Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome back to your latest installment of music industry 360. I am your host, Randall Foster. I am chief creative officer at Symphonic, and joining me today is a colleague of mine that I have the utmost respect for, Vanessa Sciano, who is our manager of video distribution and encoding. And it really is a longtime symphonic employee and runs a great business for us in the distribution of music videos. Vanessa joined Symphonic in 2016 and came to us with a digital video and electronic arts degree from University of South Florida. So she has the background here to really guide us in the right direction. And, Vanessa, I'm just. I'm so pleased to have you on the podcast, because last time you and I were on a podcast, our roles were reversed.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: This is kind of. This is kind of cool. It's like, it's like, you know, the chickens coming home to a roost.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: I believe we did a publishing podcast, right?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. Very, very early iteration of music industry 360. And I think I was with the company about a week at that point in time. So that would have been.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: I think so, yes.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Almost five years ago, if you couldn't believe it. I can't believe it's been that long, but I digress. So, Vanessa, tell us about your role and what it is you do at symphonic around music videos. I think we'll get into music videos and we can talk about kind of the history of them and where they came from and where they're going and all that. But if someone were to say, Vanessa, tell me what you do, what's the answer to that?
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So basically, just like with audio distribution, we have artists that come to us that have music videos that they want distributed to partners like Vivo, Apple Music, Tidal, Boomplay, amongst other dsps. And what I do is the artist will submit an application and submit their video file to us. And what I do is I review every single submission that comes through, and I make sure that the music video meets all of our technical and content specs for all of our partners, especially Apple Music, because they're the picky ones, for sure. So I make sure that everything is good to go, and then I make sure that I assign codes and I send the approvals, and then we deliver it. And then the next step of that process is that we also pitch the music videos for feature placements with specific dsps like vivo, Tidal, and Apple Music.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Very interesting. I don't think a lot of people understand that the same kind of playlisting functionality that exists at Spotify and some of the other dsps exists at the video level as well, yes, correct. And you have a pretty good hit rate, right?
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Yeah, especially with Vevo, for sure. Like, you get a lot of good exposure and views related to that.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: So I have a theory based on this, and I'd love to say it and hear your agreement or disagreement with this theory, but I think a lot of artists these days a aren't making videos. I think that in a day when there's 120,000 tracks being uploaded to Spotify every single day a week, we certainly don't have that quantity of videos happening due to the cost of the video, etcetera. And so I've always thought that if you do make it even a low budget music video, utilizing that in conjunction with your music, it kind of lets you break through the crust a little bit with regards to getting the attention of these various dsps. Would you?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like when, I know on the audio side, when we pitch to, like, apple and tidal, that they want to know if there's a music video coming for that track as well. So that kind of gives it a little boost in their eyes and their curators and looking like, oh, is there a music video, like a visual that we can that goes along with this song? Because essentially, you know, at its core, music videos are meant to be a promotional tool for the track. So it's a tool that artists, I believe, should be using.
In regards to official music videos and stuff, I am seeing a lot more where artists are doing more like a visualizer video, where it's a much more, like you said, a simplified video where it's just them performing and it's a simple video. It's not a high budget music video. What it does is it gets them as an artist out there, it puts a face to the music, and it helps promote their brand as a musician by getting that music video out there.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah. And I think the audio file actually, with regards to playlisting, tends to perform better if the video is on platform as well. At least with Apple and Tidal, I've heard people refer to that here, both internally and on the artist side.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: It gives it better chances, for sure.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Great. So, like, music videos are funny, right? Like, when we grew up, there was only a couple tv channels where you could consume those music videos, and the budgets were super high. I mean, I remember hearing stories about these million dollar music videos Michael Jackson was doing or that other rock stars were doing. I feel like music videos in general have been democratized. Kind of like music has.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you. Yeah, I mean, that you always go back to thriller, you know, as your main point of, like, oh, that was the height. The height of, like, music video consumption was like the movie style music video. And you still do get those. We have some clients that do a whole series. Like, if they have an album that tells a story, they'll have music videos that tell that story in a visual format, and they'll do a whole high production. And. And that's all depending on the marketing plan, you know, like, hey, if you have the budget for it, you know, what you want to. What story you want to tell with your music.
But in regards to, like, street viewing it on tv and stuff like that really has kind of gone away. Like MTV, Vh one, they still exist, CMT, they still exist. And they still will accept music videos, which we can do on the side. We can submit to them for placement, but it is very expensive and it's not a guaranteed pickup. So usually what we recommend to artists that are more indie and starting out is to go more with a digital format. Go with your YouTube, your Apple music, your title, you know, because nowadays that's how music videos are viewed and consumed, is on the digital media.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: No, absolutely. And it feels to me like that we had so many fewer resources for getting music videos out back in the day. And it's like, now you named a series of companies that I know mostly because of working here, but I don't think most people know those various video providers that we are providing things to do. You wanna walk through them and talk just a little bit about the capabilities with regards to video and the marketplaces that they're aimed at. For instance, boom play, et cetera.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Well, with video distribution, with symphonic, we do have two plans. We have a base plan and we have a plus plan. If you choose just the base plan, you get your standard, as I call them, dsps, which is Vivo, which is delivery to a vivo channel on YouTube, but also the Vivo app, like on Roku Fire TV, the Vivo app on all those platforms.
And then you have Tidal, which is an app, but also a desktop player. You have Apple Music, which everybody knows. Apple Music has their app on iPhones and then also on Mac computers. But video still is delivered to the iTunes store as well for purchase. So that's still an option with iTunes. And then Boomplay, which, by the way, all of these partners accept videos from all genres. Like Boomplay does have a specific niche with the afrobeat reggae dance hall content, but they do accept all genres. So Boomplay does have a web player and also an app where you can play music videos from that.
So that's our base. And then we have Vimeo, which is our symphonic channel on Vimeo. So you just get some extra promotion there by having your video on.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Very cool. And you mentioned Vivo, which I feel like Vivo's kind of taken over as the new MTV, a little bit digitally, at least as far as reputation goes. But there's a. You know, Vivo is owned by YouTube, so couldn't I just upload my music to YouTube? Could I just put the video on YouTube and call it good? What's that? What are the. What are the perks of Vivo in your. In your.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I get. I get that question asked a lot, for sure. Vivo, as you said, it's been around for quite some time. And you'll see, distributing your video to Vivo versus just uploading yourself to YouTube, like, put you on the same level as mainstreamers out there, because you'll see, like, for example, Taylor Swift has a Vivo channel, and she uploads all of her official music videos through Vivo. And the way YouTube works now is because they have that partnership with Vevo. The Vivo channel gets linked to an artist's official artist channel. So when you look at Taylor Swift's official artist channel, for example, you'll see the vivo videos on there, because the Vivo channel is linked there. So they have a nice partnership there where you can deliver your video to the Vivo channel that's linked to your official artist channel. But in addition to that, you can get your video pitch for playlisting with Vivo. And Vivo has millions of subscribers. Playlisting is always bonus there. Just another opportunity to get more exposure for your video. And then I mentioned earlier about how vivo has the vivo app on different, excuse me, platforms. Like, you know, the fire, Roku, Samsung TV, like all those different OTT platforms, they call them.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Okay, there's an acronym I don't really know. Ott.
Explain OTT to us, Vanessa.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Yeah, OTT just really means over the top. And it's meant to be like an alternative to cable, I believe that's my. To my knowledge of that. So it's just another way to view music videos other than just going to YouTube.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Very cool. So, like, maybe pulling it up on your roku or something to that effect.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Correct? Yes.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Okay, awesome. Now, hold on. I want to stop, though, and back up, because I was thinking about this. You had said that there were two levels of video distribution at symphonic. And I think we talked through the first one with Bebo, etcetera.
What's the second? What's the incentive? What's the reasoning on the second?
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Yes. So our plus platforms are curated partners. That we refer to them as similar to Pandora would be for audio. So when a client adds on the plus partners to the base plan, we do pitch those videos to those platforms as well. But they aren't guaranteed to be added to those platforms. Our plus partners are excite.
Our newest partner is actually Gogopix, which is coming vibe stream. We have Canela tv, which is for our latin content.
Symphonic spotlight, which is our own personal symphonic app, which we have a lot of different playlists on that app as well.
Which one did I miss? It's five of them.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: It's a quiz.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Excite symphonic spotlight. Oh, promo only. Promo only is our last one. And promo only, they do accept all genres, just like I said with the bass partners. But they are leaning towards electronic because promo only is meant for DJ's to use, like in clubs and such.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Yeah, no problem. Only that actually brings me back to my old dj days.
But that's great. So you could, you could potentially submit your, your dance track with a video to promo only. And if they take it, then when you're at the club, you can see your video play your music.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Exactly. Yes.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: That's very, very cool. So another thing you mentioned earlier on the YouTube front and the vivo front was official artist channels, or OAC, if we want to put an acronym on it. Can you talk a little bit about those and how the videos play into that?
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yes. So an official artist channel is something you should have if you are an artist on YouTube. In order to be eligible to have an official artist channel, you need to have a personal channel, which is called an owned and operated channel that you own yourself. And that channel needs to have at least three videos uploaded to it. And then another requirement is that you need to have delivered at least one audio track through a distributor to YouTube music. And for us to request an official artist channel for you, we obviously need to have delivered that track for you to YouTube music.
And delivery to YouTube music creates what's called a topic channel for the artist. And a topic channel is just like a vivo channel, where it's a separate channel where the music gets delivered to that, but that channel gets linked to your official artist channel. So when you view an official artist channel, you'll see a tab that says releases, and that's where all of your audio releases will be. And then you'll have the videos channel where all your music video uploads would be.
Ideally, what I usually recommend for artists is to use Vevo for your official music video releases. Even though they do accept all types of music content, they'll take layer videos, track videos, visualizers, live performances, behind the scenes. But if you're trying to build your subscriber base on your personal channel, especially if you're trying to be eligible for an official artist channel, I usually recommend upload the official music video through Vivo and then use your personal channel for all of your behind the scenes. You can do vlogs, the track videos.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: And things of that sort, and more social content, kind of.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Short form videos, etcetera.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And build, you know. Yeah. With shorts and stuff. Yeah. And you can build your fan base that way.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: And of course, the, you know, those channels can be monetized once you. Once you reach those thresholds, right?
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Your official artist channel, for sure, they have the 4000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers in order for the official artist channel to be monetized. But that's one. Another perk of vivo, actually, is vivo videos are monetized on the views so you don't have to meet the channel require, like the 4000 watch hours. And the subscribers counts for those videos to be monetized. They are monetized through vivo. On the view counts.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Very cool. So you just named some video types. Let's, let's talk through those a little bit, because I know, I know that not everybody has a wide open budget, right? And I know that, like, for some people, and I tell bands all the time, you know, you know, you don't have to spend $10,000 on a video. You know, go buy a couple of GoPros for $300 a pop. Buy news that you want to get some separate footage of you live on stage or of you and your band setting up, tearing down on the road, etcetera. Edit that through with the GoPro edit suite and call it a video, which is obviously a very simplistic way of looking at a way to make a traditional music video. But let's talk through the various kinds of music video, because you did name. You named a couple of things here. Let's start with lyric video.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So a lyric video is basically just your track, but with an animated lyrics that kind of gives a more visual stimulation for somebody to watch while they listen to your music.
I do see a variety in those, and that some people will just have their album artwork and then just have the lyrics over top. And what's tricky about that is Apple Music will accept lyric videos, but they need to have constant animation, constant movement. Like, they need to be well produced, well edited, you know, really stylized lyrics. Like, they can't just be, like, karaoke style lyrics for that. So that's usually when people are asking about distributing a lyric video. I say, if it's not, you know, stylized and all this stuff, we can deliver it to everywhere but Apple music.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Okay, very interesting. The interesting thing about lyric videos, too, for the audience here, is that you actually get paid for the publishing piece on the lyric video. It can be monetized separately from the audio because there's a print right attached to it. So there's a higher publishing payout on lyric videos that I think people kind of miss out on, especially if you're not paying attention to your publishing.
But, of course, you have to be claiming YouTube publishing appropriately, et cetera, which, of course, you can do through symphonic and through the team that Vanessa is on outside of lyric videos. Visualizers.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So again, there's a couple of different varieties of visualizers that I've seen come through on the video distribution side. One of them is where, like I said, it's a very simplified, like, we've had it, where an artist had a single camera setup. They've done like a one, a one shot performance video. And they call it a visualizer because it's a very simplified visual of their, of their track, whereas an official music video is more so, multiple camera shots, multiple locations, like, tells a story. Like, there's more, more of a story behind official music videos versus visualizers. I have also seen visualizers that are, again, just the album art, and they'll have the waveform over top, and it's just meant to be released the same day as an audio, as just another way of consuming the audio. And it's just a very simple, kind of like a track video, except the visualizer has a little more movement with it, versus a track video, which is what you will see on YouTube music, which is just the album artwork, artist name, and that's it.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Well, of course, all of these are just, are just part of that content game that we're all trying to keep up with. Do you recommend that people space these things out as they release them, or do you think they should get all the videos ready to go and drop them all at once, whether it be a track video visualizer, lyric video, official music video.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: No, I mean, just like with, with audio, you should not just create a video as soon as you hit the final edit, just drop it up on YouTube because you aren't building buzz for your release, you know, you're hurting its chances. If you're distributing it, you're hurting your chances of getting it playlisted. Because just like with audio, we need to get the video sent to our curators at the DSPs to look at and review and decide if they want to put it on any playlist.
Usually the release format that I see is definitely don't release a video before the audio, because like I've mentioned, video is meant to be a promotional tool for the track. So if you release a video before the track, people are going to be looking, hey, where can I listen to this track again? And it's not out yet.
So usually I will see if you have a lyric video or a visualizer. Usually I see those released the same day as the track and then the official music video. I usually recommend, hey, put that out maybe one or two weeks later, because then that keeps the momentum going for the track. And then it also helps you build some more buzz for like, oh, now let's see what you know. I've been listening to this track, you know, and getting my own feelings about it. Let me see visually how this artist feels about this track.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Very good. So letting it continue to keep the buzz up between tracks, essentially.
Very cool. So we've covered a lot of ground today with regards to the videos, technically speaking. I wanted to talk about the technical part of what you all do on the back end. That is the magic in the sauce, the encoding. As I understand it, each of these partners likes their encoding just a little bit different. Is that right?
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Yes.
Vivo is pretty open. They just have to meet YouTube specs, which YouTube has a pretty open variety. Like YouTube can take anywhere from SD HD, 4k up to, I believe, eight k. So Vivo is pretty open with the types of formatting and encoding that the videos have in regard, but also in regards to frame rates as well, because sometimes you'll get something that's a 60 frames per second frame rate versus like a twelve frame per second. It's getting a little more technical there. But yes, Apple Music, tidal, they all have their own specific format that we need to have the video in in order to deliver it to them. But as part of the video distribution service, you just send us the high res file. Like the high, I usually say whatever the highest resolution is that you have, whether it be 4k prores mob format, you send that to us and we'll encode it for each partner specs. We take care of that for you. You don't have to send us multiple.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Versions of it service with a smile.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Very cool. So I have to ask you, tell us a little bit about your background.
In a million years, did you think you'd be doing what you're doing right now?
[00:21:01] Speaker B: No, I, you know, I, you mentioned how my degree is. It's a fine arts degree, you know, so I did all the painting and all that jazz, but I did an emphasis in, they called it digital video and the electronic art. So I did a lot of those artsy fartsy videos where, like, this is how I feel. And, you know, just like, really, you know, they weren't music videos, you know, because I wasn't creating music. But I really like to videos that really express how I felt about society. And then, you know, I was in my twenties, you know, just, I kind of laugh at them now, but. So that's more like what I worked on then. But I found my way to sephonic through networking, to be honest. I actually did an internship at the strat center for the performing Arts, which is like a Broadway location here, a Broadway venue, there we go, here in Tampa. And I interned there, doing video production there. And there I met a gentleman named Lorenzo, who was also interning at the strat center, who eventually finished his internship and started working at another company. And then I also, through other, it's kind of a weird story, but I also got employed at that company. And then it's kind of like, a lot of people say they're like, oh, did you just follow Lorenzo around? Is that what happened? I was like, well, just how the pieces fell into place. But he eventually, because we were both unhappy at that job, he eventually left and started working for symphonic. And then he and I had still kept in touch on Facebook, and he had messaged me saying, are you still unhappy? We're looking for another video production person here at Symphonic. And I said, you know what? Yeah, let's. Let me apply and let's see what happens. And at that point, you know, you mentioned 2016. Like, I think we were only, like, twelve to 15 people at symphonic. You know, we were a much smaller office. And so it was a big jump going from a big corporate company down to the small niche company of music distribution. And I had no experience with music and music distribution or anything, but I did have my video production knowledge, and that's where they put me.
And then from that day forward, video distribution was very small, not even a part. Like, it was just a side gig that symphony was doing.
I do pride myself knowing that I built, I took that little baby and that's my baby. And now it's what it is today. And like, I built that from where it's at where it started.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Well, no, you absolutely did. And ladies and gentlemen, I like to refer to Vanessa as our music video mava. I love that phrase, too, in that this is Elaine, you've really owned for symphonic. And I think it's brought a lot of value. I, coming into symphonic, I didn't know anything about video distribution. I didn't know you could distribute a music video onto Apple, for instance, etcetera. And so it's been a learning curve for me, for sure, throughout this whole process as well. So are there any, in the time you've been here, are there any videos that just stick out to you that you would direct people to, to say, this is a, this is a fantastic example of visuals and of everything I would call perfect music video?
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Oh, man. Like, that's to put me on spot like that. I mean, I definitely love all of our client Laura Marano's videos.
They're your typical, like, not, not over the top budget, but really well, like, she has such a personality that you see shine through in these videos. One of my favorite songs of hers is Feou, which it's explicit. I'm not gonna say what it stands for, but I love the track and I love the music video for that. It's just sizzling electricity in that video. One thing I will mention is our artist, Gossid, who has a whole series called Black Box and Pillbox that is, like I mentioned earlier, how artists can tell a story with their music videos, just like their albums. So Gossip had an album of like twelve or 13 tracks and released a corresponding music video that tells the story and is the story is continued with the next music video release.
And those are all on YouTube and all platforms, you know, YouTube, iTunes, Tidal. But those are the super high end, well produced, like in. And they have some supporting characters in there, like Dylan Mulvaney and I can't remember. They'll bet. Benson from SVU.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Olivia.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Olivia Benson.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Yes. Olivia. Yeah. Olivia Benson, maybe. But yeah. Anyway, guest stars on these music videos. It's a big deal.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Very cool. Very cool. So we've talked a lot about music videos and about how we work around music videos. If someone is interested in this, where do they go?
[00:25:52] Speaker B: They're interested in having their videos distributed. They can just go to symphonic's website. We do have a short link, you know, simvideo.com. But if you just go to symphonic.com and just click apply. It says music video distribution right there. So really easy to navigate. You just read everything on the page and you fill out your metadata and hit submit, and you pay the fee. And then you get redirected to send the file to us, and then we take it from there.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Great. Well, thank you, Vanessa, for dropping so much knowledge on us here in this short time. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, closing up here with Vanessa Sciano, manager of video distribution and encoding at Symphonic. I am Randall Foster, your host for music industry 360. And we're so glad you could join us for this episode. Stick around for more great info in upcoming episodes.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Thank you.
