Ed Sheeran

Marketing, technology,
regulation & Audience

I dont need a deal.

Sheeran's voyage to get a record deal with
his self-released EPs and financing more
than 1,000 gigs since age 16 by selling CDs
out of his rucksack while staying on friends'
sofas has been previously well documented
by Music Week.

Technology Big changes

Marketing
Making a profit
for themselves
and record
label/
company

Successful
marketing
and
promotion
Unknown,
unproven
=Risk?

Independent
record labels

Ed Sheeran
Brand of music
and style usually
remain
underground

Kick start

Early days +
Youtube/ word
of mouth/
social
networking TECHNOLOG

5 Eps
i tunes
SBTV
Chicken shop
& You need
me
Radio 1 & 1
extra playlist

or do I?
Jake Gosling: Youve got
Easier to
to remember theyve
Broaden
got marketing teams,
Appeal
press teams radio
More
pluggers, accounts
access to
departments and when
marketing
ops
you get bigger you need
help with that stuff How is this
www.guardian.co.uk possible?
Asylum/
Atlantic
records part
of Warner

Promotion
Press coverage
Appearances on the
radio, chat show, etc
Appearance at the Brit
awards
Website
Merchandise
Live Tour
Tour supporting Taylor
swift
Celebrities/ stars
Creation of image that
is easily recognisable
Others?

Examples?
Use ipads to find
Think about
Audience appeal,
positioning, response
Technology making
it easier/ problematic

Marketing/ Internet
fans sign up at www.edsheeran.co-buying.com
share with their friends to secure their place on a
leaderboard.
Twitter and Facebook are flooded with the hashtag
#EdWembley and the wonderful promo video, which is
pulled through from YouTube.
the campaign trended on Twitter and continued to build up
throughout.
The more friends any fan get to come along themselves
and take part, the higher they rise up the leaderboard.
the fan whos brought in the most friends gets that coveted
meeting with Ed, while other top referrers get signed
merchandise.

Power of technology
6 days the campaign
Nearly 18,000 people have already taken
part
90% of whom have been referred in by
another fan.
Overall, 60% of all participants have
shared the campaign with their social
networks
reaching up to 5m people on Twitter alone.

Gideon Lask, CEO Buyapower commented:

We knew that Eds fans were second to
none, but weve been blown away by the
response to this campaign. It absolutely
proves what weve known for some time
- your existing fans and customers are
the greatest tool any brand has, but you
have to give them reasons to share.
They wont just do it on their own. Give
them the right message, the right offer,
at the right time, and you hit a viral
tipping point where impossible targets
get smashed time and time again.

Watch the video GRAIN - links to

interactive

Shazam and WMG

http://mandmglobal.com/news/19-02-14/warner-musicgroup-and-shazam-announce-global.aspx

SYNERGY

How does the Ed Sheeran website help

to market him and his music genre?

Richard Dyer 1979

A star is an image not a real person that is

constructed out of a range of materials.
CD Covers/ Music Videos/ Press
Industry and Audience

Industry (production) and audience are interacting

with each other. Stars, no matter are constructed
as real or photocopied, are commodities
produced and consumed heavily based on their
meaning.

Character & Personality

Stardom is a social and cultural issue as well.
Therefore, the star image is generated either
adhere the social expectation or go against it
(PLEASURE). Star images are like guidance for their
audience of what they are appropriate to be like.
Different from film stars, pop stars have more
pace to decide who they are, since create
their own song. However, it also means it should
be constructed more carefully. Pop stars
transform their personality by their music, which
will be played over and over again and studied
carefully by audience. Therefore once their
characteristic changes, there is no way
audience wont notice it. Pop stars persona is

Read Dyer answer

questions

Read Regulation recap

CD, Music Video, Print, Web

How does Ed Sheeran appeal to his
audience?
Give 1 example from each form.
Think about how/ why?
Uses and gratifications personal identity
and social interaction
Genre pleasures
Richard Dyer Utopian Solutions
USP/ Star theory
Industry Marketing power
Targeting audience Internet

HW Audience responses?
Research
Look at a fan site for Ed Sheeran
. What does it tell you about its fans?
Amount of people who have bought Ed Sheerans
music across a range of platforms?
Find Literal responses from fan sites/ responses
Sheeranators Vs. Alexis Petridis of The guardian what
happened?
How well has the album + done? Even though NME
termed him New boring and received lukewarm
reviews. What does this tell you?
Ed Responds to Noel Gallaghers Dig

Appeal
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/a
rticle-2847768/I-appeal-uncool-kids-s
aysEd.html

X album
the most popular digital album of 2014, with
471,194 copies downloaded.
Spotify have confirmed that Sheeran was their most
streamed artist in the world in 2014, achieving the 1
billion streams milestone on the service.
Sheeran was also the UKs most streamed artist
across all audio streaming services.
His singles Sing and Thinking Out Loud have
been number one hits this year
By the end of this sellout UK tour, he will have
played to 275,000 people.

Sales to Streams
Spotify, YouTube, Beats Music and other services
streaming services pay money to labels, publishers
and collecting societies, who pass that on to
musicians according to the terms of their contracts.
Spotify pays 70% of its revenues out and
launched a website to explain the process , while
YouTube is famous for its non disclosure agreements
(NDAs).
How the money is then passed on to songwriters and
artists? Musicians complaints about their streaming
income arent just about low royalty cheques, but also
about the music industrys ignoble history of artists
getting screwed whenever theres a big format
change.

How to make up the

shortfall
If youve got a fanbase of 30,000 fans, and
10 years ago you could have relied on half
of them to buy your album, maybe now
thats 10%, but 50% to 70% will stream
your music, he says.
larger number of them engaging with you
directly links
more chance of getting them to do other
stuff
Thoughts?

on-sale on-stream policy.

X was released to stream or buy on
the same day, unlike recently
windowed albums from artists
including Coldplay, Beyonc and
Taylor Swift. Sheeran is firmly behind
the on-sale on-stream policy.

YouTubes role in digital music

34% of music streamers wont pay for
music because they get all they need for
free from YouTube, it claims, before
adding that YouTube quite simply sucks
too much of the oxygen out of the
competitive marketplace for premium
services to compete effectively.
YouTube is preparing to launch its own paid
subscription music service
,
Difficulties?

 Fundamentally, Google gets everything it

needs from the music business out of
YouTube as it is at the moment, so doing
this new paid service is mainly about
doing it because the labels are pushing
them to do it, and thats how they protect
the relationships for the core business,
which is YouTube,
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/20
14/sep/30/ed-sheeran-spotifystreaming to print

Interactive TV advert
The first of its kind (or at least in the UK)
Speaking about his upcomingchallenge,
Sheeran said: For me, this is a really cool
way to show songs from the album that fans
will have never seen performed in this way
before.
It gives my fans the chance to decide [which
song] from the new album they want to see
most. Their involvement is really important
to me. Audience E4 Big Bang Theory