Author: m_r3nn1e

Matt Rennie, managing director at The Box Plus Network, explains why music channels are still a “healthy business” despite a shift towards streaming.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2015/05/20/is-the-music-channel-dead.html

We wrestle with the BIG issues here at Box (someone has to!).  Of course they’re all great but which one is the greatest?

Using complex algorithims to combine things like amount of cash, social prowess, media support and sellability (can they sell stuff), we work out who’s the most powerful player in pop.

And this year, of course, it’s Taylor….

https://www.musicweek.com/news/read/the-box-plus-network-s-pop-powerlist-returns-for-its-fifth-year-in-2016/064079 | https://www.recordoftheday.com/news-and-press/the-box-plus-networks-pop-powerlist-2016

It would be madness to remove the free tier of freemium services – getting consumers directly into a pay model is so so tough. That said, the current balance isn’t right. The quality and quantity of ads is not right, but they possibly also lack a decent windowing strategy.

There’s no reason why you can’t run a successful and profitable advertising model, TV has done this for years. TV advertising has always been a highly immersive and creative and yet ultimately interruptive medium. Despite all of the new tech allowing you to skip ads and the fact (as everyone states) that no watches ads anymore, the demonstrable reality is that people still watch a hell of a lot of TV ads. From my POV, this is in no small part due to the highly creative approach many advertisers take to cut through, which in turn contributes to a better consumer experience.

Looking at the new free digital services (e.g. YouTube, free tier of Spotify), they just haven’t got this right. There’s simply not enough ads for the amount of free content being consumed. On our network of music TV channels, on average we generate about 0.6p for every music video stream. Our content on YouTube (monetised by Google) generates around 0.05p per stream (some aren’t monetised) and then looking at the OpenSlate/VentureBeat data (i’ve used this before) Taylor Swift’s Vevo channel generates around 0.07p per stream. That’s simply not good enough. Common feedback is that consumers don’t like or even won’t accept advertising but they’ll accept what they’re used to and that’s up to us. Just have a look at the differences between the US and UK TV ad market. The UK consumer, spoiled by all the great BBC content without ads ‘accepts’ less ads than the American consumer who will quite happily watch a different experience; nurture not nature.

Google have to shoulder a lot of the blame here. I watched Matt Brittin from Google give a very good speech at the Guardian’s Changing Media Summit last week, he was celebrating YouTube’s 10th birthday which seems fair enough – YouTube has changed the face of culture as we know it, a lot of it for the better – unfortunately just not for many viable advertising businesses. He was explaining the popularity of the ad skipping model they have. Of course this is great for the consumer, and it’s also great (i know, i’ve used it) for the advertiser.  It’s just not great for the content owner, at least the professional content owner/producer. Google have never revealed whether YouTube actually makes any money, although it’s fairly widely thought it doesn’t. Clearly this has implications on the rest of us who don’t have deep enough pockets to not make money and undersell/underload our content with no or non-monetisable advertising, This is where the content owners need to stand strong. The major (and big independent) labels have a strangle hold on great/popular music content and they have the ability to force a change in this. Forcing a better (more lucrative) ad experience on YouTube and the other free services would not only improve the economics, it would also drive more consumers into the pay-tier. Get your ad-load right and work with the advertisers to improve the quality and creativity of the advertising.

There’s also the point on windowing. There’s no shame in holding back some of your premium content. Again, TV has built a layered model that drives premium customers into pay services for premium content. Even if you don’t hold back content completely, then possibly do it through functionality limitations (e.g. limited plays on demand). I know there’s a lot of resistance to this from some of the music services but at the end of the day, if they’re throwing their weight around a bit, then the labels should play them at their own game.

But free is definitely not bad, it can make you money and it draws consumers in so you can upsell them to a higher value service. Just keep tinkering until you get that balance just right.

Music TV channels must diversify their content and work across digital platforms if they are to continue attracting viewers and advertisers, the boss of 4Music and Kerrang! has said.

Matt Rennie, managing director of The Box Plus Network, which owns seven music channels in total, admitted that the growth of online music platforms had taken its toll on music TV stations, with the industry seeing a 6.7% fall in viewing figures last year.

However he said his company had grown advertising revenues in 2014 off the back of flat viewing figures because of its ability to retain the interest of young music fans and develop new content avenues.

FULL ARTICLE: https://www.marketingweek.com/music-tv-still-a-draw-for-advertisers-insists-4music-boss/

So today is the day. We’ve been planning this for quite a while, in fact it’s probably just about a year ago that we first mentioned the idea to rebrand the business, and now we’re here. The business has been known as Box Television for the last sixteen years, previous incarnations having been Video Jukebox Network Int’l and Video Dukebox Network Int’l (I do wonder whether this was in fact a typo, it was changed 20 days later!).

Why have we changed? Well, the ‘TV’ tag in the company name was starting to feel a little restrictive. We do so much more these days; a third of our team is dedicated to production and everyone knows that as a youth focused business our audience are consuming media in lot’s of different ways – in response we’re naturally distributing our content across all of these new digital (non-TV) channels. The one other thing our old name struggled to get across was the fact that we’re more than just The Box, we’re a network of 7 of the best music TV channels in the UK.

Will much change? Possibly not. We’re already operating in this way, it’s not a statement of intent, it’s more a reflection of what’s already happening. Our TV channels will still lead with the incredibly strong brands that we (mainly) license from our shareholders – there’s actually very little that the consumers will get to see. But quietly behind the scenes, Box Plus becomes the glue between those brands, emanating through the quality and creativity of each and every Box Plus channel. Digital may be a little different, The Box+ App is already the network home of our channels and www.boxplus.com is the web home of the network. Our digital strategy is starting to kick into gear and over time, the ambition we have for these digital products will definitely impact on a very significant consumer audience.

And though consumers may not feel much change, it’s a big day for us so allow us a moment to enjoy it. But not for long, we’ve got to get back to doing one of the best jobs in the world…

Wow, what a year. We’ve had record numbers pretty much across the board and we’re STILL the UKs biggest music video network!  From my point of view there’s a few key things that have driven our success in 2014;

1. an amazing team who not only went the extra mile, they were doing laps of the extra mile for fun
2. an incredible bout of creative renewal across our output, marrying great innovative production and technology, refusing to accept the ‘normal’ way of doing things
3. a brilliant audience, who are up for it and don’t show any signs of falling out of love with music TV

All of this is against a backdrop of declining (c. 6%) 1634 TV viewing for general TV and music TV, where we’ve managed to stay flat.  Bring on 2015…

Interesting piece of analysis from OpenSlate/VentureBeat on the earning power of the top YouTube channels. Number 2 in the list is the Taylor Swift Vevo channel with what seems an impressive 341m video views per month or 4Bn (!?!) views a year. Whilst impressive numbers, they then go on to estimate that this usage earns only £2.7m annually.  This beautifully encapsulates their issue and the problem they’re causing the rest of the industry. For that amount of usage, you really need to be generating more revenue. And more importantly, whilst you carry on growing your usage without a decent monetisation model, you’re impacting on other businesses who do generate good revenue and profit for themselves, the rights owners and the artist talent. After all, it’s really not that hard to give away great content like this.

By way of comparison, it’s interesting that Vevo reported in 2013 that in the UK they had a total of 2.6Bn views, less than the 4Bn views to Taylor’s own channel [granted the UK number is 2013 and Taylor is 2014 – they clearly will have grown and i’ll update these stats once they report fully on 2014].

During the same period (2013), we at Box TV played a total of 3.3Bn videos to our viewers (we work this out by combining our playlist and BARB data) generating a top line income of £35m with a decent chunk of profit – now there’s a business!!

We have some new better stats for 2014 that we’ll release soon. I’ll pop them up here once we’re done but we’re still #1 in TV and i’d even guess that we’re still going to be the largest outlet for music video in the UK, bar none!

Leading UK music video tv channel Box TV is bringing Spotify to what used to be the small screen aka the television. In what is apparently just the beginning of a partnership, the two are launching “The Official Box+ Streaming Chart” which is described as a “brand new music TV show.” What’s kind of weird is that they don’t really tell you anything about the show leaving me to assume it’s all music videos like what I imagine the rest of their channels to be. But that’s just a guess.

In a Box TV post, “The Official Box+ Streaming Chart” is described as the “first ‘Official Streaming’ chart on music TV.” The show will be based on a weekly top 40 chart from Spotify that will air Mondays beginning April 14 on 4Music.

FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2014/04/spotify-and-box-tv-launching-top-40-tv-show.html

Last week I had the unexpected pleasure of attending the UK Music Video Awards.  I say unexpected as I was completely surprised by how inspiring the night was – these things are usually so dull.  It’s the awards for the all the people who make music videos and so is rather artsy, but given I spend most of my waking day watching the same slug of pop music videos, it was really great to see some of the talent that unfortunately doesn’t make it into the hi-rotation lists. There were some great videos shown (and honoured), some of my favourites… willy moon – yeah yeah (which I got to present) yeah yeah yeahs – sacrilege rudimental – not giving in (always do great vids) jon hopkins – open eye signal There were some great films but that were let down by the music, for me a great music video has to have both.  And my absolute favourite of the night was Gesaffelstein – Pursuit.

Gesaffelstein | Pursuit from DIVISION on Vimeo.

In music TV, unfortunately the formula is pretty simple, margins are tight and we need to hit ratings, you do that by playing the hits so a lot of stuff never gets a look in.  That said, we’re toying around with a few ideas that could unshackle us a little from always having to cover costs (or significant ones at any rate) and so we may get to be a little more experimental after all…