Music Marketing

Do We Really Care About The Fans?

Despite the mind numbing idiocy of labels suing fans for downloading a few songs, the fan/artist relationship has been the music industry’s mantra for the last few years. How do we best create, nurture and of course monetize it.  But how far have we really come? In a forward thinking essay Doc Searls writes in the Linux Journal:
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"Yes, we can go to websites, subscribe to music services, use iTunes or other supply-controlled intermediating systems and deal with artists inside those systems. But there still isn’t anything that allows us to deal directly, on our own terms, with artists and their intermediaries. Put another way, we don’t yet have the personal means for establishing relationships with artists."

Searls only riffs on possible solutions. "It can’t be limited to a browser. I want a button, or a something, on my MP3 player that allows me to relate not only to IT Conversations as Festival_15an intermediary, but to the artist as well — if the artist is interested. They may not be. But I want that
function supported. What we need on the user’s side is a tool, or a set of tools, that support both independence and engagement." (more)

Bold stuff. Maybe impossible. But somehow it gets past the clutter to the root question.  How far do we really want to go to engage, listen to and learn from our audience?

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3 Comments

  1. The problem is when fans *do* get to write to us about stuff–it seems like with rare exception they’re asking the same inane questions with the answer already out there.
    i’m pretty active with keeping up with my myspace page and I respond to every message, but by the time I get to the 60th message asking me when I’m playing next in their hometown (or where I live, or..any number of straight-forward questions) i wonder two things:
    -do people actually *READ* the show dates on the front page of myspace?
    -is there *too much* information available about me/my music out there that people are having a hard time finding the really vital stuff?
    As I head into another web redesign and (finally) a new album releasing in April I’m thinking about all these things and while I want to be able to give my fans access to me, I also want to give them enough information that they’ll stop asking me the same damn thing over and over…I know I sound like a grinch—I LOVE interacting with people, I just don’t like it when I feel we’d both be better served by copy/pasting our messages to each other from the knowledgebase of fan/artist interaction rather than just rewording the same thing 100 different ways, 100 different times.

  2. You can’t expect a tiny mention and ugly design at myspace to announce everything you need.
    You also need a real webpage, complete your band wiki, maybe have a blog/group blog, etc
    link them all up together.
    One tiny paragraph in notoriously impossible to read myspace is not enough.

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