Once you’re scoreing 20-30% love in your target segment, you’ve made it. That’s so much love you will almost feel under pressure. Getting there is difficult. It can take a long time most of the time and when it does, it also takes a lot of great songs. There are no substitutes for great songs and it is better not to release a song then a great song. And experiments usually backfire. Stay away from dipping into other genres just because of your artistic freedom. Do it and pay the price. Bring people together through lots of great songs.

If you don’t want to wait and build love organically, you will need a megahit. These rarely come these days. We have aggregated a lot of them over time, but today it’s exciting if we hear one a year. Last year we had Chasing Cars.

It accelerated the growth of love for the artist from nowhere to 30% in during the life of the song.. And guess what? Chasing cars is still the number one testing song in the UK across pretty much all formats. An it’s not burned. People are not tired of it.

You can find evidence for this passion everywhere, on the likes of On Myspace, YouTube and broadcasting sites. Songs like this attract huge audiences.

But this love is not just great for the artists, it transfers right over to whoever ,manages to get involved, to ride along. Be it the Radio Station, A Tv Show, a website or a product.

Brands know how powerful music is and they do want to get involved. But its not the music that’s powerful, it’s the love some music generates. Without Love, there is little point. For a brand to play in music matters only if the can access love.

Ever wondered why many radio stations sound so much alike? They fighting for the same love. Love generated by a number of tunes, old and new. Now whilst we’re all subscribing to the idea that music has never been more important then it is today, its also never been more accessible then today and there lies the problem. There is still only a small number of tunes that attract large numbers of people. Yes, and we all subscribe to the long tail and target micro segments and we try and unify a smaller number of people, suggesting that we still can make money selling our music and tickets and merchandise to these small segments. The truth however is that music is a social medium, it carries a message that wants to spread and so by nature it is only the big songes that unite big crowdes and can create such phenomena’s as Youtube and Myspace. Its not the many small segments, the many not so popular tracks that in the end unite large crowds, else we would have seen the likes of MP3.com, Peoplesound, Vitaminic etc come far further then they have.

So please let’s not think it’s technology or new ideas that matter, what makes them work in the first place is nothing but the love for content.

Let’s keep finding the big songs!