that Instagram now has over 2 million advertisers? Yeah, you read right — TWO MILLION. No biggie. With so many advertisers already in situ, you’re probably wondering how you can create Instagram ads that stand out, and get your business noticed amongst the masses — since clearly, Instagram has truly become a place to do business. https://blog.iconosquare.com/instagram-ads/ 12% and More 12% CitiGroup published an 88 page report on the status of the music industry. Regardless of whether it was the intention or not, the takeaway was that musicians receive just 12% of the industry’s revenue. This number was up from 7% back in 2000.While it’s a great sign this number is going up, the response to this number has been “shock” from the media and creative community. This % is NOT to be confused with an artist’s profit margin. This is a mistake I was guilty of making when I first read the articles about the report – I quickly began to scan other industries profit margins and learned restaurants operate on average at a 6% margin, hotels at 10% and alcohol at 20%. http://artofamanager.com/2018/08/12-2/ CitiGroup's 88 Page Report On The Status Of The Music Industry https://ir.citi.com/NhxmHW7xb0tkWiqOOG0NuPDM3pVGJpVzXMw7n+Zg4AfFFX+eFqDYNfND+0hUxxXA How Fragmentation Is Hurting The Music Industry's Developing Artists The music industry has been in a rut for years — a $7 billion rut, to be exact. After a $15 billion peak in 1999, the industry watched its revenue slide until it plateaued at $7 billion in 2010, where it hovered for years. In 2016, the music industry finally saw an increase, notching a $7.65 billion year. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brittanyhodak/2018/07/09/how-fragmentation-is-hurting-the-music-industrys-developing-artists#1fa4b9fc32d3 50 Ways To Promote A Single Here are the first 50 ways to promote a single that came to mind (in no direct order and definitely not in order of importance) – Lyric Video Create recognizable artwork Debut the song at a show before it’s released Lock in the right premiere partner Give the song to your super fans early via text Thanks for tuning in to this month’s DRT feeding of your mind!  Remember, DigitalRadioTracker.com is the leading broadcast monitoring company in the world that monitors Internet Radio stations streaming in cars, smart TV’s, smart refrigerators, airplanes, cell phones, tablets and other electronic devices such as smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, & Google Home. DigitalRadioTracker.com DigitalRadioTracker.com  is committed to this newsletter, Trakr, as a way of sharing helpful industry information and useful ideas to help our music community be the best we can be as recording artists, songwriters, producers, musicians, publishers, industry professionals, etc. DigitalRadioTracker.com exclusively monitors and provides personalized and individual DRT Reports for artists and songs from over 5,000 radio stations, internationally, with a focus on digital radio airplay.  The DRT Global Charts excel for marketing, promoting and supplying information for growth.  Trakr keeps its viewers informed as to industry changes impacting airplay and revenue through other related links.  We thank you for tuning-in and look forward to your continued interest.  Always happy to help. Let us know what you think! Please email us at DigitalRadioTracker@gmail.com