Author: Edouard Reny – August 19th, 2013
Defining in which music Library to place ones musical composition can become quite a headache for the composer new to this business area. Many factors are to be taken into account to ensure that uploaded tracks have a chance to get pitched and that the deal with the library is actually fair to the composer.
Nothing is worse to witness oneยดs masterpiece blocked by an exclusive contract, and consequently taking dust on a shelve, un/pitched, because the library has not the significant impact on the market one thought it had when uploading the track.
One of the numerous factors that could be useful in understanding this industry, is the internet traffic generated by individual music libraries and how and by who their respective websites are browsed.
The study presented in this paper concerns libraries which are ranked 1 to 20 in the MLR ranking system as well as those that were credited with more than 40 comments. Table 1 summarizes the results by listing The Global Internet Traffic Rank , the average time a visitor spends on the website, the rank in the US, and the three countries that bring the most visitors.
The Global Internet Traffic rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors to this site and pageviews on this site over the past 3 months (The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1: usually it is Google.com)
Table 1: Internet performance parameters for music libraries listed in MLR.
(NA stands for Not Available)
The question lies in how to interpret this data. The global rank represents the traffic generated by the music library website (the smaller the rank number, the higher the traffic). However, more traffic does not systematically imply an improved quality exposure to a composer’s tracks. What is important is the popularity of a site viewed from the potential pitchers, not simple curious visitors or random listeners… Another parameter to consider is the duration of the visit: longer times imply that the visitor was interested, or that the site was “sticky”, which increases chances of exposure for one’s musical compositions.
Such indicators much be taken with caution though. Some specialized libraries, well recognized and successful in their respective industry could show up with a very low rank, because only visited by true professionals. A very high ranking library might on the other hand be visited mostly by non-relevant visitors, because well marketed to the masses.
It would be very interesting to correlate these results with the experience of well-established composers that have been in the industry for a long time. If a correlation is validated, these indicators could become a complementary tool to identify which library to trust most with our precious tracks.
Thanks for sharing this. While this data is a very small piece of the puzzle and must not be taken out of context, I do find value in it. Data is better than no data.
I tend to agree.
The study, IMHO, is pretty flawed. Internet traffic is only a possible factor for a library, such as an RF library, whereby tracks are searched/licensed on-line. For conventional libraries who primarily market directly to music sup contacts, such as Crucial or Indigi, it has little meaning. You can’t lump different library business models together.
Hi Advice,
Yes, I agree… as analysed in the text, there are more factors to consider (that is why I added RF/Excl or non Excl next to the name), and as you rightfully write there are sites that focus on a specific and effective market that will be consequently much more lucrative for the composer.
However, combine this data with their business model and their target, then you might have an interesting performance indicator…
This data is not meant to be considered by itself, it is just a piece of the puzzle
Hi Edouardo-
Thanks for taking the time to put this info together.
I think the main take away from just this graph would be ‘time spent on site’, at least in my opinion.
Alexa only tracks traffic from people who have installed their toolbar which skews the results towards to the more tech savvy and internet marketers out there and less on the regular punters that visit a website.
Alexa is a fairly good indicator of where a website stands relative to other websites but does not say anything about conversion.
In my experience traffic has less to do with revenue and conversion than most people might assume.
My website that gets 1700 visitors a day makes much more than the one that gets 15,000 visitors a day.
-Mark
Hello Mark,
Many thanks for your comment. I checked this with my brother. As the owner/founder of free-scores.com, he pretty much immersed into that type of stats. I confirm: a visitor will be counted only if he has an Alexa toolbar. Consequently, the data could be seriously biased: I suspect that the proportion of IT geeks and developers having such toolbars installed will be higher than that of music supervisors…
Readers at MLR should keep this in mind when reviewing the data and only look at this as a potential trend… Apologies to all for that imprecision.
I would also like to correct a typo in the US-Rank:
Shockwave is more in the 80-90k and Pond 5 more in the 5k. I must have interverted inadvertently those two numbers… Sorry about that also…
You have to wonder how much traffic is actually potentially paying customers. How much traffic comes from composers uploading files, checking their stats and sales? To be fair though, 2 of my best selling libraries are on that list.
“You have to wonder how much traffic is actually potentially paying customers. How much traffic comes from composers uploading files, checking their stats and sales? To be fair though, 2 of my best selling libraries are on that list.”
Some of the countries listed are not known for holding IP rights in high regard. You have to wonder how much traffic is actually “non-paying customers”… to paraphrase.
thanks for taking the time to do this Edouardo, it’s always interesting to see some raw data.
I agree with you D.I. when it comes to music, but here I was solely looking at the biz side of things. Statistics can be a valuable tool, although you will note that in my short analysis, I am cautious in how to interpret the data I collected on these libraries… It is just a part of the puzzle…
I am uploading music to one of them for the first time, a major one, it’s just not uploading, it is also understanding the legal implications, how the site works, the market of the library, choosing the right metadata not only based on the track but on the library’s customers etc… a long process… I don’t want to repeat this countless times in dozens of libraries that in the end are not popular to pitchers… I prefer to try and select those that I think will have a high return on (time) investment so I can spend more time doing what I really love: hanging out in the studio!
I am not a fan of the “big data” trend.
Many companies are seeking to use information like this to gain a strategic and tactical advantage. So it would make sense for people to want to use similar data and information. But these lists can be interpreted many different ways. There are no definitive conclusions to be drawn. People can read through the data end up more confused than ever.
It simply takes time to figure out which companies will work. Music is something that has the potential to draw up wide ranges of emotion and feelings. Unfortunately, the world has sought to commoditize music in order to sell products. I know that there is always a tradeoff.
But at some point, people are going to need to let nature take its course and stop trying to mechanize everything. Pretty soon, people will just simply use algorithms to make music. They will type in a few things, hum or whistle, and viola, songs are perfectly played, mixed and mastered.
Technology is not going anywhere. That is certain. But people, especially musicians, need to use technology as a tool, not as the only tool to do things.