For an emerging musician, having a the opportunity to play in front of a couple thousand people could be the make or break of an artists’ career. Giving fans the ability to share their new favorite artists with festival organizers might allow a band to generate enough buzz online to get that ultimate gig. Lollapalooza organizers may not use the information for more than just general reference, but the idea of a crowdsourced festival line-up sounds like a dream come true for the D-I-Y artist. As musical preferences and tastes become more fragmented and niche focused, the idea of a radio hit-single will most likely fade into oblivion. This is especially true among more sophisticated music listeners. In this not so distant future, festival organizers may use more online crowdsourcing strategies, over traditional Billboard charts, to determine which artists will sell the most tickets or which regions prefer certain genres of artists.

The collaborative nature of the social web has really opened up a number of opportunities for artists and fans. For example, Eventful.com allows fans to petition for their favorite band to visit their hometown, creating an on-demand experience for live shows. For the superfan the ability to demand an upcoming band to play a show in your hometown is a dream come true. For the musician, tools like Eventful are an excellent way to save valuable time and money determing the demand for live shows in cities across the nation.

I look forward to seeing how Lollapalooza begins to handle the onslaught of artist suggestions. I have already begun to see a number of independent musicians calling on their fan base to vote them into the Lollapalooza line-up. Given the short time-period of the ‘experiment’ (ending Nov. 11), we may see very soon what crowdsourcing a festival may have in store for the future of music. Let the word-of-mouth marketing battle begin!

In September, we set out to answer all of these questions in an effort to pave a path for measurable social media strategy development.  This white paper covers the importance of creating a measurable campaign, types of data we can measure, how to measure and analyze this data, how we might determine a financial impact of our social media marketing efforts, and much more.  I’d love to hear your feedback.  Enjoy! 

So what is the solution?  A few companies have been working to develop open API music e-commerce stores which can be easily integrated on any web page.  Imagine visiting an artists website and being able to access an entire discography with the ability to stream and purchase songs, without ever leaving the page. SNOCAP has been at this for a while, creating an easy to integrate open API for an artist’s MySpace page.  The company has been relatively unsuccessful with the idea, mainly because of their exclusive partnership with MySpace. Musicians must realize that MySpace serves mainly as a portal for discovery not commerce. Music fans head to an artists MySpace page to stream tracks and get information rather than buy music. 

Recently, another company, MediaNet Digital, announced it’s own new open API, MN Open.  MN Open hosts a number of web components that can be used by anyone and easily installed onto a website without any coding required. Alan McGlade, CEO of MediaNet, stated: “MediaNet is delivering the next generation of music services. We are changing the paradigm by bringing music to the user rather than forcing them to go to a handful of centralized online destinations to acquire downloads. The MN Open Web Components and API offer for the first time, the ability to engage users in the moment to discover and purchase music, while our customers can keep them on their site longer and maximize revenue.”  The components include: 

• Media Matcher: Automatically matches MediaNet’s catalog against existing web content
• Media Links: Hyperlinks references to artists, albums and songs within existing content on page
• Relevant Media Search: Integrates into site’s existing search and returns media results alongside regular search results
• Media Explorer: Dynamically displays music-related information with purchasable media
• Media Charts: Charts top selling content to entice music discovery, sampling and purchases
• Media Purchase: Fulfills purchases through an automatically configured and setup component which appears in its dedicated, secure window

What I find very promising about MN Open is its feature functionality and it’s ability to be completely customized, branded, and integrated into any artists page.  Already, a number of music service providers such as MOG have arranged deals with MN Open to become their streaming music service.   The service may help decentralize digital distribution and allow artists e-commerce stores to become fabricated into the basic layout of their web page.  Another cool feature is that even music fans can embed the API on their site.  Imagine a fan blogging about their favorite artist while also helping them sell the music on their own site. While open API’s may not be the revolutionary technology necessary to immediately stimulate revenue from digital music, I believe that it may hold the key to democratizing music e-commerce.   While the web inches its way toward Web 3.0 capabilities, we will begin to see more open API’s integrated into websites.  We are already beginning to see the “life-stream” appear on many web pages via the Twitter open API.  As these technologies continue to proliferate the web, I believe open API commerce platforms may gain substantial traction.  Why would you seek out music on iTunes or a torrent site if you have the ability to get it right then and there on their web page?   

The next challenge is generating demand for your music.  Digital distribution is most definitely not going to create millionaires off of a one-hit-wonder.  Those days are long gone.  What it can do is provide an easy to use access point for fans to seek out and purchase music.  This may only be one hurdle musicians have to face in today’s industry, but as digital sales continue to rise we must question the dominance of iTunes and Amazon as digital distribution outlets.

The popularity and widespread use of Twitter can in many ways be attributed to an embracing strategy that Twitter has adopted since its inception. Providing users with the technology, allowed individuals to figure out how to utilize the communication platform in their own ways, making it an incredibly personal experience. Listening to this burgeoning online community, allowed Jack and other members of the Twitter team to actually embrace these behaviors and build them into the technology. While marketers continue to utilize social media, one major strategy component continues to be stimulating user generated content and adopting customer ideas. Both Starbuck’s and Salesforce.com are prime examples of companies using this strategy. Twitter is no exception and is another great example of how embracing the online user community and adopting their ideas can lead to an incredibly successful platform or product. In most cases the online community will provide ample insight into their likes and dislikes. It is now the marketers responsibility to listen to these customers, adopt tangible ideas, and let users know that they are contributing to something greater than themselves. As the web continues to become more social, companies and brands must also become more social. This means listening and talking with customers to find out what they actually need and want as opposed to telling them what they need/want. Embracing customer relationships has become a clear fundamental principle of social media marketing and Twitter is just another excellent example of giving the audience control and running with it. 

See the whole speech here: http://www.webster.edu/jackatwebster/

WHY WE LISTEN

Today, more than ever, people research products and services online before making a purchase. Social media marketing utilizes a pull strategy allowing customers to reach out to products, services, and brands, relevant to their own experiences, via the web and social media sources. Therefore, it is important organizations know how to engage their audience to provide some sort of value, in a relevant manner. Through the process of listening, organizations can find where/why the audience looks for products and services, and determine how to effectively reach them.

A VIRTUAL FOCUS GROUP

Listening to the online audience essentially serves as a virtual focus group. Conversation occurs across a wide array of social web components such as ratings/review sites, blogs, multimedia sites, wikis, and social networks. Listening reveals insight into satisfaction, brand association, brand loyalty, product ideas, product improvements, demographics, competitor activities, market opportunities etc. Once organizations have gained a deep understanding of the online audience, strategic objectives and relevant success metrics can be defined to develop a measurable social media or marketing strategy.

LISTEN BEFORE ENGAGING

Social media marketing allows organizations to establish meaningful and impactful connections with their target audience that may lead to valuable long-term relationships. Social media marketing works similar to offline conversations and business networking. A dialogue is established in which both parties exchange thoughts and ideas. The exchange allows individuals to find relevant connections, which may then lead to a valuable relationship. It is necessary for companies to begin the process with social media monitoring, to first listen to conversations already occurring online. Listening and analyzing to the on-going social communication produces valuable insights that are then used to effectively engage the target audience. 

What are your thoughts on the importance of listening in social media marketing?

Vintage Vinyl St. Louis, MO

While thinking about my peers and my consumption patterns I’ve come to realize that a sheer lack of buying power, and lets not forget the ease of access, has in part led to the adoption of downloading bittorent’s, file swapping, P2P networks etc.   If I had even tried to satisfy my want for music 10 years ago, I would have broken the bank instantly with CD’s at cost of around $15 a pop. Now, lets fast-forward 10-15 years from now when Gen Y, music’s biggest consumer ever, retains some disposable income and a tremendous amount of buying power.   We all know that as we grow older we tend to appreciate nicer things, cherish the past, and re-kindle those memories of the summer ’09 through our favorite band that year.   This is where I see a huge opportunity for the return of a physical music product.  Already we can see a resurgence of vinyl that reminds us that people still value a physical product, but it has to have some sort of intrinsic value whether that be nostalgic or just wanting to build a collection.  I already find myself wanting to buy deeper into an artist’s so-called “product line” looking for something tangible that I can take home.  I believe that over the next decade we will see the physical music product decline and then re-emerge in a cyclical fashion.  The CD will always have a soft spot in my heart, due to the hundreds I already own and the  cherished memories of ripping off  a freshly shrink-wrapped disc to discover something beyond this world. Of course, the physical product will have to be a little bit more than a jewel case and an album liner, but the possibilities of creating some exclusive tangible music products may lead to a profitable return of the physical music product.  

While I believe that the privacy of information is a very important issue and I agree that out-right exploitation by consumers is obviously wrong, I do not agree that the social web should be censored or limited by government regulation.  What these consumer advocacy groups who made the proposal seem to misunderstand is that by creating an open social web, we can actually limit the amount of advertising white-noise that we come across today.  I’m talking about complete personalization. Using information put forth by users online, willingly, to make web content relevant, including the advertising of products or services.  Finally, the social web may one day enable us to stop searching, and allow products and services to find us.  I think this will in fact decrease consumer exploitation.  After all, advertising online is extremely voluntary (click/or don’t click).

Through the use of behavioral data, consumers can receive highly targeted and personalized messages that will allow them to evaluate options and make better choices based upon these offerings.   Think about small local businesses.  The internet has democratized commerce allowing a number of small local businesses to offer services that compete with major corporations, but succeed due to a better value offering and basic awareness generated via the web.   If we begin to limit contextual and semantic data, which can provide some important demographic and psychographic info, we are stepping back ten years when display ads on the internet become the annoying pop-up that is immediately ignored. 

In a time when transparency is demanded by so many consumers for businesses and corporations, I do not see why the same for consumers should not be true to an extent.  The web is a social forum.  If individuals do not understand this, then they should not put their information out there. No one is to blame for a lack of privacy on the web other than yourself.  No one forces you to put your age, gender, location, favorite sports team etc. etc. online.   As consumers, we must first learn the true implications of contextual data before we condemn it as the next form of identity theft.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue as it continues to unfold.

Recently, I worked with Partner and head of Interactive Strategy at Crimson Consulting, Karen O’Brien, to conduct research on gaming industry trends and the use of community and social media.  After completing an extensive competitive analysis across multiple game sites and gaming social networks we narrowed down important industry trends as well as some best practices for utilizing the social web to reach the new Gamer 2.0.  

Where do you see the industry heading?  Will mobile soon outgrow console or even desktop gaming platforms?  Will console gaming be overshadowed by social network gaming? Or, will social games on the console be the first step toward integrating social media and television?

Okay, so the traditional album is dead – Get over it.   The “album” died when the physical product of a CD, cassette, etc. lost prominence and importance amongst the average consumer.   This may make the true music fanatic question the artistic integrity of a musician – Singles? I want a body of work.  But what does this really mean?  The album, for all practical matters, is just a figment of our imagination – created by the limited amount of storage space on a CD and an industry standard set by hegemonic major labels.   Most albums contain a few hits and the rest acts as almost a filler.  There are definitely albums that can be considered an entire piece of work, take Dark Side of the Moon for example, but these albums are few and far between.   Today, consumers seek out something from artists that could never be produced at such scale before the advent of the internet – content, and lots of it.   

The move towards singels and EP’s reflects this shift in music consumption away from a physical body of work to creating unique, high quality content across multiple online and physical channels.  In many ways this puts more pressure on the artist to crank out high quality tracks each and every time.   The album no longer masks the shitty filler tracks of the past. Instead,  artists can release a single online and allow people to digest that one track (whether they fall in love with it and can’t get it out of their head, or absolutely hate it) leaving them wanting more or wondering what else they can expect from the artist.  This is what the traditional radio has done for artists in the past, except now the distribution platform is the internet, which has an incredible reach, and is open to anyone to publish whatever they like.  

Releasing content gradually, helps stimulate demand and leaves people coming back for more, which is especially true amongst Gen Y-ers and an incredibly short attention span.   In the past a band would release a CD, then tour for a few years, and fans would be stuck listening to the same album for at least 2 years before the artist had fresh tracks.  Today an artist can distribute music whenever and however they might want.  If music consumption patterns continue to trend in the way that they are, the bands  that will have the most success will be those who consistently and constantly create good content (music & video especially.)   Through exclusive content, they can create a consistent following who will frequently visit their website, social media profiles, and concerts always expecting and receiving something new and fresh –  (hmm sounds almost like a blogging strategy.)  Once that community is created, artists can utilize it as a direct channel to sell merchandise, concert tickets, premium packages etc. (Things people are willing to pay for). So cheers to you Radiohead for taking another step toward a bright future in the music industry.