A Little Knowledge… #75

Welcome to A Little Knowledge #75 – our free weekly LinkedIn newsletter.

📬 BULLETIN NEWS:  Songwriters criticise ‘lack of meaningful streaming income’ 

Songwriters complaining about their royalties has been an ever-present phenomenon in the streaming era. Midia Research has surveyed more than 300 songwriters to offer some more data on the issues around the music streaming economy:

• It found that 10% of those surveyed earn more than $30k annually, while 54% earn less than $1k.
• When asked about their most common challenges, 67% cited a “lack of meaningful streaming income” while 40% said “breaking through the noise”.
• Difficulty finding collaborators and pitching songs; a lack of time to create; and a lack of publishing industry knowledge rounded out the top five worries.
• Midia also asked the songwriters what tools and services would help them. Tools for sync pitching topped the chart of answers, cited by 59% of respondents. 

 👉 Read more on our website here - the piece also includes a link to download a free summary version of the report.

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📬TACKLING TIKTOK: Top tips for artists from their UK music partnerships manager

In one of our latest Team Talk interviews, Stuart Dredge spoke to Sheema Siddiqi, TikTok UK’s music partnerships manager, who offers some tips and tricks for artists wanting to make the most of the platform:

• TikTok has its own culture, language and memes, which can be daunting for artists who haven’t used it regularly before. Siddiqi advises the musicians that she works with to sign up, follow your favourite artists, but also follow creators in other areas that you’re interested in, be it football, cookery or whatever else.
• Another top tip is that, whatever artists are doing on TikTok, it needs to suit them as people - and their fans. Siddiqi warns that it’s really easy to see when an artist is doing something that isn’t authentic to them. “The fans can tell, and it doesn’t perform as well as it should.”
• Siddiqi encourages artists that are new to the platform to keep it simple and keep trying new things: “Not everything’s going to be perfect, and not everything is going to work. But then you’ll figure it out: ‘Okay, the fans like it when I do performance content’ or ‘they like it when I just talk to camera… they like this, they’re not responding to that’ and then you start to get it."

👉 There are lots more tips in the full article here, and the you can explore the Team Talk archive here.

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🤔 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:

• Olympics? Schmolympics! It's all about the World Snail Racing Championships 2024 round these parts...
• An excellent Venezuelan Jungle Parrot called Sid from the 1970s would like to say hello.
• Dave Grohl doing the Charli XCX Apple dance with his daughter is the wholesome content we needed this week.

This is only a glimpse into this week's The Knowledge newsletter – subscribe for FREE and every Friday it’ll arrive in your inbox with:

🛠️ The best new platforms in TOOLS; 🌍 Highlights from our latest COUNTRY PROFILE REPORTS; 😵💫 Some great and/or strange music in SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND; 🕰 A look back in TIME MACHINE; 🎧 The Music Ally Focus PODCAST; and 🤔 more links to our favourite unusual stuff in A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA.