Chatting with…Scott from New Music Tipsheet

Usually when we think of technology, we think of crazy stuff that’s in a sci-fi novel or James Bond movie like lazers, jetpacks, and talking robots.  However, I see the purpose of technology as making a task more efficient, more effective, quicker, and/or less arduous.  With regards to New Music Tipsheet, Scott Perry has taken the bulk of album release schedules for the following 6 weeks ahead (for the free version, but more on that later) and placed them on a site that easy to follow along with.  A lot of times, it’s the most obvious problem that goes unnoticed.

I had a bunch of friends go to NARM this year.  When a buddy of mine got back, he asked if I had ever heard of New Music Tipsheet (here in referred as NMS), so I decided to reach out to Scott to set something up.

Our email Q&A:

-What made you gravitate towards the music industry?

I’ve been in the music business since high school, when I interned at  a top 40 radio station in Birmingham Alabama.  This lead to gigs with Sony (college rep, driving baby bands like Pearl Jam & Rage Against the Machine around New Orleans in my station wagon), Formula PR (Nine Inch Nails at Woodstock 94 — insane), Universal Distribution, the  Coalition of Independent Music Stores, and technology firm Liquid Audio — always growing, changing, evolving in the music space over the years.  Finally went solo in 2001 after the tech bubble burst.

-How did you think of the concept for music NMT?

I had been collecting new release data for years, as a means of sourcing out new business leads. By the time the info came out in print form (via Ice Magazine), the info was largely outdated and too late to act upon, so it just made sense to bring all that data under one roof and build a site around this one function as technology allowed for easier collation of such data.

The Tipsheet was just release schedules at first, but over the years has grown to collect music / tech / business headlines from top sites via bots & RSS, thus eliminating tons of hand holding and staffing that is involved with a traditional trade magazine.

-Give me your elevator pitch on why NMT  works for the industry.

The site focuses on one thing and does it really really well — we list almost every new release from almost every label on one site. It’s a one-stop shop for anyone needing release schedules & recent news without having to jump all over the place, easy to use for quick  in & out, to get on with your busy day.  Our industry readership loves it because it makes their work MUCH easier than if they had to curate   all this info themselves — and it’s free!

-Are there any other sites out there like yours?  How do you find yours different or superior to theirs?

There are a lot of sites that provide music industry news & info (Billboard, Allmusic, etc.), but nobody else focuses on pure new  release info like we do — come in, get the info you want, move on   with your day.  Anybody can come along and make something bigger /  better  / badder / stickier, but I find it more important to be lean &  profitable.

-Do you find that this only services the old paradigm of the music biz or the new alike?  Explain.

EVERYBODY needs to keep up with what’s coming out, what’s going on.  And EVERYBODY is so damn busy with their own jobs, that they don’t have time to look beyond their workload to see what’s going on in the bigger picture.  So as long as there are releases, there’s a need for   someone to clean up the data and make sense of it all.

-What have you done to promote the site?

One-on-one outreach, plain & simple.  it’s an industry site that consumers have found out about through word of mouth / email forwards / retweets, but my #1 goal is to serve my business clients, not go head-to-head with other general / consumer music  destinations that are much larger and better financed than myself.  Plus, I use the weekly Monday morning Tipsheet email as a platform to talk about things that I find interesting (that somehow all turns back to music), and the passalongs for those have been phenomenal.

-If you’re comfortable telling me, how do you monetize your site?  Is there anything beyond ads?

It’s all ad sales, plain & simple — low cost, fixed-time, fixed-space   ads.  No CPMs, no CPCs, no rotating banners (we are talking about a B2B site with a relatively small but influential group user base after all), just no-brainer ad buys.    The premium release schedule listings CRYSTAL BALL brings in some add- on revenue, but nothing massive — but it IS a great tool for anyone   who needs to know what is coming 6 months down the road (the free listings only go 6 weeks out).

I have Celebrity Access & Big Champagne linked on the site because they provide detailed information on stuff I don’t have time to collect myself — tour dates & digital charts.  Basically, I’m just one guy using technology to do with the Tipsheet what entire staffs of dozens used to at trade magazines as  little as ten years ago.

-Do you use this site to get clients for another service you provide like consulting?

Of course!  Running the Tipsheet and having a platform to express key insights (via my weekly newsletter) puts me in the middle of a lot of folks’ business across a wide range of music & technology fields, so I’ve been very fortunate to get paid to help connect the dots via consulting and marketing services.

-What sort of a functionality expansion do you have planned that you’re open to discuss?

There’s so much more that could be done with the site — communities, playlists, actual song samples, apps, podcasts, etc — but I have kept everything simple & manageable by design.  If a VC wants to come in and help me adapt the tipsheet concept to a new model and make it something much bigger, great, I’ve always got ideas, but given the lifespans of everything from Muxtape and Imeem to iLike and Lala, it’s a pretty tough road to follow.

After Day 2 of TechCrunch Disrupt, I sat down on a bench along the Hudson River to chat with Scott who was driving out of LA for a meeting.  A lot of what he does with NMT is straightforward and, as Scott put it, he “sorts out through the craziness…[that is layed out] similar to Craigslist in simplicity.”  That being said, I was more curious to pick his brain.

First and foremost, I wanted him to elaborate on why he hasn’t  expanded.  “Large animals like Pandora and Shazam are funded,” whereas Scott’s just one guy filling a basic service (that is extremely helpful), so he saw no justification to expand the site or create an iPhone app.  “I don’t think we’re anywhere near the apex of a profitable music discovery & community app, but if you’re looking to build a site or platform that connects fans to music, fans to bands, fans to each other – with pix, playlists, timelines, videos & music, geolocation, or whatever the next killer trend may be – I’d be more than happy to be part of the team, since something on such a level would require a few dollars more than what I have in my back pocket.”

So if a lot of what he does with NMT is fairly streamlined, I was curious with what he fills his time.  In a lot of ways he’s like Jody Foster in The Inside Man, but for the music industry obviously.  The person to go to when you want to connect with someone else.  If you need help with your band or label’s strategy, you go to him.

Essentially, he’s an uber-consultant.  “Consulting is like an assistant coach.  I go to the playbook and decide what’s the proper strategy.”  Right before we finished the call, Scott said something very interesting that some industry folk realize, but don’t execute on.   “Nobody does just one thing anymore; you have to leverage one property for another.  Billboard isn’t just in the magazine business, they are in the conference and data business. Fader, Vice, so many others, they’re not jut in the content business, they are in the management, events, and marketing business. It’s what we all have to do to pay the bills in order to do the best possible job for our clients.”