There has been much public debate about catalogue across the industry. I’d love to share with you my perspective on it from the agency side, and explain why so many people misunderstand the term or don’t understand the need to use catalogue at the right time.
At Deviate, we are often approached by labels, managers, publishers, promoters and artists to run catalogue digital marketing and paid media campaigns. It’s something we’re incredibly good at across paid media, eCommerce, socials and streaming services.
However, when I use the term catalogue campaign in conversation with people outside of our clients and our company, I can often see the vision that comes to their mind: 60-year-old reel-to-reel master tapes saved from rotting conditions in an unnamed warehouse in the desert, dusted off, digitised and rolled out in a vain attempt to push some money back into them. This just couldn’t be further from the truth in 95% of cases.
To understand where this confusion comes from, I think it’s important to understand what catalogue actually is. Anything released in the last 18 months is frontline. Everything else is catalogue. Everything. That’s why so many people are buying it up at rapid rates.
An excellent H1 report from industry analytics firm Chartmetric was released on this very subject recently; I would urge you to read it if you haven’t already. The data they explore is too extensive for my word count here. But trust me when I say that it’s time that the music business redefined its understanding of catalogue, its potential and its uses in the new music economy.
One of the key findings from that report is that the bulk of the tracks that got significant traction on TikTok were released in the last five years, but remember, any songs older than 18 months are deemed catalogue.
When we are brought in to run catalogue campaigns, the approach we take varies greatly depending on the client’s objectives. It could be that we are brought…
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