Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog has a post about “The impact of the internet on customer behaviour.” It presents further discussion about recent studies showing the internet to be twice as influential as TV and eight times as much as print media.
I don’t find this surprising at all and here’s why.
In what is now called “traditional media” interaction revolved around stuff. We watched stuff paraded across our televisions, heard it paraded across radio and flipped through it as we looked at magazines and newspapers. And while that mentality is present on the internet – banner ads, contextual ads, etc., the internet is about us.
When we are online, we are much more likely to be active than passive. We are searching, responding, creating content and any number of other things best described as interacting. Because we are in this mode, we naturally interact with “stuff” too. If your like me, when I come across something new online I immediately seek out what others I know are saying about it. Which is why studies are showing the internet to be influential.
But it’s not the internet. It’s people. It’s us, just like it’s always been. All the internet has done is make interaction easier and we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Marketing online is not difficult if you keep this in mind. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the hype, it’s always about people.
At the risk of appearing to pandering to my son and his band, I’m encouraging you to check out this post from Mashable.
Radiohead has released a pure data, you can play with it and create your own, video for House of Cards. Only it isn’t the video for the song, it’s a gift to the world to interact with Radiohead. From Mashable:
“No cameras were used to create it – only pure data. But the really
interesting thing about the video you’ve just seen is that it’s not the video for House of Cards; it’s a video. It was created through complex data visualization which you can see and manipulate over here
. Want to save a copy? Download the necessary tools and knock yourself out!
Of course, if you think you’ve done the song justice or perhaps even topped the original video, you can share it over at the House of Cards YouTube group.
OK, I admit, seeing too much of this stuff might render you slightly
insane after an hour or two, but Radiohead has opened a door here that
will probably be followed by many bands to come. Can you say “Video
2.0?””
The video is stunning and it is a brilliant move from a band that is exploring and taking full advantage of the connected world of today. Good for them.
Let me know what you think of my son’s band too. Last November is a great song to start with.
I’m somewhat encouraged by EMI’s continued path of bringing in non-music people to lead their change. Guy Hands is intent on bringing in people who understand consumer marketing.
A quote from Leoni-Sceti jumped out at me though: “Creating brands and the values associated with those brands will be a possible value adder I could bring to this industry”
“A possible value adder I could bring…” doesn’t exactly exude confidence.
While your contemplating whether he’s hedging his bets against failure, examine the words you use. Do you talk ‘like you’re kinda sure you might be an okay’ musician, artist, person, whatever? Or do you confidently state the reasons you’re the right person for the job?
Which way will get you what you want?
My thanks to TechCrunch for the heads up about former GM of Yahoo Music, Ian Rogers’ launch of Topspin. From Topspin’s about page:
“Our mission: To provide artists the tools they need to build successful businesses.
Topspin is a media technology company dedicated to developing
leading-edge marketing software and services that help artists and
their partners build businesses and brands. We help artists manage
their catalogs, connect with fans, and generate demand for music.”
Sounds good to me.
Rogers understands the networked world we live in and the necessity for companies/services like this. They have launched with a “select group of artists, managers and labels”, but will open up to everyone soon. Keep an eye on them – it could be well worth it.
In the past two days, I’ve come across four articles about giving away digital content for free. Most are, somewhat understandably, bemoaning the idea. This post quotes Esther Dyson as saying “that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product — software, books, music, movies — the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.” It then goes on to describe all the problems – for artists and consumers – that this will cause.
On the other side, is this post from Joe Wikert about his excitement and ideas after reading Adam Engst’s point of view. I love Joe and Adam’s enthusiasm and want to encourage the same in you. They are looking for opportunities to succeed in the midst of changes by introducing new concepts that bring benefits to their customers. Ideas like this will always win. Starbucks is not about coffee, it’s about a “second home.” Disney is about dreams coming true.
All of the negative reminds me of this speech from Other People’s Money where Danny Devito’s character speaks about the mistakes of the buggy whip makers at the dawn of the automobile. Instead of involvement in the biggest opportunity of their lifetimes, they put more effort into creating better buggy whips. Make sure you don’t do the same.
“In today’s globalised, digitised music industry, record companies may be on the run, but the enterprising individual artist has never had it so good.” That’s the quote beginning Robert Plummer’s story on BBC News about Ahmed Fakron’s blossoming music career.
Fakron is a Libyan born artist seeminly doomed to “international isolation” until about a year ago when a “New York-based DJ known as Prince Language unearthed an old Ahmed Fakroun track called Soleil Soleil, re-edited it and put it out on a 12-inch single, renamed Yo Son.” But that’s not the cool part, or the part of interest to you.
“Since April this year, Ahmed Fakroun has had 20 of his songs available for download from 7digital’s indiestore – an offshoot of the firm’s main site that allows singers and bands to create their own digital music shop.
“It happened through a fingertip. I happened to find [the store] while I was surfing and I tell you, I am happy to find them. It wasn’t too complicated, my fans started to know about it and others discovered it,” he says.”
Still not convinced?
DubMC has an in depth interview with Kenyan band Yunasi. You think you have it tough in the music business? Read this. The live in a country with no music industry. None. The radio stations mostly play western music and they earn all the money they make through live performances. Again and again, they mention how they long for the structure and mechanisms of the music businesses we take for granted in the west. Mechanisms that are still valuable btw.
But then, near the end of the article, the band mates say this:
“The internet has been a God-send to Yunasi. It allows us a window to the whole world and different demographics that despite geographical positioning can be exposed to our music conveniently. We have a website making our info available 24-hours a day, social networks like Myspace accounts allowing interaction with potential fans, YouTube allowing our videos to be available, music available for purchase directly for download from our website, on Itunes, Amazon and so forth. We are able to get useful contacts of world music professionals, media, festivals and organizations just at the click of a button that allows networking opportunities. We even can send our music to anyone in the world and use the available learning opportunities to make us better musicians. We were even invited to two festivals in Thailand festival thanks solely to our website and the availability of our video on the internet. People are also able to contact us easily after listening to our music from whatever sources. The internet offers us numerous opportunities to better ourselves as a band and further our careers.”
Take a look at what’s going on in the GLOBAL and internet linked music business and you’ll find endless opportunities.
Check out Dominic Basulto’s slide deck on four business trends:
(1) Social Data
(2) Micro-Payments for Online Social Experiences
(3) Content Mashups
(4) “Live” experiences (that really aren’t “live”)
What’s interesting to me is that they are all related to Social Networking, which I believe to be the big mega-trend today. They also fit squarely into any business model a musician or artist should have today.
Don’t let the doom-n-gloom of the industry news fool you, people want to be entertained. It may appear that the “hows” of entertainment are a mess right now, but I would argue that they’re not. As I’ve said before, I argue that the selling of products that contained music was the anomaly – what we’re seeing now is a return to normal. For thousands of years, people went somewhere to hear music and probably paid to do it. For the past 100 years, people bought music and took it home. That’s not going last – at least not the same way.
Which is why I like this list as a guide for musicians and artists. Are you doing something in or with or creating or manipulating or sending social data? Are you offering stuff cheaply – micropayments – that give people experiences? How ’bout mashups? Could you create or offer pieces of stuff and let your fans go nuts with it? Where could that lead? Lastly, what are doing about “live”?
Back to my point, isn’t music ultimately about live? Even “fake” live?
