Regional Mexican Fans: Digital Drive by Ayala Ben-Yehuda
Online Sales Make Inroads Among Regional Mexican Fans
Billboard Magazine - June 28, 2008 - As with Latin music overall, regional Mexican's digital sales are tiny compared with its physical sales. Though the genre accounts for more than half of all Latin music sales, regional Mexican made up only 10.3% of Latin digital sales in 2007, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But the picture seems to be changing. As of May 11, regional Mexican made up 13.8% of Latin digital albums year to date, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's more than a 70% increase from where the genre was digitally at the same time last year.
With regional Mexican front-line and catalog product now widely available digitally, the next order of business is aggressively marketing that content. A key initiative will be tying in the physical retail experience with the digital, as department store chain La Curacao is doing with its Pasito Tunes service beginning this summer.
The digital store, powered by MusicNet, offers access to millions of songs in a variety of Latin genres. But regional Mexican stands to benefit in particular, given La Curacao's customer base in the southwestern United States.
Beginning in July, the company is set to open pavilions in its stores that allow customers to plug in their MP3 players or laptops and purchase music on site. Staffers can instruct customers on how to use the service.
Pasito Tunes will be promoted in the personal electronics sections at La Curacao, which offers discounts for purchasing MP3 players or computers and Pasito Tunes subscriptions together.
Digital distributor the Orchard has also sought to make the physical-digital connection by selling an MP3 player at La Curacao preloaded with 100 songs by acts on regional Mexican label Musart/Balboa.
But more than online downloads, "mobile is where the action is" for regional Mexican, the Orchard mobile marketing manager Nathan Thompson says.
The company has made full-track downloads from Balboa acts available as exclusives on Sprint phones prior to wide release, beginning last fall with Joan Sebastian's album "No Es De Madera" and in April with Cuisillos' "Vive Y Dejame Vivir."
While he wouldn't reveal sales figures, Thompson says they were "extremely encouraging for the format."
Johnny Phillips, VP of independent distributor Select-O-Hits (which handles regional Mexican labels DBC, Serca and Far Music), is also betting on ringtones.
"Everyone has a phone, but not everyone has a computer where they can download [music]," Phillips says.
But instead of making every track from every album available as a ringtone, Select-O-Hits is asking its regional Mexican labels to pick its strongest titles to push with carriers.
Regional Mexican mobile content got a major boost in availability and exposure when the Univision Tonos application launched last year. Mobile content provider 9 Squared merged with Spain-based Zed this year. The move put three Latin mobile content platforms—Música Real, Zona de Tonos and Univision Tonos—under one company with worldwide distribution and plans to acquire mobile distributors in Latin America.
"As our distribution expands down there we will definitely bring the content as well," says Ted Suh, chief marketing officer for Zed in the United States.
Stateside, most of the company's regional Mexican success has come via its downloadable application that allows ringtones to be previewed. It's available on Verizon, but much of its volume comes from carriers popular in the Western United States, such as Alltel and Metro PCS.
So far, 300,000 people have signed up to receive text updates about new ringtones available through Univision Tonos, Suh says.
Other Latin genres like salsa may have wider appeal worldwide, says Erol Cichowski, content manager for Latin and South America at the Independent Online Distribution Alliance. But the regional Mexican niche can be targeted on mobile, where even catalog—such as from Texas label Joey Records—can be successfully monetized.
"It speaks to the longevity of the genre," Cichowski says. "When we talk to mobile partners they are constantly asking us for regional Mexican, what we have, who we work with—now there is the browsability, where people who know the genre know what they want, and they can find it in a way they wouldn't be able to do at physical retail."