Prompt's TechBlog
Indie music leads the way in social media marketing
06 April 2007
Posted by Fiona Campbell-HowesThis week's news that EMI plans to drop the copy-protection software from downloaded tracks marks an important turning point in the commercial relationship between music labels, artists and fans.
When Napster launched in 1999, the music industry came to view fans as the enemy; as thieving pirates who needed to be hunted down and punished for illegally sharing and downloading music. Two years passed before anyone thought that the thieving pirates might welcome the opportunity to buy music legitimately online. And when that thought did come, it didn't come from the music industry. It came, of course, from Silicon Valley, and Apple has been cashing in ever since.
But the digital rights management (DRM) software slapped on to legal downloads showed that, while it was happy to take their money, the music industry still didn't trust its customers. In any relationship, a lack of trust in the other party is an unhappy state of affairs, which is why EMI's decision represents a major moral victory for fans.
Elsewhere, however, artists and fans have been enjoying a far more symbiotic and egalitarian relationship, partly due to new social media platforms. Social networks like MySpace have allowed fans to interact directly with their favourite artists. Industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails have actively sought to involve fans in their music by giving their approval to online fan remix competitions, while the Beastie Boys recently invited fans to submit their own footage of the band for a concert DVD, appropriately titled 'Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!'.
(I very much like the prim and proper use of the semicolon in that title, incidentally.)
The other day I noticed one of my favourite bands, Voxtrot, endorsing a competition held by Spanish music site Buffet Libre and mp3 blog Stereogum to remix one of their singles. The Stereogum blog has nothing to do with the band, and its activities - posting free mp3s for fans to download - are, well, more than verging on the illicit. However, the band recognise the influence of mp3 blogs, and prefer to encourage them rather than sue them.
Voxtrot's friendliness towards the mp3 blogs - despite singer Ramesh's concerns about the dehumanising effect of the internet, ironically expressed in his own blog - will serve them well next month, when their debut album launches. The inevitable blanket coverage across indie music blogs will provide Voxtrot with a massive amount of online 'media' exposure, effectively creating a huge grass-roots promotional campaign for no marketing outlay.
Despite its initial slowness to adapt to fans' behaviour on the internet, the music industry now seems to be leading the charge in the use of social media for marketing purposes. Marketers from other industries would do well to watch and learn.
Tags: EMI | itunes | voxtrot
Comments:
I quite like the new Voxtrot album.
The Dismemberment Plan actually did something entirely similar a few years ago, separating many songs into tracks and inviting fans to remix it. The result was a full CD, "The People's History of the Dismemberment Plan".
Voxtrot are indeed great.
Thanks for the info about the Dismemberment Plan - also, someone wrote a letter to last month's Wired pointing out that the Beastie Boys weren't the first to use fan footage for a video; apparently none other than Bon Jovi did the same thing in the 80s. There's nothing new under the sun...
The challenges of the new order have to do with issues of who makes money and how (I'm not persuaded the artists are going to make less, but record executives may) and who drives promotion and distribution (which may now lay in service to the artist, rather than to the corporation). I may be a little dreamy here, but I do see some evidence for increased power in the hands of the artist, without necessarily a diminution of income. The rub is that the artists are going to have to either learn the ins and outs of promotion and distribution, or hire a manager. which may bring us back to a corporate model eventually. I'll watch with interest.
That said, the removal of DRM is a great (and brave, I think) move by EMI (engineered by Apple, who is now holding a lot of strings, and heck, more power to 'em). I'll certainly be rewarding them both by purchasing my iTunes Store songs under the new plan.
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