Community and Collaboration = Keys to Engaging Digital Content
It was less than 24 hours ago when I blogged about a few interesting examples of engaging digital content.
Well here’s more! Today a series of engaging videos and songs came my way from a musician known as Kutiman, aka Ophir Kutiel. You can find them at a site Kutiman calls “Thru You”. The keys to Kutiman’s success and engaging content are community and collaboration. We certainly talk about collaboration a lot at Cisco and the great results that come from collaborating with your community (link to a good video interview on the results of collaboration)... but anyways I digress. Collaboration in the enterprise is great, but its also fun in the production world and this new digital content example clearly demonstrates the impact collaboration and community have on the production of media and entertainment content.
So what is “Thru You” exactly? Kutiman created a series of songs and accompanying music videos by cutting up and mixing content from the YouTube community of musicians. Kutiman went through hundreds of hours of music lesson videos and user generated music content on YouTube and remixed bits of content into full songs. I am likely not explaining the concept that well. Check out this Kutiman music video below, and you’ll get it. Following the music video, is an explanation from Kutiman himself on how he put this all together. All of the musicians involved with the “Thru You” project got credit for their collaboration with Kutiman. Of course, Kutiman is not the only one creating digital media through community and collaborative web tools. Yet, this project was too fun, too engaging to not bring it to your attention. I also know of one web site and service called MixMatchMusic which also allows for music writing collaboration, and there is also another one called eJamming. Comment below if you know of other examples of engaging digital media content created by communities collaborating together on the content. Thanks!
“Thru You” - Kutiman Remixes YouTube - Music Video for “The Mother of All Funk Chords”
“Thru You” - Kutiman Remixes YouTube - About the “Thru You” Project
Posted by Chuck Fishman at 02:29PM PST
Kevin Rochowski Mar 5, 2009
This is a great example of monetizing free content - the first thing I did after downloading the free MP3 version of Thru You was go to iTunes and see if he had any other stuff… lo and behold a recent album came up and I bought it!
I’m surprised he didn’t add a direct link to it on his site… maybe he doesn’t want to appear corporate? I felt much better about giving money to an independent artist rather than a large label, so not pimping it was actually beneficial in this case.