What’s Ahead For 2011? Brenden Mulligan: We’ll See A Lot More Fan Engagement Tools Appear.

As we end the year, Hypebot asked some our favorite thinkers, writers, and friends to answer two questions – one looking forward and the other back. Here Brenden Mulligan (@bmull), founder of ArtistData and VP of Strategic Development at Sonicbids, answers.

Hypebot: What do you see as the most important business and consumer trends that will shape the music industry in 2011?

Brenden Mulligan: I think in the next year we will see a lot more fan engagement tools appear.

These tools will try to help artists leverage the fans they already have and reward those fans for performing certain actions (like spreading the word on social networks, buying merchandise, etc…). Besides the few that have cropped up already, I'm hearing from more and more people who plan to launch them. It's a complicated dynamic to create, and I think the company that does it right will really make a huge impact on how artists grow their fan-bases and reward their fans for loyalty.

We'll also see a lot more attention being focused on video and bringing the internet experience to the living room. This past year there has been a lot of attention on hardware that brings online content to your TV, such as Roku, Boxee, XBOX, PlayStation, internet enabled TVs, a relaunched Apple TV, and a just launched Google TV. All this hardware paves the way for an enormous amount of software and video content to suddently appear outside the constraints of your cable or satellite dish service. As a result, live streaming will be more and more important and services will emerge that help bands more efficiently get video content to their fans in a variety of ways.

Hypebot: Since this is ultimately all about music, what were your top musical moment(s) of 2010?

Brenden Mulligan:Top Show: The Jonsi tour was incredible. Besides the general elation I feel when going to any Sigur Ros/Jonsi show, the tour to support "Go" was a work of art that extended the music to an amazing visual experience. Here's a time-lapse video of the entire show: http://vimeo.com/16299637

Top Music Conference: As always, I enjoyed the two SF MusicTech Summit's more than any other music business events this year. The 1-day conference focus on how technology is shaping the creation, promotion, and monetization of music. I'm constantly impressed with the quality of participants and attendees and look forward to the event every 6 months.