As we blogged about previously, Warner Bros Records and Devo announced at the SXSW Interactive conference that they would be soon relaunching their band web site on Cisco Eos technology. 

The new Club Devo site is now live on the web, pictured in the above screen shot.

Also at SXSW Interactive, WEA (Warner / Elektra / Atlantic) SVP of Emerging Technology, Ethan Kaplan, discussed the importance of the artist web site as a hub to collect and act upon data generated by music fans on social networks (link to video of the discussion).

So what kind of data will Devo be collecting about it’s fans using its site built on Cisco Eos? 

Devo is launching a ‘song study’ to see what songs should go on it’s new upcoming album. You can participate by visiting -- http://songstudy.clubdevo.com. It’s a great way to crowd source the final track selections for the Devo album -- you the fan in effect will become the record executive, telling Devo which songs should make the cut.

Yet, there’s more to the song study than just letting fans choose the songs. It’s all about using technology to create a constant dialog with the fan that drives higher fan engagement and informs Devo and Warner Bros Records about what kinds of products and experiences they should be marketing and selling to you the music consumer. 

For instance, Devo also recently asked its fans to participate in a color study to determine a color change for Devo’s famed energy domes (hats) -- you can participate in the study here -- http://colorstudy.clubdevo.com/. 

Regarding higher fan engagement, at the same SXSW Interactive Panel ‘Devo, The Internet, and You’, Jeremy Welt, SVP of New Media at Warner Bros Records discussed how the color study increased site traffic to the Club Devo site by 10 to 20x during the promotional push for the study. Traffic has since leveled off, but its still 300% higher than before the study.

And with the Devo song study launching on the new Cisco Eos powered Club Devo site, it will be interesting to watch how much fan engagement will increase -- how many users will add comments on the site, how many tweets, shares on Facebook (read about viral effect here), YouTube favorite selections? -- a lot of data will be produced. Warner Bros and Devo will closely monitor the social actions, user comments, and will use Cisco Eos technology in part to aggregate that data and determine which songs are winners. 

At SXSW Interactive, Jeremy Welt discussed in depth what Warner Bros has gotten from the previous Devo studies and what the label will do with future data and the new site built on Cisco Eos.

We’ll be paying attention to the results Devo song study, and how their Club Devo site engages fans over the coming months.

I continually assert  that music fans appreciate artist web sites (discussed a bit in this previous blog post) and will visit them regularly if they are more than just placeholders, and instead are full of newly produced content and community, like the newly re-launched Club Devo site. Our partners at the Entertainment Technology Center at University of Southern California asked students if they visit artist web sites. One of the students offered, “I go to the artist web site because they have complete control over it, and it’s structured to whatever they want it to be.” Very much like the Devo site. There’s more of the conversation with the students here: