👋 The Knowledge #190: TikTok Music is shutting down; back in time with BTS and One Direction; three great new campaigns; plus fast woks on ice

 MUSIC MARKETING TIPS, MUST-KNOW SKILLS & ESSENTIAL NEWS Need more Knowledge? Visit Music Ally Pro! Hello , and welcome to issue 190 of The Knowledge – Music Ally's weekly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ at the modern music industry. This is the newsletter that will be spending the weekend Extreme Ironing. Below are highlights of the news, tips, analysis and learning that make up our  Please consider forwarding it – or this signup link – to anyone you think would like The Knowledge to crease into their inbox each Friday. (And hit reply if you are also now stepping up your training for the 2024 Wok-racing championships.) Knowledge is power! THIS WEEK'S KNOWLEDGE – IN-DEPTH AND AT-A-GLANCE: 📬 BULLETIN NEWS:  TikTok Music is shutting down for good 🕰️ TIME MACHINE: What we were talking about this week five and 10 years ago 😵‍💫 SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND: Weekly, week-ending music for the weekend  📻 FOCUS PODCAST: Three great new campaigns under the spotlight 🤔 A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA... Our favourite unusual stuff found online this week Note: Ⓜ️ = links to Music Ally subscriber content @MusicAlly @MusicAlly @MusicAllyFB @MusicAllyFB Music Ally LinkedIn Music Ally LinkedIn Instagram Instagram 🎧 TL; DR? Each fortnight, Joe Sparrow talks to expert guests who give brief, deep analysis of important music business stuff in the Music Ally Focus Podcast.  🍳 It's short: episodes are as long as it takes to boil three eggs, consecutively... the perfect podcast for people who cook eggs the most inconvenient way! Listen here: Spotify / Apple / YouTube / Other 📬 BULLETIN NEWS: TikTok Music is shutting down for good at the end of November In recent years, the most obvious new candidate to join the upper ranks of music-streaming services was TikTok Music. Well, not any more. TikTok is shutting it down on 28 November in the five countries where it has launched so far: Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Singapore. * Why? Publicly, at least, TikTok is saying that it wants to focus on partnerships with existing DSPs. "We will be closing TikTok Music at the end of November in order to focus on our goal of furthering TikTok’s role in driving even greater music listening and value on music streaming services, for the benefit of artists, songwriters and the industry.” said its global head of music business development Ole Obermann in a statement sent to Music Ally. * TikTok Music (and the Resso service that preceded it) didn’t have an easy ride, with missing catalogue from some major labels. * And tellingly, there were precious few announcements about its growth or success metrics along the way. 👉 Read the full story here. Join us for the inaugural Music Ally Marketing Awards on Wednesday 20 November @ Ministry of Sound, London! Bringing a much needed and deserved stage for digital marketing teams in music. To find out more, including how to submit an entry, click or tap here. 🕰️ TIME MACHINE:  What we were writing about this week five and 10 years ago Change in the music industry happens fast - even faster than a British man attempting to run the fastest ever lap of Iceland. Here’s what Music Ally was writing about five and ten years ago: 5️⃣ In 2019 we reported on the latest artist signing up for rapidly-growing short-video app TikTok. K-Pop group BTS took the plunge, and within 19 hours of their profile going live they had 2.2 million followers. Five years on, that number is a LOT bigger. BTS currently have 66.7 million TikTok followers. In 2023 they ran a #10yrswithBTS anniversary challenge on the service - the anniversary being BTS as a group, not their TikTok presence - and notched up 400m views in a week. 🔟 In 2014 we were casting our eye over an augmented reality app released for One Direction. Not by their label, though. It was the work of book publisher HarperCollins to accompany its official autobiography of the British boy band. Fans could hold their phones over its pages to unlock photos, video messages, interviews and audio clips. Since then, AR has become a mainstream music technology, but less through standalone apps, and more through the lenses and filters on Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. 🧪 MUSIC ALLY CO-LABS  Personal, attentive & hands-on: why a boutique distributor is better for your business – in collaboration with TLR Distribution The decisions you make today have a huge impact on your future, and tend to compound over time – without you even noticing. This is where experience is immensely valuable. It’s no secret that artists need a team to succeed. But while it can be done on your own, this comes, often, to the artist’s detriment. Focused attention is gold – and when you have a partner that can dedicate their effort to specific areas, you will get significantly better results in the long term. Boutique music distributors like TLR Distribution have a deep understanding of the music industry, and can provide advice and guidance on the best strategies for long-term success. They can also help to identify potential pitfalls, and suggest creative solutions to overcome them, ensuring that your music reaches its full potential. 👉 Read the full article here! - Co-Labs articles are created by publishing partners in liaison with Music Ally. Learn more about Co-Labs. 😵‍💫 SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND: Weekly, week-ending music for the weekend Isn’t it funny how in the music biz we spend so long yakking about strategies and platforms and budgets and stuff, and the actual music can sometimes feel a bit relegated to “oh yeah, and that too” status? This is the bit of The Knowledge that rights that wrong – and gives you something good to listen over the weekend. - This week:  Jonathan More and Matt Black have been responsible for some vital components of modern dance music (Coldcut, Ninja Tune) – and also, via their DJ Food side project, partially responsible for the mid-90s Trip Hop phenomenon, according to some observers, at least. The general definition of Trip Hop was "downtempo, ‘blunted’ beat workouts with no direction" according to none other than the DJ Food blog, and it's, well, not reviled now, but it's not as cool or ubiquitous as it was then. (As the blog post notes, "true" trip hop was inventive and interesting.) Anyway: DJ Food released a series of early-90s records, all called "Jazz Brakes", which were designed to be sampled and mixed by DJs (hence 'food for DJs') and they have aged very well indeed. They are also a little difficult to find online these days, but a bit of digging reveals, for instance, 1994's excellent and breakbeat-y Jazz Brakes vol. 4, and also 1996's Refried Food, a remix album with some drum 'n' bass leanings. Tuck in! Music Ally Pro: What's new this week? NEW Pro Skill: Elevating The Fan Experience - We hosted our Pro Live webinar this week with attendees from across the globe, covering strategies, tools and case studies around crafting fulfilling experiences for an artist’s fanbase. The replay is available to attendees and Pro subscribers here. Weekly Round-Up: In this unlocked edition of the weekly round-up, The Cure tease their new release with a cryptic website wipe and physical mail activation while FINNEAS uses dry humour to promote vinyl merch in a relatable way. Explore these creative fan engagement tactics and more in our latest round-up. Featured Free Content: We’ve launched a selection of a few of our favourite videos and Weekly Roundups for anyone to check out. We'll be adding more each month, as a taster of all the great things we're creating for Music Ally Pro —just sign up to access! 📻 FOCUS PODCAST: Three great new campaigns under the spotlight The latest episode of our Music Ally podcast has a marketing focus, as our own marketing and training expert Sarah Seukeran analyses three notable recent music campaigns and activations: * Work for Lainey Wilson, The Cardigans and Peggy Gou are up for discussion * The campaigns combine local weather data with music streaming; connecting catalogue music with TikTok’s youthful audience; and encouraging fans to design localised merch * Looking for ideas for your own music campaigns? Get inspired! 👉 Listen to episode 160 in full here, where you can also explore the full archive of shows. 💼 Music Ally Jobs - The latest and best jobs for the global music business, trusted by both top music industry companies and experienced professionals on top of their game.  Are you looking for a job? Click here to see the full list of vacancies! 🚨 MUSIC ALLY IS HIRING! 🚨 We're looking for a Client Services Assistant. In this new role you will be responsible for raising awareness of our platforms, products, services, and events via direct email outreach and liaison with our current and target client base. This role is part time, with two days of activity needed each week that can be done remotely as long as your hours can align with European or East Coast US time zones. Interested? Find out more here. 🤔 A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA... And finally… our daily Bulletin newsletter is loved by subscribers for its instant industry analysis - but secretly, the part they like most is the ‘A Little Something Extra’ section at the bottom of the email. Here's a few of the best recent links: * A mournful but also surprisingly upbeat take on why ‘Twitter Must Die’. * Someone, inevitably, has put ChatGPT on a graphing calculator (yes, this is good news for people taking maths exams... as long as it doesn't hallucinate.) * We have a new favourite happy-honking TikTok toucan. * We, too, are invested in the Gordon Ramsay AI cooking series. Music Ally Pro is our powerful new platform consisting of an integrated suite of knowledge and skills tools, a responsive AI AllyBot drawing from our full insights resources, and a unique marketing campaigns database. We also offer in-house learning and development as well as marketing strategy and implementation for labels, managers, artists and publishers. Talk to Anthony to find out more or set up a call. Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Instagram YouTube Website Copyright © 2024 Music Ally Ltd., all rights reserved. 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