People Who Share Music Are 5X More Likely To Buy
According to Reuters (and by Apple's own admission), only 3% of the music stored in the average iTunes user's digital library was purchased from the Apple music store. The rest came from ripped CDs, a friend or was downloaded illegally.
But users of Music With Me, a mobile app that facilitates music discovery through social sharing, have been shown (click on image to enlarge) to posses nearly five times the digital download purchases. DETAILS:
“Social sharing leads to music discovery and music discovery leads to more digital music being purchased,” says Michelle Jones, Music With Me’s Community Manager.
When music is shared socially (online or offline), a common bond is formed between those that shared it, which in turn gives each person one with the artist. This is because the music now stands for something greater than the art presented in front of them. It now represents their bond as individuals, as like-minded music lovers.
These sorts of bonds are beneficial for long-term fan retention, which generally results in long-term music sales over time – whether it be through digital downloads, concert tickets, or merchandise sales.
Musicians should encourage the social sharing of their music in every form they can think possible. Tweet-for-download campaigns, which requires fans to tweet about the content they’re about to be downloading (before being granted a download code), are just one example of the ways artists should be utilizing fan-based promotion strategies.
The more you can empower your fans to be a part of you and your music, the deeper the bonds you create with them become, thus increasing their desire to share your music with their peers.
After all, sharing is caring…
This post is by regular Hypebot contributor, musician and music marketer Hisham Dahud (@hishamdahud).
The behaviors of a small group of people that sought out or stumbled on a music app (Music WithMe has under 50,000 downloads on Android) are in no way representative of the general population.
I don’t doubt that sharing facilitates commerce in a certain way, but this headline should read: people who care a lot about music buy it. And as an idea, that’s about as newsworthy as the fact that bears shit in the woods.
Agree with Bug. Of course people who share music with their friends are people who also buy music. The insidious thing here is the potential for equating ‘sharing music with friends’ to ‘uploading music for millions of strangers.’ These are not equal actions. Even the headline here blurs the distinction– we all know by now that “people who share music” is often code for illegal file-sharing.
Both bloggers and music industry folks would do well to affirm the distinction.
Do the calendar for my mom and she loves it too…One year we got my parents tickets for a dinner train and that was a big hit.