We are in a streaming era, where artists make tons of money off digital streaming. The more people play/listen to your song, the more money/value for you and your art. So you need to make efforts to see you retain your listeners and keep them coming back for more. The music industry is basically an attention market. When all eyes/ears were on you. How did you convert, retain and sustain that?
In the first instance, what is Replay Value?
Replay value is the repeatability of a track, record, or project, how your music keeps people coming back to listen more, over and again – daily and weekly. Replay value is determined by the conscious effort you make towards capturing your listener’s attention, appealing, and retaining them through your music. In the long run, replay value metaphors to recommendations and share value.
What factors affect the replay value of a music?
1. The first 30-seconds:
In today’s fast-paced world of digital streaming, those first impressions will determine if someone will take the time to listen to the entire song or not. With such easy access to so much music right at our fingertips, it’s becoming difficult to keep a listener’s attention for an entire song. You need to put in efforts to keep a listener glued for 30 seconds on your song. How do you achieve that?
Get to the point: Most songs have strong points and weaker points, the strong points being what catches the listener’s ear and makes them react (either to keep listening or move on). Whatever the strong point is in your song, it is a good idea to use this within the first 30 seconds in one way or another and then repeat it periodically throughout the song. One way to test the effectiveness of the first 30 seconds of your song is to play it as a ring tone on your cell phone. When it rings observe the reactions of the people around you and see what people think of it. Does it grab attention? Is it pleasant? Is it irritating? Is it even noticeable? Watch how your friends respond without telling anyone what the music is and you will discover how strong of an attraction your ‘First 30 Seconds’ carries.
2. Cachy Hook:
A hook or chorus is the central point of music. There are times, you listen to a song, the first verse might not be that great, but you got to give it a chance to run through to the chorus and by the time the chorus is fading out to the second verse, you already made 80% decision on the replay value by analyzing the quality of music, its reception and how you resonate to it. This proves the importance of a hook in music. Being the cardinal point of sonical attraction & decision making, the chorus of your music needs to be created with an intentional creative effort to appeal to your target audience. Fill it up with the central message of the song, hit the nail on the head, and give it your best shot because it is the lifeline of your music. Losing out on your chorus will only increase your skip rates.
3. Sonic Apealing:
The melodic composition of your song should be appealing to the ear with a great message. As much as you may think this is the producer’s work, the artiste has a lot to do towards bringing out the beauty of the beat created by the producer. Lace your beats beautifully with lyrics creatively crafted for that beat. The Producer only gives you a template, more like the raw material. It is your duty to decide how the final product will look or taste like.
4. Study Fan Behavior
Because your music is made for your audience, which are your fans, lovers, and admirers of your music? You need to study their behavior from your previous release and build upon it. What did they like most about your previous release? How do they relate to it? What was the most quoted or referenced section of the song? When you study all these, the next time you hit the studio you will know how to create music that will appeal to your fans and gain more replay value for your music.
5. Length of music:
Keep it short, make them want for more. Nobody is interested in spending 4, 5 minutes on one song again. We are past that era, we live in a fast-paced digital world, where if you cannot impress your listeners in the shortest possible time? He is pressing the skip button. There is no need for a 4 to 5 minutes song. What do you have to say that you’ve not said already? A perfect example of this is Joeboy’s songs. They appear short, precise, and straight to melodies. There’s no time beating about the bush. A Twitter user once twitted. “Before you will finish cooking indomie, Joeboy don sing two songs finish.” That is it. Keep it short and have them replay it to enjoy it once more. Be sure to have delivered your message within that short time. Don’t just be focused on the length of the song. But more messages in a short time.
6. The Message:
Lastly, back all of these with a strong message containing popular opinions or unpopular opinions depending on what you are dishing out. The more people relate to your lyrics, the more replay & share value. When the music is reaching the people that it is supposed to reach? They will hold it down and exploit it to the best of their abilities.
The concept of replay value In music is not so much talked about, that’s why we decided to share this today, hope this was insightful and useful?
Written by: DigitalJunkie
