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DISCOVERY CHANNELS
Steps toward improving music discovery (and sales) on TVa special white paper developed by Billboard and NARM By Glenn Peoples Illustration by Seluk Demirel

THE

usic discOvery On Tv seems so straightforward on paper: A

viewer hears a song of interest and seamlessly taps into a wealth of information, then purchases the song or adds it to a playlist on a subscription service. But the reality of getting from discovery to engagement or purchase is far more difficult. To connect listeners with music they desire, all stakeholders need to be linkednot just hardware and software developers and music service providers, but also music supervisors, production teams, distributors and licensing services.

Key Points Inside This White Paper


Viewers are eight times more likely to buy music at the moment of discovery than at a later time. music discovery has moved from brick-and-mortar stores to digital media. discovery can be as basic as text on a tV screen while still being effective. the second screen has enormous, untapped potential to offer immersive music experiences related to tV viewing. Connecting music discovery on tV with music purchases and subscription services will improve monetization and engagement. stakeholders all along the value chainmetadata, hardware, applications, download stores and subscription servicesmust work cooperatively.

Moving from the point of discovery to engagement requires timely and accurate metadata to be provided to the distributor or broadcaster. Or an integrated service must identify an individual songs digital fingerprint by matching it against a cloud-based database and returning a host of information A simple purchasing solution must be provided to hardware makers and software developers that allows a consumer to purchase an MP3 on any given mobile device. Numerous details must work perfectly for a person to identify a song and quickly add it to a playlist on a subscription service for future listening. The good news is discovery on TV presents great potential. Consumers are showing a desire to seek out music on TV. Such music-focused programs as American Idol and the Grammy Awards are popular vehicles for discovery. Scripted shows, from Greys Anatomy to Mad Men, offer immediate connections to songs viewers wouldnt have otherwise heard, as do advertising synchs. But the technical pieces required for seamless discovery are still being put in place, and communication among all stakeholders is vital. This white paper is intended to highlight some of the key players, describe the potential gains, identify the significant pain points and suggest solutions. It was undertaken as a joint project among Billboard, NARMS DigitalMusic.org division and TAG Strategic. The content is based on a session at the National Assn. of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) conference, Music Biz 2012, titled Music & TV: Enabling Discovery for the Connected Consumer that was organized by DigitalMusic.org and TAG Strategic.

The OppOrTuniTy
How big is the opportunity in music discovery on TV? Here are some numbers, statistics and trends that tell the story.
Immediacy is king. Coincident, a developer

interests most consumers surveyed. The hypothetical service was described as being connected to either a digital jukebox in a public place or an interactive touch-screen at a concert venue. Swiping a mobile device in front of these appliances would provide the consumer with artist information and allow for easy purchase of digital downloads or merchandise. Eleven percent of respondents said they were extremely interested in such a service, 15% were very interested and 36% somewhat interested. Only 39% said they were not very or not at all interested in such a service. Cloud-based discovery services received an extremely or very interested rating from the most avid music fans (52%).
New artists will benefit from improved discovery and monetization. Much dis-

of software for video engagement on digital platforms, found that viewers are eight times as likely to buy music at the moment of discovery than at some later time. The company experimented with placement and timing of song purchase options to gauge viewers reactions. Coincident found that people were most likely to purchase a song when the opportunity presented itself on a screen overlay rather than choose to purchase using a buy button. This underlines the growing understanding that contextual opportunities to engage that are synced to specific points in a video are much more likely to result in a favorable action, the company concluded in a white paper.
Digital music is growing fast. Discovery

covery relates to previously unknown artists. NPD and NARM found that 42% of songs that caught listeners ears were from unfamiliar artists compared with 25% from favorite artists, 28% from known and liked artists and 5% from familiar artists. The more committed consumers tend to research and buy music they hear and like, but more casual consumers wait to buybut usually end up buying nothing. Thus, new artists are more likely to lose out on the opportunity to get an immediate purchase or begin a new relationship with the listener.

can be tied into consumers love of buying and streaming digital music. U.S. consumers brought 1.2 billion digital tracks and 103.1 million albums in 2011, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Internet radio is going mainstreamPandora has 150 million registered users and 51 million active users. Subscription services have millions of users and are growing fast.
Discovery has moved from physical retail to digital sources. Consumers rely more

surveyed for an NPD Group/NARM study in 2011 cited traditional retail sales as a top five discovery source, and only 13% of physical shoppers cited brick-and-mortar retail.
TV is a vital tool for reaching moderate consumers. The NPD/NARM study found

The currenT sTaTe Of discOvery and mOneTizaTiOn


When todays TV viewers opt to identify a song, applications retrieve information from a cloud-based database to provide the consumer with basic song information, buy links and possibly access to related YouTube videos and song lyrics. But most of the discovery is taking place in ways that dont integrate the many platforms a single viewer may engage with on a regular basis. A viewers cable TV doesnt communicate with his Pandora, iTunes or Rhapsody account and doesnt synchronize with a smartphone or tablet app for an engaging second-screen experience. Much of todays music discovery is relatively old-fashionedand quite effective. Music video tags on the screen, for example, provide

that TV is particularly valuable for targeting the mainstream consumer, women and brick-and-mortar shoppers. In aggregate, TV shows and TV music channelsnot including advertisements or infomercialsare inf luential in discovery for 49% of consumers. Thats second only to AM/FM radio (60%).
Consumers are interested in cloud-based discovery. The NPD Group/NARM study

on TV for discovery compared with the days when brick-and-mortar stores were more plentiful and important. Only 8% of consumers

found that simple, cloud-based discovery

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real-time song identification in MTVs original programming. The feedback from the audience has been good because viewers dont feel the ID tags take away from the story, MTV executive VP of music and talent Amy Doyle says, noting, Our audience is used to multimedia tasking. MTV uses its online and TV properties to aid discovery, Doyle adds. Not only does MTV offer song ID tags on its shows, it offers on-demand access on MTV.com for a deeper dive to take advantage of awareness gained from editorial or music video. Then its up to them where they want to go across the MTV screens to find out more about that artist and interact more, Doyle says. In addition to MTV.com, MTV offers two mobile apps to aid discovery: MT V PUSH, which highlights up-and-coming artists, and Music Meter, an app that measures Internet activity and ranks artists according to hotness. Editorial aids discovery at MTV, too. The PUSH program spotlights new artists and exposes them across properties. Some acts have seen a big impact. Mac Millers Blue Slide Park album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 144,000 units (according to SoundScan) after being a PUSH artist.
Song lyrics are among the most-searched items on the Web. A fairly low-tech but effec-

Viewers are eight times as likely to buy music at the moment of discovery than any later time.

users with a set list, a live blog and a free remix of Madonnas single Give Me All Your Luvin. The USA Network drama Covert Affairs uses Shazam to give viewers additional content. The Shazam logoa capital Sappears in the lower corner of the screen during the show as a call to action. Through Shazam, USA has given viewers playlists of music from the show and behind-the-scenes videos with the cast. Both Shazam and SoundHound provide links to buy identified tracks at either iTunes (on iOS apps) or Amazon MP3 (on Android apps). Not every query results in a purchase, but the purchases add up when an app has a large install base. In September 2011, Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher told news site paidContent that the service was getting 4 million song identifications per day that resulted in a song purchase between 8% and 10% of the time. In all, he said, Shazam users purchased $100 million of digital music per year through the app.

Metadata is a key ingredient in discovery on connected TVs. Rovi, owner of All Music

hey, i like That! how Today


The top six ways to discover music

There are two technological approaches to platforms and billing: vertical and horizontal. A vertically constructed

tive way of finding a song is to search for it in Google or another search engine. Many websites are devoted entirely to song lyrics, thus making it possible to locate a song heard on TV by searching for fragments of lyrics. Such question-andanswer websites as Quora are also helpful: A person asks about a song in a particular commercial and others can leave the answer.
More than 200 million people around the world use audio identification app Shazam to identify songs using their mobile device.

Apps like Shazam and SoundHound offer a popular way to discover and purchase music. Shazam is now working with TV producers and advertisers to offer richer second-screen experiences. For example, Pepsis Super Bowl ad offered a second-screen experience with a full song and video in addition to social features. Shazam also enriched Madonnas Super Bowl halftime performance by providing app

company like Apple has everything integrated in its devices with Apple billing for Apple consumers. Google and Amazon are increasingly vertical, too. This approach can also be seen in Sonys Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited services that allow a single account to be accessed on Sony hardwareDVD and Blu-ray players, PlayStation 3as well as Web and Android mobile devices. The horizontal approach may present the most opportunity because it currently has the most friction. Its a bit of madness for us, says Vickie Nauman, president of North America for 7digital, which provides white-label solutions for MP3 purchases and streaming across a variety of platforms. Nauman says the biggest hurdles are all of the other things that are required to link discovery and monetization: account linking, management of the transaction, ensuring the money is collected and that everyone gets paid. The complexity and herding of cats means we take on a lot of that complexity. Discovery on connected TVs is in its early stages. We havent reached our iTunes App Store moment with the TV, Rhapsody VP of product Jon Maples says. Its really fractured.

Guide and Muze, has a team that enters artist and other song data as well as album reviews into a database. The company has created application programming interfaces on top of data so consumer electronics manufacturers and app developers can access its data, Rovi solutions architecture director Michael Papish says. If the client has an ID (e.g., UPC, Rovi ID), it summons the cloud and accesses the data it wants. Clients can send snippets of audio and Rovi will do a real-time search. Discovering actual music fits into the overall strategy of interactive TV, Papish says. Another way of identifying content that airs on TV is through an automated content recognition service like the one provided by Audible Magic. The service uses digital fingerprinting technology to identify audio within any particular frame that matches the sample against its registry. Being able to identify audio at any given point in a TV program creates the opportunity for timebased applications for personalization, socialization, engagement and interactive advertising. Myspace owner Specific Media is working with Audible Magic and Panasonic to integrate a Myspace app into the TV that recognizes a song playing in a program and connects the viewer to that particular artists Myspace page. Its version 0.1 right now, but people are trying to connect the dots, Audible Magic VP of marketing and customer support Jay Friedman says. But smart TVs, or connected TVs, are only as smart as the data and technology provided to them. These smart devices are really dumb devices, Friedman says. They dont know whats playing. You have all these apps, but that singular interface you have in the living room, all these devices connect to that TV set, but that TV set knows nothing about whats actually playing.
Companies have spent years learning from their experiences with different platforms.

TradiTional aM/FM 60% Tv shows/videos/channels 49% Friends/FaMily 40%

Movies 29% youTube 23% Free online radio 22%

Rhapsodys TiVo integration was an early combination with a connected device that taught the company a lot about the technology and execution, Maples says. User engagement has been fair but the market isnt mature enough to make an impact. Without widespread adoption of the platform, a one-off integration can be incredibly costly, Maples says. Companies that develop second-screen applications will find a TV audience well attuned to multitasking while watching. Such app de-

The road To discovery . . . and sales

DIGITAL MUSIC SeRVICe: Purchase download access sTreaMs

velopers as TV.Plus, Miso and Yap.tv create TV companion apps that provide contextual, real-time information on the shows people are watching. Twitter and Facebook have become popular platforms for TV shows, especially music awards shows. The Grammys in February generated 13 million comments on the two leading social networks, up 2,280% from the 2011 Grammys, according to social activity tracker Bluefin Labs. The Academy of Country Musics telecast on April 1 generated 676,000 social media comments, up 331% from the prior year, according to Bluefin. Tracking song plays has both business-tobusiness and business-to-consumer implications. TuneSat offers a proprietary identification service in 13 countries that constantly monitors live broadcast feeds, executive VP/ COO Chris Woods says. The service can even identify music buried under layers of other audio. Rights owners who want to ensure theyre getting paid for performances use the service. Woods says case studies show that up to 80% of music broadcast on TV is never reported to performing rights organizations because submitting cue sheets is a manual process. Its literally impossible for production people to report this with a high degree of accuracy. It falls through the cracks. TuneSat also enables consumer-facing products by bridging multiple platforms. We are monitoring for the use of nearly 20 million song titles on hundreds of TV channels in 14 countries in real time, Woods says. We license this data and enable app developers, broadcasters and content distributors such as cable and satellite companies to integrate instant music identification into their products and offerings.

pain pOinTs
A number of significant pain points inhibit music discovery and the intercompany processes that facilitate discovery and monetization.
Remote control mechanisms are problematic. Connected TVs often have a controller

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photograph/illustration by tk

credit tkb

arTisT, songwriTer, label, Publisher

ProducTion coMPany Music suPervisor

Tv or FilM sTudio, cable or saTelliTe coMPany

Tv, audio recogniTion soFTware

thats archaic and multi-buttoned that doesnt do much other than control the TV and channels. A remote provides limited ability for onscreen navigation and search. Moreover, some consumers may not want additional content like artist biographies on their screen during a program.

s consumer discovers Music


When a person heard a song he or she liked enough to listen to again, the artist was . . . Discovery requires information for conversion. Question: What would make you shop more often for new music?

announceMenTs on aM/FM 54% buy single To geT discounT on albuM laTer 23% Facebook uPdaTes abouT new Music 19% recoMMendaTions FroM online services 17% seeing billboard charT aT sTore 11% eMails FroM reTailers 11% FavoriTe 25% known/liked 28% FaMiliar 5% unFaMiliar 42%
Source: NPd Group/NArM research report on consumers and Music discovery, November 2011

Catch Them In Two Clicks: opportunities for The future


hink two, three or five years ahead and consider the ways that devices, applications and services will work together to deliver a more information-filled discovery experience to tV viewers. here are some things to watch for in the coming years. 1. EasE of usE WIll dictate the success of discovery and monetization strategies. For the foreseeable future there will be many different user experiences, 7digital president of north america Vicki nauman says. some people want to buy something immediately, and some people want to bookmark and add it to their last.fm playlist or spotify playlist. there will continue to be a lot of different options. Were seeing across all [options] its ease of use thats the driving factor that makes a difference in whether something will be successful. 2. ComPanIEs nEEd To address many different demographics and types of consumers. the challenge before is not either/or, its to build all these new models and superserve the consumer, lakeshore Entertainment senior Vp of music and soundtracks brian mcnelis says. but serving each group of consumers will take flexibility. the top 10% of most committed music fans are also probably the biggest pirates, mcnelis says. if were not going to get them back, if the most committed consumers are already gone, we better figure out how to get the rest of them. thats why making a tighter weave on the net so we can catch them in one or two clicks [is so important]. 3. donT forgET abouT albums. the internet is a medium for singles. but people dont fall in love with artists just because of singles, shine america executive director of music daryl berg says. you fall in love because of a song and their next song and their next song that you have a 45- or 50-minute experience with. if we keep feeding people on a song-by-song basis . . . were not going to build artists. 4. TomorroWs TVs WIll ProVIdE new opportunities. sets with next-generation 4k resolution debuted at the Consumer Electronics show in January. Contemplating where to display information on a 3-d plane is interesting, audible magic Vp of marketing and customer support Jay Friedman says. you can really enhance the experience. you can overlay information in front of the plane in a way thats less distracting than [typical] overlay. 5. PlaTforms and dEVICEs will be connected to deliver a better experience. music services already have millions of songs. now its up to developers to connect music collections with discovery moments. What would be really great is that your tV or device learns more about what you like, and starts recommending, tag strategic managing partner ted Cohen says. how do you get me to the music i like quickly? but more importantly, how do you get me to that music that im totally unfamiliar with and make a connection? GP

arTisTs using TwiTTer 4%

Cue sheets are holding up innovation. Cue sheets, the list of music featured in programs, are often finished after the date of broadcast. Daryl Berg, executive director of music at TV production and distribution company Shine America, says music departments are often understaffed and producers need incentives to complete them on time. Discovering independent and unknown artists takes even more work. According

to the NPD Group/NARM study, 42% of motivated discovery involved unfamiliar artists while the remainder58%involved artists the listener already knows or likes. It stands to reason that lesser-known artists would benefit from improved discovery tools than more established acts.

mon post-discovery action was passive29% of consumers said they waited to hear the song on the radio. But there is proof consumers take action upon discovery23% said they went to an online video site like YouTube, 22% looked for the artist using a search engine and 15% went to the artists website. Its important not to miss a chance to convert interest into a purchase, Lakeshore Entertainment senior VP of music and soundtracks Brian McNelis says. McNelis says he requires his team to limit a consumer purchase to two clicks.
Incentivize producers to complete cue sheets well before the time of broadcast.

is to create an interactive experience that ties the program to the second screen during the creative process rather than after postproduction, Audible Magics Friedman says. In other words, the producers would start to contemplate interactive features and what content could be added to the second screen when producing the show. Examples of second-screen content are information and e-commerce opportunities of featured products, cast biographies, historical information of the setting and coverage of the artist and songwriter behind the programs music synchs. This approach would solve the problem of cue sheets being unavailable by the time a program is broadcast.
The cost of discovery could be built into the service. On average, consumers favor dis-

hOw TO mOve fOrward


Getting to the future of music discovery on TV will require teamwork on the part of all companies in the value chain, from the providers of metadata to the services that stream, sell and store digital music. Here are the best places to start, according to the experts.
Focus on connecting consumers to music at the moment of discovery. Consumers

need to hear it, be exposed to it and know what it is easily. Once they do, they need an easy way to access the music through their product/service of choice, be it iTunes, Amazon, 7digital, Spotify, Rhapsody, Amazon MP3 or another store or service. All of those steps are the problem that needs to be solved, 7digitals Nauman says.
Integrate discovery with mobile apps. Second-screen viewing circumvents the limitations that networks have with displaying additional information (e.g., artist name, song title) onscreen while a song is playing. Networks often need to reserve the bottom third of the screen to promote other network programming. Shorten the distance between discovery and purchase. NPD/NARM research has

Producers are short-staffed and dont always have the resources to complete cue sheets, Shine Americas Berg says. Enticements could be direct monetary incentives through sales, although thats problematic because digital music revenue can be split only so many ways. The incentive could take the form of promotion received from the network or featured artists in advance of broadcast, by letting fans know what songs will be included in a program, for example. Or the label and artist could buy into the video and create a revenue stream for the producer, says Eric Hanson, a former manager at Microsoft who worked with the video-on-demand service available on Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone. This is only a stopgap solution, however. Improving the delivery of manually created, labor-intensive cue sheets lacks the potential of automated digital services that can replicate the process.
Find technological solutions to cue sheet problems. For example, Soundmouse is a

covery models for which the cost is included in the music or merchandise (30%), according to NPD/NARM research. They are less interested in a one-time annual fee (20%), watching advertisements in return for the service (20%) and a small per-use fee (19%). Having the fee included in a monthly phone bill was the least desired payment method (9%). Committed music fans are the most open to including the fee in a monthly mobile bill or one-time annual fees. However, theyre far less interested in the per-use fee, indicating an expectation of high usage for which such fees would be cost-prohibitive.
Integrate subscription services with discovery. Windows Phone, for example, has a

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found just 15% of consumers purchased a music download upon discovering a new artist or new release and just 11% streamed the song from a music website. The most com-

Web-based service that aims to provide efficiencies to significantly reduce the headache and costs in terms of time and resources needed to manage, report and distribute cue sheets, according to its website. Soundmouse helps producers enter cue sheets more efficiently and gives broadcasters a standardized format for improved reporting and analysis. But, again, addressing problems with manually created cue sheets is more of a stopgap solution than long-term progress.
Producers can bake interactivity into the creative process. The next phase in discovery

Shazam feature that connects to the Zune subscription service, Hanson says. Thats where the magic happens. TV viewing app Miso connects viewers to a currently playing track on Spotify. As an increasing number of music fans use on-demand subscription services as a home base for cataloging and listening, its logical to connect the moments of discovery to the preferred mode of listening. Subscription services can enable repeat listening to the songs identified with apps like Shazam and SoundHound. Songs identified by these apps could be turned into playlists. Subscription services can build playlists of recommended songs and artists based on identifications. App developers will need to work with subscription services to enable these functions.

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