Como Os Compositores De Vídeo Game Constroem Uma Música De Suspense

GDC 2017: How video game composers can use music to build suspense

First of all thanks to Winifred Phillips for this article.

The Game Developers Conference is coming up soon!  Last year I presented a talk on music for mobile games (pictured above), and I'm pleased that this year I'll be presenting the talk, "Homefront' to 'God of War': Using Music to Build Suspense" (Wednesday, March 1st at 11am in room 3006 West Hall, Moscone Center, San Francisco).  In my talk I'll be focusing on practical applications of techniques for video game composers and game audio folks, using my own experiences as concrete examples for exploration.  Along the way, I'll be discussing some very compelling scholarly research on the relationship between suspense, gameplay and musical expression.  In preparing my GDC 2017 presentation I did a lot of reading and studying about the nature of suspense in video games, the importance of suspense in gameplay design, and the role that video game music plays in regulating and elevating suspense.  There will be lots of ground to cover in my presentation!  That being said, the targeted focus of my presentation precluded me from incorporating some very interesting extra research into the importance of suspense in a more general sense... why human beings need suspense, and what purpose it serves in our lives.  I also couldn't find the space to include everything I'd encountered regarding suspense as an element in the gaming experience.  It occurred to me that some of this could be very useful to us in our work as game makers, so I'd like to share some of these extra ideas in this article.

First, let's start with the basics.

What is suspense?

If we are to understand what suspense is, we first have to acknowledge the role of two other emotions: hope and fear.  They are diametrically opposed, but essential to the existence of a suspenseful state.  In his final treatise, The Passions of the Soul, French philosopher René Descartes wrote, "the mere fact of thinking that a good may be acquired or an evil avoided is sufficient to produce the desire for this to come to pass. But when, over and above this, we consider whether our desire is likely to be satisfied or not, the idea that it is likely arouses hope in us, and the idea that it is unlikely arouses fear."

In a paper written for the journal Text Technology, researchers Aaron Smuts and Jonathan Frome connect the emotions of hope and fear to the concept of suspense.  "People feel suspense when they fear a bad outcome, hope for a good outcome, and are uncertain about which outcome will come to pass," writes Smuts and Frome.  "In real life, we might feel suspense when walking through an unfamiliar, reputedly dangerous neighborhood at night. We fear that we might be mugged, hope that we will be safe, and are uncertain which will occur."

Things get a bit more interesting as the writers connect these ideas to the structure of video game design.  "We have found that the games most effective at creating suspense often put players in situations where they must wait and see what happens, much like a film spectator," they write. "This passive position allows the player an opportunity to speculate about possible outcomes and reflect on the consequences of those outcomes."

So, for the moment let's accept that suspense requires both hope and fear, along with the opportunity to mentally encompass the awesome impact of both emotions and contemplate the possibilities of the situation that inspired them.  Now, armed with this viewpoint of what suspense is, let's ask ourselves another basic question: why is suspense important?

Suspense and surprise

In the film industry, suspense is a great tool for keeping an audience engaged and emotionally invested in the outcome of a story.  Certainly, video games can also benefit from the motivating power of suspense to keep players riveted to the action.  But the role of suspense can go beyond this.  In a research study published in the Journal of Political Economy, Jeffrey Ely from Northwestern University along with Alexander Frankel and Emir Kamenica of the University of Chicago drew some original and unexpected conclusions about the role of suspense in human society.

As an example, the researchers observed that in order for a democratic political system to be effective, voters must be informed of the issues in contention during any popular vote.  However, individual voters may feel conflicted and uninspired because of a sense of their relative unimportance -- after all, what kind of change can a single vote bring about?  Yet, despite this danger of voter ambivalence, many citizens still engage in the political process.  "Many voters do in fact follow political news and watch political debates, thus becoming an informed electorate," writes Ely, Frankel and Kamenica. "A potential explanation is that the political process unfolds in a way that generates enjoyable suspense and surprise."  The study goes on to advise the use of suspense-style techniques in the dissemination of important information, or to add urgency and motivation to tasks that might otherwise seem bland and un-involving.

In that spirit, an educational course of study was prepared by the Belfast Education and Library Board, the National Science Learning Centre, and the Northern Ireland STEM organization Learn Differently Ltd.  Tailored specifically for science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers, the course showed educators how to "explore a wide range of emotional engagement techniques designed to foster suspense and surprise in the classroom context. Triggering these emotional responses can impact positively on attention, enjoyment, motivation, student-teacher relationship and on cognitive processes such as memory and understanding."

So, we've talked about the powerful and pervasive effects that suspense can exert, both within entertainment media and in society at large. However, as game developers, our ideas about suspense will naturally focus on its functionality within game systems and structures.  With this in mind, let's now turn our attention to some specific correlations between suspense and video gaming.

Uncertainty in game design

One of the most important concepts in game design is Flow.  It's a famous idea in the field of psychology, and its influence has extended to many other fields as well.  I discussed the relationship between video games and Flow in chapter 3 of my book (A Composer's Guide to Game Music).  Coined by psychology researcher Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow is an altered state of consciousness in which "people become so involved in what they are doing that the activity becomes spontaneous, almost automatic; they stop being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing." As an expert researcher, Csíkszentmihályi has been studying Flow and its manifestations in various human activities since the 1970s.  He wrote the seminal book on the subject, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (pictured left).

We're interested in Csíkszentmihályi's work on Flow because it greatly informs his recent experimental study on the nature of suspense, entitled "Enjoying the possibility of defeat: Outcome uncertainty, suspense, and intrinsic motivation."  Co-written for the journal Motivation and Emotion with fellow researchers Abuhamdeh and Jalal, the research article describes an experiment that measured the enjoyment level of gamers while playing video games with varying degrees of challenge.  One game was rigged so that players would win easily, while the other had been manipulated so that the challenge was much greater but that study participants would still win (by a much slimmer margin).  After playing the two games, study participants were told that there was a little extra time left, and would they like to play one of the games again?  The answer to this question revealed an apparent contradiction between the results predicted by Flow theory and some of the motivating influences of suspense.  The conundrum plays out like this:

When we reach a state of optimal Flow, we are functioning at a skill level that equals the demands of the task, and as a result we emerge with a sense of self-confidence in our own competency.  This feeling, according to Flow theory, is a potent motivating force, luring us to return to the same activity in order to again experience these emotions.  This sounds great as a reliable inducement for gamers to prefer games that accentuate their feelings of competence, right?  As it turns out, this assumption is wrong.

"The most enjoyable games, and the ones that participants chose to play again, were not those that maximized perceived competence, but those with high outcome uncertainty," the researchers observe. "Participants chose to play games higher in suspense over games which provided them with higher perceptions of competence, suggesting the motive for competence may be trumped by the enjoyment of suspense in some situations."

So, now that we've taken a closer look at the purpose that suspense can serve in game design, how can we deliver a suspenseful experience for gamers?

Mechanics of suspense

"Suspense and tension are hard feelings for games to generate," writes Chris Pruett, CEO of the Robot Invader game development studio.  In an article for Game Dev Daily, Pruett describes these emotions as "the apex of engagement: the player is so enthralled with the experience that it causes him physical stress."

Pruett urges designers to "focus the player on narrative context rather than underlying game systems. We want the player to be thinking as if he is his avatar rather than a third party solving a puzzle." In order to accomplish this, Pruett suggests that designers "move the player’s mode of thinking away from “systemic” problem solving (thinking about stats, min/maxing, design patterns, or even tactical strategy) to “contextual” problem solving (“who sent this note?” or “how do I get out of here?”)."

The importance of contextual thinking to suspense in games is echoed by YouTube essayist Mason Miller, creator of the [game array] series of videos on game design.  In his video essay, "Resident Evil and the Art of Suspense," Miller explores how the design of 2002's Resident Evil Remake forces players to think less about stats and mechanics, and more about in-character choices and circumstances that promote a greater sense of immersion.

"Uncertainty is at the core of suspense in video games," Miller observes. "Despite whatever perception we may have in our heads, there is very little certainty in Resident Evil... Areas we thought would remain safe for travel suddenly become dangerous, short cuts become inaccessible, and new monsters spawn in vacant hallways.  These changes prevent any iron-clad one-size-fits-all strategy from taking place, and instead welcomes contextual in-the-moment thinking.  And contextual thinking like that is a necessity for the kind of immersion we require to generate suspense."

In his video essay, Miller discusses the Mental Model(an important concept in the field of psychology), which Miller applies to the world of gaming and describes as "the process in which players instinctively build up collections of what they believe to be true about a game and its systems in their heads."  By challenging this collection of perceived truths and this internalized map of the game world that players create for themselves, a game can surprise its players, leading to greater suspense.  "By invalidating the very mental models players depend on, the game creates an incredibly tense experience from beginning to end."  Miller's video essay is fascinating - you can see the entire video here:

Conclusion

In this article I've shared some of the additional research I'd encountered that didn't make the cut for my GDC 2017 presentation, 'Homefront' to 'God of War': Using Music to Build Suspense (Wednesday, March 1st at 11am in room 3006 West Hall, Moscone Center).  The presentation I give at GDC will include lots of practical and concrete techniques and strategies for game music composers and audio folks looking to ratchet up suspense for their players.  That being said, the more general research in this article can also provide helpful insight, and I hope you've found it stimulating!  I've included all the information about my upcoming talk below.  Please feel free to share your thoughts and insights in the comments section at the end of this article!

'Homefront' to 'God of War': Using Music to Build Suspense

This talk presents ideas for creating a high-tension game score. Composer Winifred Phillips will share tips from some of her projects (pictured left). Phillips will discuss tension-enhancing audio techniques from the films of Martin Scorsese and David Lynch. Phillips will also discuss techniques that composers can adopt from the world of sound design, from startling bursts of noise to strategic moments of silence. Dissonances, drones and unnerving sonic effects all contribute, and each technique will be examined via aural examples from Phillips' projects, including 'Homefront: The Revolution' and the original 'God of War'. The discussion will also include an examination of the uses of suspenseful music in virtual reality, and Phillips will share examples of her music from the recently released 'Dragon Front' VR game. Phillips' talk will offer techniques for composers and audio directors looking to enhance player suspense. Takeaway Through examples from several successful game titles, Phillips will provide an analysis of music composition strategies that effectively elevate tension. The talk will include concrete examples and practical advice that audience members can apply to their own games. Intended Audience This session will provide composers and audio directors with strategies for designing suspenseful game scores. Includes an overview of the role of music in elevating tension (useful general knowledge for designers). This talk will be approachable for all levels (advanced composers may better appreciate the specific composition techniques discussed). Speaker Biography Wnifred Phillips is an award-winning game composer. Some of her latest video game credits include the triple-A first person shooter Homefront: The Revolution and the virtual reality game Dragon Front. Other credits include five of the biggest and best franchises in gaming: Assassin's Creed, Total War, God of War, LittleBigPlanet, and The Sims. Phillips has received an Interactive Achievement Award / D.I.C.E. Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, three Hollywood Music in Media Awards, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards, five Global Music Awards, an IGN Best Score Award, a GameSpot Best Music Award, a GameZone Score of the Year Award, a GameFocus Award, and three Gracie Awards from the Alliance of Women in Media. In addition, Phillips has been recognized as an expert in music for VR by the Women in Virtual Reality organization. She has released fifteen albums. Her soundtrack album for the Legend of the Guardians video game was the first video game soundtrack album released by WaterTower Music, one of the top labels for film music soundtracks. Phillips is the author of the award-winning bestselling book, A Composer's Guide to Game Music, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

Como Ter Uma "Ruptura" De Idéias

How To Have Breakthrough Ideas

You can learn to cultivate great ideas. That’s the bold promise of The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking, by Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack. Cabane is the author of The Charisma Myth and both she and Pollack used to work at Stanford University’s start-up accelerator; the two now consult variously for prominent companies and organizations ranging from Google, Airbnb, and IDEO to Deloitte and even the U.S. Army Special Forces. The Net and the Butterfly is filled not only with anecdotes describing the births of famous ideas, but also with a series of practical exercises aimed at improving your ability to generate them. The edited excerpts that follow examine the states of mind that are most conducive to creativity along with a few examples of how to achieve those states. The final passage explores how idea “creation” often consists as much of idea modification and combination as of the original spark.—Fortune

THE YEAR WAS 1965. The place was Clearwater, Fla. In his motel room—the Rolling Stones weren’t yet famous enough to afford hotels—Keith Richards woke up on a hot, humid morning to find his guitar and a tape recorder on the bed beside him. Groggy and hungover, Richards rewound the tape and pressed play. The hourlong tape contained 59 minutes of his own snoring. But the first 30 seconds held the opening bars and first lyric of what became the Rolling Stones’s most iconic hit, the song “Satisfaction.” 

He didn’t remember even touching the tape recorder.Believe it or not, Richards’s breakthrough moment follows the very same pattern as Albert Einstein’s discovery of the special theory of relativity. It’s the pattern we heard again and again when we interviewed some of the world’s greatest innovators for this book. And it’s the same pattern you’ve experienced if you’ve ever had a sudden epiphany in the shower.

Whenever you have a “shower moment,” chances are something was on your mind, like a problem at work or an issue in a relationship. You’d probably been mulling over the problem, trying to work it out in different ways. Then you stepped into the shower. Your mind wandered off as the water poured over you. You were no longer focused. Suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, the answer came to you. 

What do your shower moments have in common with both Keith Richards’s and Albert Einstein’s discoveries? When you got into the shower, you unknowingly switched brain modes. Previously, you had been consciously focusing on the problem. But in the shower, your mind was probably drifting, idly daydreaming or seemingly “thinking about nothing.” Neuroscientists have recently discovered that the secret to breakthroughs lies in our ability to switch between these two modes, the focused and the meandering.

The focused mode is one you are already familiar with, because it’s the one you have been consciously using all your life. You can think of this mode as the “executive mode”: it’s the one you use to execute, to get things done. Goal oriented and deadline focused, it’s a champion at making lists, following timelines, and coming in under budget. The part of your brain responsible for this mode is called the executive network, or EN.

The EN is a group of brain regions near the front of your skull that help you focus on a task and accomplish a specific goal. You’re very well versed in the use of your EN. You did, after all, spend at least a decade in school specifically training those brain regions. As a matter of fact, you’re using your EN right now to read this sentence. With your EN you are (we hope) a functional, responsible, and productive member of society.But your EN alone can’t create breakthroughs. It needs help from the more meandering network, the one that creates shower moments. This is our creative network, the default network, or DN. 

You can think of the DN as a network or council of breakthrough geniuses inside your brain. The geniuses talk and exchange ideas, half-baked theories, and wild speculations.The DN is the source of all our creativity, all our invention, all our genius—and it hasn’t gotten nearly enough recognition. What has the DN accomplished throughout history? A better question would be what great discoveries hasn’t it played a role in. 

If the EN gives us the ability to focus and accomplish a task, the DN gives us the ability to look through the complexity of the world to see the patterns underneath.The DN is a vital component of your brain: Research has made clear that this part of your brain is as essential to your survival as your heart or your kidneys. It’s so important, in fact, that we could have written this entire book all about the DN. We would have said, “Here it is! Here’s how it works, here’s how you can access it, here’s how you can turbocharge it.” But in fact, that’s not enough. The DN, alone, can’t create breakthroughs.

Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein Photos by Paul Sakuma/AP & Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images 

It’s the ability to use both modes, to switch from one mode to another, that enabled Keith Richards to come up with “Satisfaction” and Albert Einstein to discover the special theory of relativity. In fact, it’s what enabled most discoveries in human historySo how can you access your genius mode? One way is to sleep on it. (Yes, really.)Adam Cheyer is the creator of Siri, Apple’s artificial intelligence iPhone voice assistant. Building Siri was a Herculean design and programming task. 

The sheer number of variables—the ability to understand varying speech patterns, the ability to search based on the random ways people would request information, the ability to return answers in a useful way—were each a massive challenge. Thankfully, Cheyer had a secret weapon: ready access to his genius mode.Although designing and building Siri was a highly structured task, Cheyer knew better than to try to logically grind out every answer. Instead, he told us, “I sleep on the issues I’m wrestling with.” 

Cheyer, like Thomas Edison, has discovered the incredible breakthrough power of the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, the half-asleep periods just before falling asleep and just before waking. These are times when our genius council runs on hyperdrive.“I go to bed around 11, noodling on a problem as I fall asleep,” he explained. By “noodling” on the problem, Cheyer uses his EN to deliberately and consciously focus his genius council on a question. 

He relies on his genius council to make new associations and deliver breakthroughs while asleep. In the morning he goes to his desk and uses his EN to process the night’s harvest of ideas.Morning after morning while first designing Siri, he would wake up with new insights from his DN. He’d use his EN to integrate them into the prototype he was building. Eventually, he felt that he had something concrete enough to show the rest of the world.

Thomas Edison and Apple's Adam Cheyer Photos by Keystone & Araya Diaz/Getty Images for TechCrunch 

The hypnagogic and hypnopompic states are so fruitful for creativity because our inhibiting frontal lobes—where our EN’s front office is located—are quiet, and our DN is running strong.

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE: HOW TO ENTER THE HYPNAGOGIC STATE

— Clear the room of clutter and distractions.

—Have pen and paper, voice recorder, your phone on airplane mode and set to take notes, or . . .

—Dim the lights (or wear an eye mask).

—Ensure you’re in a quiet place, or that only white noise is audible.

—Don’t get too comfortable—no wearing pyjamas or getting in bed

—Try to find time at midday, or right after you’ve eaten, when you’re just the right amount of tired.

—Set your alarm for ten to fifteen minutes.

—Take a moment to focus your brain on the problem, and then let it go. Relax and drift off.

As anyone who zones out all the time can testify, simply taking a break will not lead to inspiration: To stoke creativity, you need to perform tasks that allow your mind to wander.

After an “unusual uses” creativity test (“How many things can you do with a hanger?”) students were given a 12-minute break. One group simply rested; one did an easy, mindless task; one did a demanding memory game; and one group took no break.

When the participants reconvened and retook the creativity test, the “mindless task” group performed an average of 41% better. By contrast, participants in the other three groups showed no improvement.

Interestingly, this was only the case for problems that were already being mentally chewed on; doing a mindless task didn’t seem to lead to a general increase in creative problem-solving ability. This makes sense: Our executive has to have set a clear goal for our geniuses in order for them to be productive.

“So what’s the single best mindless activity I can do?” our clients often ask us. If we had to choose one single mindless activity, it would be walking.

In a recent study, participants walking indoors on a treadmill facing a blank wall or walking outdoors in the fresh air produced twice as many creative responses compared to those who were sitting down.

“I thought walking outside would blow everything out of the water,” said the lead researcher, “but walking on a treadmill in a small, boring room still had strong results.” The study also found that creative juices continued to flow even when a person sat back down shortly after a walk. “We know walking meetings promote creativity, but walking before a meeting may be nearly as useful.”

From a cognitive angle, walking demands just the right amount of focus from our executive, without asking too much. Walking is a very complex task: We are taking in constant input from our feet, legs, hips, arms, and, of course, our inner ears, the heart of our balance gyroscope. But our brains are experts at this task. Through long familiarity, the executive can do all this with very little energy.

From a physical angle, walking stimulates your brain. Increased blood flow causes a cascade of wonderful changes in the brain, including the release of brain-

Derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) and other growth factors. BDNF promotes the birth of new neutrons and the formation of new synapses, and it also strengthens existing synapses.

Open offices have strong detractors as well as proponents, but with their few inner walls and rolling tables, they’re at least walker friendly. In fact, according to research out of Stanford, the most important thing these open spaces offer to creativity is the ability to walk. Doing so increased a person’s creative output by 60%, the study found.

Charles Darwin famously had a quarter-mile-long walking path called the Sandwalk that was his place to go and think when working on a problem. “So important was walking to his thought processes that Darwin sometimes described a problem he was working on in terms of the number of turns around his path he would need to solve it.”

Mason Currey, after studying the habits of nearly 200 of the world’s most prolific inventors and innovators over the ages, found that the single common habit of these great inventors and innovators was walking. As Currey reports, Charles Dickens famously took 3-hour walks every afternoon—and what he observed on them fed directly into his writing.

Tchaikovsky made do with a 2-hour walk, but wouldn’t return a minute early, convinced that cheating himself of the full 120 minutes would make him ill. Beethoven took lengthy strolls after lunch, carrying a pencil and paper with him in case inspiration struck.

Soren Kierkegaard is quoted as saying “I have walked myself into my best thoughts.” He is also reported to have often rushed back to his desk and resumed writing, still wearing his hat and carrying his walking stick or umbrella.

Walking, when used for mind-wandering, works well in quiet, peaceful places; less well when you have to be aware of cars, traffic lights, joggers, and so forth, because your executive mode has to stay active. Whether to meander or to walk with purpose is up to you: Judah is comfortable walking aimlessly, but Olivia needs a route and a destination.

Here’s the thing: you don’t just take a walk and magically have a breakthrough. Walking is a wonderful way to set the conditions, but there is more to it than simply meandering along. Putting it into practice involves multiple steps, including defining your problem—the act of verbalizing what you’re looking for can get you started on finding the answer—and setting a goal. You’ll also need to carry a notebook so you always have a way to record your thoughts. And then there are the more unexpected techniques: Keep something in your hand. A coin, a stone, a paperclip, a Star Wars figurine—we won’t judge. Our hands send massive amounts of information to our brains, and keeping those channels open keeps our brains in a more associate state. Adam Cheyer of Apple always keeps a Rubik’s Cube on his desk to play with while thinking.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. . . . That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”

Henry Ford driving his Quadricycle, 1896 Photograph by Apic—Getty Images 

What Steve Jobs is describing is called “associative thinking,” and is essential for breakthrough thinking. Too often, we make the mistake of assuming breakthroughs are freestanding ideas, something never thought of before by anyone in any context. The truth is that almost every breakthrough is a combination of ideas that already existed

Henry Ford’s breakthrough of the assembly line came when he made an association between the Chicago meatpacking industry’s use of mechanized hooks and bakeries’ use of industrial conveyer belts. He put the two together, applied them to the building of the automobile, and the assembly line was born.

A breakthrough in gun accuracy came when gunmakers looked to the bow and arrow. The feathers on the back of arrows cause the arrow to spin, and the spin makes the arrow fly straight. In the same way, a football flies straight when thrown in a spiral. To make their bullets spin, gunmakers carved spirals inside their gun barrels. Accuracy increased fivefold. Because putting feathers on arrows was called rifling, these guns became known as rifles.

One of Thomas Edison’s least successful inventions was the electric pen, patented in 1876, to help make copies. People just weren’t that into it. In 1891, a tattoo artist named Samuel O’Reilly saw the pen and had a breakthrough. He invented the modern tattooing machine. Instead of ink writing language on paper, he applied ink to skin to create images.

He saw how to substitute it for what he was using. And when the Southern Pacific Railroad built a series of microwave towers to facilitate an intercontinental network of telecommunications, they were just focused on improving their trains’ efficiency. But this also became the foundation for the telecom company Sprint (Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications). The new use in this case became the breakthrough.

"Desamarrando" Um Album - O Negócio De Lançar "Single Songs"

Unbundling the Album: A Business Case for Releasing Single Songs

First of all thanks to Frank Woolworth for this article.

There are many examples of the benefits of working in harmony with nature. When first venturing out beyond home a child is taught to walk with traffic. A carpenter achieves a cleaner result by going with the grain rather than against it. In sports a team succeeds by taking advantage of what the defense gives them, and there are countless other examples that express why it is better to work with the flow rather than push against it.  For the past ten years the recorded music industry has ignored this strategy, and stubbornly clung to a business model that is no longer in harmony with they way people consume music by predominantly releasing albums in a single song economy.

According to Nielsen Soundscan, in 2011 there were 1.374 billion digital transactions last year. Of those only 103 million or 7.5 % were for albums. This means that approximately 1 out of 14 times a consumer went to buy music online last year they were purchased an album. First with Napster and MP3s, then iTunes and the iPod, and now with streaming services like Spotify and Turntable.fm–the music consumer has repeatedly demonstrated that they prefer single songs to albums. Despite this fact, nearly 77,000 albums were released last year.

Rather than change strategy to work with this reality, most people in the industry just complained that it wasn’t fair, and continued the status quo.  I believe there are several reasons for this.  The first reason is that labels believe they can make more money selling albums. The second, is that marketing and sales processes were built for the album system and that makes it difficult to change. The last reason is because artists believe they are supposed to make albums either as a musical statement or as validation of their professional status.

This essay will attempt to prove that all three of those reasons are not necessarily true, and that selling single songs can be better promotionally, artistically and financially for artists and labels.

Layout of the Song Based Release Strategy

There are three key rules to the successful execution of the song based release strategy.

1. Every song is given a reasonable amount of time to stand on its own.
2. Every song receives its own unique marketing plan.
3. No song is available before it is promoted.

After that there are limitless ways to release the music. An artist can release a song every week, every month, every day, or every third Monday. It doesn’t even have to be uniform.  It really doesn’t matter how the music is released, as long as the philosophy that every song is important in its own way is embraced.

Why this strategy works promotionally

Not only do consumers prefer music in a single format, but the outlets for music promotion are all focused on single songs as well.  Some of these formats are:

Radio: The bread and butter of radio is singles. Album Oriented Radio died when radio started hiring consultants in the 1970’s.

Blogs: Blog posts are usually about one or two songs.  The biggest aggregator of blogs, The Hype Machine, focuses on songs instead of albums.

Club Promotion: By definition the DJ at a club or bar will provide a steady mix of songs. It is quite the rarity to hear a whole album played in a club with the exception of a listening party.

Synchs for Commercials and TV: For reasons of time, cost, and artistic expression, individual songs are usually featured as synchs rather than albums.

Music Videos: Music videos are primarily made for one song. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between.

The two promotional avenues that focus on the whole album are preview streams, which have the drawback of lasting for only one or two weeks, and album reviews. Album reviews have come to mean less and less each year as newspapers and magazines cut space and syndicated their copy.  They have also lost their main purpose of previewing an album when consumers can decide for themselves whether they like an artists on streaming sites. The editor in chief of Spin Magazine recently cited that exact sentiment as justification for why Spin would be relegating the majority of their album reviews to 140-character tweets.

In addition to working in harmony with the promotion outlets currently available for music, there are several other benefits of the song-based release strategy in terms of marketing.

The first is always having new assets to promote to the media.  One thing that occurred because of the digital age is content has a much shorter shelf life. The Internet is a voracious beast and is always hungry for more content. Importance is placed on newness and exclusivity.  In a song-based system there is always something new to engage the media. If an album of songs is released you lose that newness factor when pitching for placement.

The second is that it creates a platform to consistently engage fans. In the current media landscape, attention is the most valuable commodity. By consistently releasing new material, an artist has an opportunity to engage their fans much more often than the year or more that commonly occurs between album releases.

The third is that it gives consumers a chance to know what they are buying.  This eliminates the feeling of betrayal or trickery when buying an album based on a single song and finding out the rest of the songs are either poor quality or just not their cup of tea. The best analogy I can use to explain this is the DVD compilation release of a TV show. Fans buy a DVD of a show after having seen the complete season. If DVDs of television series were marketed the way music albums were, a 12-episode season would have one show picked to be played on television repeatedly in the hopes that it would drive people to retail stores to purchase the whole series DVD. It is not an exact comparison, because of the variety of differences in how the two are monetized, but I still think it illustrates how bizarre the current album-marketing paradigm is.

Why this strategy works artistically

First, I want to be clear that this method doesn’t mean that an artist can’t create a full album of songs, or even a concept album. It only changes the order and format in which it is released. This results in the album not being fully experienced until all the songs are released and collected by a fan.  The baseline question that needs to be confronted when evaluating this method is “Is it absolutely necessary that the first time a fan hears my album is in its entirety?” If the answer is no, then a song based strategy can work artistically.

After that hurdle is cleared — and there should be very few bands that should answer the above question with a yes — there are several reasons why this method can lead to better artistic expression. First it forces artists to step up their game. This method puts every song on a pedestal or under a microscope. The temptation to phone it in on an “album track” is eliminated. It might be a little hyperbolic but I hope that it could usher in a new golden age of songwriting.

The next advantage is release flexibility and the opportunity to be timely. Presently, there are a number of obstacles to releasing a song about current events in the middle of an album cycle. No matter how relevant or great the song is, there is a tendency to not put full promotion behind it, because the song will not drive album sales. With the song based method there is greater flexibility to interrupt the release schedule with a timely or important song, because there is less financial disincentive.

The last advantage is counterintuitive in that it allows great albums to stand out. The true concept albums become something worth noting. If song based release strategy becomes the dominant model, and some group has another Sgt. Pepper or The Wall in them, then it will stand out. If they don’t, and have just another average album, then they will have given up their shot at sustained revenue.

Why this strategy works financially

This leads to the most important questions for whoever has invested in the music. Is the sustained revenue of singles equal to or greater than the lump sum of album shipments and sales? In terms of pure revenue from recorded music there is a relatively simple equation to determine how many singles an artist would need to sell to equal the money generated from the current combination of album shipments and individual track sales. This is:

((Album $ + Track $ ) / # Tracks ) /Single Wholesale =  Average Sales Per Track

Using hypothetical sales figures it would look like this:

Traditional album release A

10-track album

50,000 albums   x $6.50 wholesale = $325,000

200,000 tracks x $.70 wholesale = $140,000

(($325,000 + $140,000 ) /10 ) /$.70 = 66,428 average sales per track

Traditional album release B

12-track album

1000 albums x $6.50 wholesale cost = $6,500

13,000 tracks x. $70 wholesale cost =  $9,100

(($6,500 + $9,100) / 12) /$.70 = 1,857 average sales per track

After doing this initial equation for either previous or projected album sales the next step is to look at how the track sales were divided on previous releases to determine the possibility of meeting or exceeding the target average sales per track. As this is a subjective process there is no exact mathematical formula that will work every time, but I have two formulas that will give a rough idea of how a release will fare with this strategy.

Formula 1

(Sales of the promoted singles + average of all other singles) / promoted singles + 1

If that number is greater than the average sales per track needed, then a singles based release strategy is probably a safe bet.

Formula 2 (which is really not a formula and only for veteran artists)

Average first two week albums sales = core audience.

If the average of first two weeks of all an artist’s album sales is greater than the average sales per track needed then a singles based release strategy is likely worth pursuing. This method does not work for artists with one album that experienced great success after a slow build ala Mumford and Sons.

If, after running the numbers, it is still not clear what release strategy is best, there are two other financial incentives to the song based release strategy to consider. First it eliminates the phenomenon of putting all your eggs in one basket and in turn spreads out risk when developing an artist. In this case the basket is the single.

There is nothing worse than the process of picking a single. In my experience it is usually a bunch of music executives sitting in a conference room listening to two or three tracks with their most intense faces, maybe with a couple of head bobs to let you know that they really feel the music.  It is very funny to watch people try to indicate that their sense of hearing is working.

Then comes the debate. There is a discussion of what is currently on the radio and how the potential songs fits in with rest of the music landscape. There is sometimes research brought in to show what test audiences have thought of the songs.  After that it is gut feel and a bit of magic to reach consensus and a single is picked. That is it. A half hour in a conference room determines the trajectory of an entire album campaign in both focus and budget allocation.

If that single doesn’t work it doesn’t matter how many people would have liked the other songs the artist created: they will never get exposure, because of a lack of marketing funds. The majority of the budget was devoted to creating awareness for that one single, and this does not seem like a very efficient use of resources.

The second benefit is for business arrangements where there are income streams that are not directly related to recorded music, namely touring. One of the big issues that bands have is making sure there is something new to promote around a tour. Song-based release strategy makes it possible to always have something new for fans and to either be considered for tour packages or have a story for promoters. By spreading out the release of new material, the artist will increase the demand for their other revenue streams.

The last benefit is better management of manufacturing expenditures. For labels, one of the toughest costs to predict is the amount of physical albums to manufacture and ship. For developing artists, manufacturing their first run of CDs will usually cost several thousand dollars. The song-based release strategy helps determine what the demand is for the project and consequently physical product.

Conclusion

This article shows that a song based release strategy has promotional and artistic benefits, and that it is feasible financially. There are many factors for why certain artists or albums succeed and others fail. The release strategy is just one of those factors and will never be fully responsible for either the success or failure of an artist. There will be times when it won’t work out, but the album release system doesn’t always work either. Nothing works all the time, and nothing is the perfect solution for every situation. The premise was that it can work, and I believe this shows how it can. Of course, this can never truly be proven until artists and labels take the plunge and start releasing their music as individual songs. I hope they take that chance.

Common arguments against this theory and my responses

When writing this essay I floated the concept out to many people both in and out of the music industry. I received several common responses:

1. This will never make enough money if music moves to streaming as a dominant listening habit:  If streaming makes no money, then whether music is released as an album or as individual songs will be irrelevant. At that point other revenue streams become more important, and I would argue that the ancillary benefits of always having something new to promote and to engage an artists fans still makes the song based release strategy the more attractive option.

2. It is easier to record as an album: Agreed, but his strategy does not preclude an artist from recording a whole album at once, which I know is a much more efficient and cost effective way of creating music. It is focused on how that music is released after it is recorded.

2a. But what if all the tracks leak?: This is definitely the weak point of the strategy. A leak is much more detrimental to song based released system as it effectively destroys the advantages of letting each song stand on its own, and the newness quality when promoting. The only counter I have is that music most commonly leaks when it is submitted for manufacturing. As manufacturing is delayed or eliminated in this model, perhaps it would curtail the practice of music leaks. I am not certain of that though, and it is a risk.

3. This would kill record stores: There are many factors at work in the decline of physical music retail. Song based release strategy is meant to work in harmony with the existing trends, it did not initiate them.  The one positive is that after a little while record stores would have a lot more data available to gauge demand. There are many instances of something that was available online first finding a successful second life in music retail for latecomers to the band. Radiohead’s album, In Rainbows, is the best example. After the pay what you want experiment the band released it in stores and still had a #1 album. This method could ensure that only the albums with the most demand are in stores eliminating the phenomenon of shipping platinum and returning gold.

4. This won’t work if you want to go to radio: The question that needs to be answered here is whether the network effects of radio play of one or two songs will result in enough artist affinity to drive sales of the non-radio singles. When coupled with the other promotional methods for those songs, I think they will. The other possible benefit of this method would be that radio might go back to playing a diverse group of songs, as singles will no longer be dictated to them. Every song is promoted, and radio can once act as a filter instead of a megaphone.

Information that could make this article better

There are several pieces of information I do not possess that would make this article better. These are:

Exact sales numbers: With the Soundscan artist history (including track sales) of a large sample of artists I can run the formulas to see if there are trends between album releases and single sales.

My ideal major artist data subset would consist of a complete artist history including track sales for a selection of artists across a variety of genres.

Katy Perry
Black Eyed Peas
Kanye West
Little Wayne
Adele
Norah Jones
Mac Miller
Jon Lajoie
Zac Brown Band
Jason Aldean
Foster the People
Civil Wars
Train
Hinder
Disturbed
Pearl Jam
The Rolling Stones

Albums vs. Singles revenue from Tunecore: With this information it would be possible to go beyond the Soundscan data and look at the trends of independent artists.

Album streams vs. single song streams from Spotify, Mog, RDIO or Rhapsody: With this information I would be able to determine if listening habits change from singles to albums when streaming. Anecdotally I don’t think they will, but I do not have empirical evidence of that.

A case study – An artist who has released their album as a selection of individually promoted songs is the best way to prove the theory works.