Bandwidth Conference Highlights Diversity in Artist Online Strategies
At the Bandwidth Digital Music Conference, top band managers talk with moderator Scott Perry about artists who create direct relationships with fans using social and digital media.
The 2009 digital music conference, Bandwidth, just wrapped up at the end of the last week in August in San Francisco.
I was lucky to attend the second day of the two day conference. I also grabbed some video clips following in the post. One of the major conference themes of the day - you heard record labels, managers of top bands, and individual artists all day long proclaim: the artist / band site is the keystone of an online media strategy for music. But if the site is at the center of the strategy - what kind of message goes on the artist site and how do record labels, managers, bands and artists develop their sites?
Artist Sites are the Hubs, but what are the Spokes
Livia Tortella is the GM / Executive VP of Marketing and Creative Media at the Warner Music Group’s Atlantic Records division and she answered that question a bit along with other panelists.
During the conference, Livia held a discussion about the online media strategies of the bands she markets for Atlantic Records. Tortella’s focus at Atlantic lies in business and digital product development, such as establishing artist fan clubs, merchandise products and direct-to-consumer strategy. Atlantic’s innovation in digital marketing has made them the first major label ever to earn 50% of their revenue from digital products.
As announced a few weeks back, Warner Music Group will now use the Cisco Eos platform to deploy an unlimited number of branded artist sites for their portfolio of artists and labels. Eos will play a significant role within WMG’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) initiatives.
Conference Moderator Jordan Kurland of Zeitgeist Artist Management asked Livia Tortella how Atlantic artists are advised to develop sites on Cisco Eos and what kind of content should reside on the sites. She also talks about the benefits that Cisco Eos platform returns to the artist and the labels, for example Livia says artist site traffic levels typically triple just a few weeks after launch on the Eos platform.
Different Spokes, for Different Folks
Of course having an artist site as the center of an online music strategy is one way to keep more control of the fan data as Livia mentions, but that doesn’t mean other social media platforms just go away for a band or individual artist.
For instance, the Cisco Eos powered site for the Atlantic Records signed band Paramore - http://paramore.net - prominently features Twitter content and mobile photo uploads on the front page of the site. Which leads us to the another question - with a myriad of sites and platforms - how do artists pick and choose what social media platforms to utilize to reach fans who are having discussions off the main artist web site?
Livia Tortella says it really depends on the individual communication tastes of an artist. For instance in the clip, she explains how one singer songwriter signed to the Atlantic label - Rob Thomas - decided on what social media platforms work for him to compliment his artist site…
Generate Content, or Create Mystery?
In addition to Livia Tortella’s conversation, there were many takeaways from the Bandwidth Conference’s ‘Hi Speed Fan’ panel - The panel covered how bands and individual artists use online media and their various strategies for connecting directly with their fans.
Lee Martin participated on this panel and he is technology manager, at Silva Artist Management - representing the online media and marketing efforts of artists like Ryan Adams, Beck, Foo Fighters and many other marquee names. Michael Fiebach, also on the panel, is the technology manager for DJ Shadow’s online presence, both at DJShadow.com and the artists’ other platforms.
Lee in this clip talks about how different artists approach their online presence. One artist Silva Artist Management handles - Ryan Adams - tends to be overly involved in talking to both his fans and detractors on fan enthusiast managed communities. Beck likes to produce a ton of content on to put on his own branded fan site. One day Beck hopes to upload 70 new pieces of his content a week.
In the following clip, Lee begins by talking about Ryan Adams and then moves on to Beck. Michael also talks about how DJ Shadow goes in a different direction, using social media to maintain a level of mystery around his image.
Creative Storytelling and Scarcity of Content
Speaking of creating mystery around an artist using online media, Lee Martin discussed the marketing efforts he’s managing for the brand new hard rock supergroup, Them Crooked Vultures. Lee put up a web site - http://themcrookedvultures.com - but only revealed little pieces of the band logo one at a time - and he didn’t offer much other content on the site. If you wanted to learn more or be in on the buzz, you had to sign up at the site with your email address. Lee says that they nabbed almost 25,000 new fan email addresses to their marketing list every time a little bit more of the elusive artwork was put on the site. On August 12, a 14-second clip of Them Crooked Vultures’ song “Nobody Loves Me and Neither Do I” was posted on the group’s YouTube channel. On August 19, they posted a new 33-second video featuring a studio performance of the song. The limited availability of the content led to over 600,000 views of Them Crooked Vultures videos on YouTube in just a few short weeks. There are even fan created “hoax” videos of the band leading to more confusion, but also more interest and buzz among fans. The approach to marketing Them Crooked Vultures is based on very creative and controlled story telling.
Artist Sites as Commerce Centers
Also talked about - the importance of utilizing artist web sites to sell exclusive content directly to fans, versus using a digital store like iTunes.
In this clip, Scott Perry of NewMusicTipSheet.com moderates a discussion with Michael Fiebach of DJShadow.com
Michael explains why DJShadow.com has chosen to sell content directly to fans from his web site versus pushing the fans towards iTunes.
Tim Bierman, Manager, Ten Club - Pearl Jam’s Official Fan Organization, discusses how Pearl Jam uses their site as well as a direct sales channel to fans.
Resources:
Yahoo Tech! / AFP Coverage of the Bandwidth Conference:
http://bit.ly/bandwidthnewswrap
More on Livia Toretella’s (Altantic Records) discussion at the Bandwidth Conference:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-wmg-reinvention-continues…but-is-time-running-out/
Content Now - First Day Details from the Bandwidth Conference:
http://contentnow.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/bandwidthfeatures-sync-ops-touring/
Content Now - Second Day Coverage Details from the Bandwidth Conference:
http://contentnow.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/bandwidthnapster-flashback-tunecore-future/
Bandwidth Conference Home Page:
http://bandwidthconference.com
Posted by Chuck Fishman at 03:13PM PST
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