I had the pleasure of speaking with Jay Frank, author of Futurehit.dna. Jay is currently, Senior VP of Music Strategic at CMT and covers all music, helping take music across all CMT platforms. Prior to that, Jay was VP of Music Programming and Label Relations at Yahoo Music for 7 years.
Future Hit.DNA provides a road map to the digital landscape, outlining 15 points that must change in a song if the artists, songwriters and producers of tomorrow want a chart topping hit. I asked him about some of the main highlights and points of Futurehit.dna and also how that can apply to the artist members of Sonicbids. You can listen to the full interview via the Youtube embed here, or read through below for some key takeaways and quotes.
You’re the author of Futurehit.dna, which I’ll ask more questions about in a minute, but first, a little bit about you. What was your background before writing Futurehit.dna and what prompted you to sit down and write it?
"While I was at Yahoo, we were the first to accrue over a billion music streams a month between radio/video…it was interesting to look and monitor what was happening and why people were doing what they were doing and how they listen to music. I started noticing patterns in how people listen and react to music and started to understand the psychology of how we listen... Part of the reason the music industry was failing was because they were not making music that played well into the technology… People used the craft songs to make radio hits…but no one was making them that way for the digital age. The top 10 selling songs of last year all had intros of under 7 seconds…the biggest change in the digital age of discovery is that we focus on the first few seconds of the song to decide whether we like the song or not. The first 10 seconds of a song are the most important.”
Your very first sentence of the prologue is “Technology dictates music creativity, not the other way around.” As you acknowledge, that’s a pretty controversial statement to make. Can you give a little context around that statement and how it lays down the concept for Futurehit.dna?
Jay studied the movement of music technology and history of music. Popular music was always affected and dictated by technology – the space on a vinyl record dictated the length of a song, new recording processes, etc. Rap is a whole genre dictated by technology from a DJ mixer to portable turntables.
“Music comes from your heart in a natural way that is inexplicable… [but] as I was writing the book, I developed 15 ideas that I saw could be changing over the previous decade…I wanted to know why these changes were made with technology… Technology then dictated an element of the creative process.”
At Sonicbids, we serve a category of musicians that we call the “Artistic Middle Class.” Our members are serious about their music and willing to invest time and money into their art to take it to the next level; however, typically our members are not represented by a huge agency or don’t have major label support. How can your research help this type of artist?
Technology helping all artists at any level because it’s helping to engage listeners. It widens the scope. But if your first song that they hear doesn’t engage them, then you’ve lost the fan.
“The hardest part right now is reaching the hearts and minds of consumers. The biggest benefit of Sonicbids is that is cuts through the filters and gets the music distributed quickly and efficiently, but that also becomes the biggest challenge. As the end result, I can only listen to 5% of what’s being released… so the competition is great. So any success, even at a middle class niche, you still have to have something that separates you from the pack.”
The book essentially lays out some “rules” how to capture an audience’s attention in today’s changing world. Artists primarily come to Sonicbids to network with promoters – a professional audience, rather than a consumer audience. Are there any particular rules or suggestions that you think artists should hyper focus on when shopping their work to promoters and music buyers?
They want to be able to find a listen to your music at their leisure. A service like Sonicbids has the ability to make distribution seamless while also not clogging up the promoter’s email and turning them off.
“A person who you are looking to impress – they don’t want to open an email inbox cluttered with 5 gigs of music. That attachment becomes a burden and has a lower likelihood of being listened to.”
There are exceptions to every rule, especially with art. Have you heard any successful songs released over the last few years that didn’t really follow your new “formula” for success, or have there been any songs/artists finding success that just generally have surprised you?
If you are a band who has gained the audience’s trust and built it up, then you can put out whatever you like and don’t need to worry about impressing those in the first few seconds. The other exceptions are those that are in the top .1% of talent. This allows a greater latitude to break the rules.
“There are always exceptions to the rules…the one that strikes me the most is Lady Antebellum’s ‘Need You Now’ … it doesn’t follow any rules [and] is more of a standard radio hit of the old days… [though] examples like Radiohead and U2… are artists that love to challenge their audience time and time again. [But] spend time and really earn your audiences trust…When you have their trust, then start challenging them.”
==
Jay Frank's first book, “FutureHit.DNA,” was published last year. A respected worldwide leader in the music and digital communities, Frank has spoken at such conferences as MIDEM, South By Southwest, Canadian Music Week, ASCAP Expo, MusExpo, Digital Music Forum, CMJ, SF Music Tech Summit and Mobile Entertainment Summit, among others. Visit http://www.futurehitdna.com/