The Prodigy Club Shows And Connecting With Fans

The Prodigy performed the first of their two club shows in Sheffield last night. I’m on my way up the M6 in an hour to see the second one in Birmingham. Million have been involved in connecting with fans from start to finish.

1. Initially an email was sent to The Prodigy mailing list, informing them about the show and that they had a 24hr window to buy tickets before they were advertised by the venues.
2. Together with The Prodigy’s tour managers, TCP, we liaised with the venues on the look and feel of the ticket websites.
3. Subsequently, the tickets sold out immediately.
4. We posted the gig dates on MySpace, iLike and Facebook to allow comments and fans to say if they were attending.
5. Before the shows we emailed everyone who had bought tickets with a message from the band, links to Google Maps showing them how to get to the venues and stage times.
6. Photos were taken during the soundcheck which we posted on to the band’s official website using Flickr as the interface.
7. We invited fans to send photos to Flickr and tag them ‘Prodigy_Clubshow‘ which allowed us to search on the keyword and gather all the photos in one place.
8. We posted the photos on to the bands Facebook, MySpace and iLike, together with a bulletin and photos.

OK, so I’m getting ready to go. I’ll take photos tonight which I’ll email via my Nokia Lifeblog and tag..

Coldplay Highlight The Continued Importance Of Email

Despite the rise of Social Networks, friend lists & bulletins, email remains one of the most important ways of communicating with fans.

Initially, in the early days, collecting emails was probably the number one reason for running a website. Nothing was done unless an email was collected.  In the last couple of years, with the rise of social networks, friend lists and bulletins many artists fell in to the trap of believing email less important since fans could be reached via bulletins or blog posts.

So it was good to see the recent Coldplay promotions run by EMI which went straight for the email jugular once again. Campaign number one was the free track giveaway. Hardly anything new - artists have been doing this for years. And yet it proved incredibly succesful with over 2m people registered. Next up, they offer a free gig but you have to register - again, another masterstroke in building an email database. It reminds me of the Robbie Williams’ gig he performed at the Albert Hall - the one where he did his Frank Sinatra impression. Fans had to apply via www.robbiewilliams.com, and over one million fans did, despite only 10,000 tickets being available. He performed and they filmed the gig. Subsequently, they emailed everyone who had applied for tickets and sold 100,000 DVD’s on pre-order, vividly illustrating the power of CRM.

And I don’t think that power has been diminished, despite the plethora of new ways to communicate. Email is still the thing people obligingly read and most likely will respond to. Our advice for artists is to use phplist, a fantastic open source program that enables you to manage multiple lists or quickly combine them. Capture data at gigs, on your site, via your social networks and insist your gig promoter shares any data from ticket sales - perhaps the most valuable fan data of all and the most often overlooked.

Million Attend Internet World And Present Jamiroquai.com

I’ll be attending Internet World on Wednesday 30th April at Earls Court. At 10am I’m due to give a 30 min presentation on Jamiroquai.com and the philosophy behind content sharing and syndication. We have made great efforts on Jamiroquai.com to allow fans easy access to content, whether text, photos, music or video, either by placing widgets on the site or more typically, using sites like YouTube and Flickr that can be used by fans themselves.

I’m happy to meet up with anyone there so please email or call 07855 449845

Jamiroquai And Oakley : Offering Fans Shade

Jamiroquai and Oakley recently collaborated on the ‘JK15′ range - a sensational pair of shades that put others in thejkk, er, dark. They’re also MP3 players with smart little earpieces that mean you can look cool and listen to the funky sounds of Emergency On Planet Earth that come embedded when you buy them.

There are only 2,500 pairs in the world, and Jamiroquai.com recently had 15 to sell before they went on sale in any store.

Million believe artists should continuously produce high quality, thoughtfully produced merchandise. It doesn’t necessarily have to cost £300, like these shades. And we’re not saying churn out loads of it just for the sake of it. But an exclusive, carefully planned line of music, artwork or merchandise is an ideal way of building relationships with fans.

BBC Launch The Sound Index

The BBC have just launched a Sound Index of “The Top 1000 Artists” based upon a 6-hourly scan of MySpace, iTunes, Google, Bebo, Last.fm and YouTube. The chart counts plays, profile views, comments and downloads to produce a Top 1000. Currently, Mariah Carey tops the inaugural chart followed by Britney, Leona, Rhianna and The Kooks. The Power Bar Key under each artist provides a facinating insight in to which artists are popular on which networks, or which are popular via downloads or social networks.

Million have been publishing an “engagement chart” with Musically since January and so this chart is both welcome, and a pain in the arse. On the one hand, the BBC are using license fee money to inhibit commercial enterprises. We can neither hire IBM to do our analytics or use BBC resources to market our chart.

On the other hand, ultimately the chart is just a list of artists and throws up more questions than it answers. Why are artists more popular on some networks than others? Do YouTube plays lead to download sales? How do you promote artists on the individual networks? What about the networks not listed here, for instance, the hundreds of music blogs or iLike, Facebook, NME, Drowned In Sound? Why only one retailer and one that caters to such a narrow slice of the audience?

Music engagement is going to be crucial for artists, labels and management in future, understanding that sales alone are no longer the sole indicator of an artists popularity. Or that people engaging with an artist counts for more than merely listening. Although the hows, whys and wheres are still being worked out labels in particular need to start investing time to understand the implications. Artists need to figure out which network is right for them.

The Artist Digital Universe

Million are specialists in linking artists to their fans. To do this we create a ‘Digital Universe‘. This places the artist website at the heart, but utilises social networks, music sites and widgets to reach fans across the Internet.

Our belief is there are millions of people who like Jamiroquai, but only a small minority (although naturally, a very important and crucial group) will visit the official site. Our goal is to create ‘touch points’ on social networks which allow casual fans the opportunity to hear the band, place  music on their profile and at any time, increase their engagement by visiting the site or downloading a new track.

Furthermore, gig dates can be promoted to fans who will happily attend a live gig, but may be reluctant to join a mailing list. Speaking for myself, there are many bands I love to see live, but am not on their mailing lists. However, if they tell me via Facebook I’ll more than likely go.

Running so many profiles is time consuming and the social networks don’t make it any easier. Gig dates have to be typed in a dozen times when they could be imported via ICS. However, the time is very little when compared to the cost of marketing employed by record labels and tour promoters.

How Can Artists Use Wikipedia?

A recent report by Yahoo highlights how important Wikipedia is becoming to the artist/fan relationship. It quite rightly points out that Google will often return the top three search results as the artist site, the Myspace site and the Wikipedia site. And yet, for all the time artists spend updating MySpace very little is spent checking and updating their Wikipedia.

The fact a Wiki can be changed by anyone is both a positive and a curse. Check the Jamiroquai Wiki and you’ll see it has been updated with the latest tour dates, it has a full history and band member info. However, it can often be changed by a well-meaning fan to contain a mis-informed “fact” or quote. In addition, we find the link can sometimes be changed to the wrong site, probably maliciously to gain traffic.

We offer the following advice:

1. Keep checking it regularly but remember, a Wiki tends to be self-policing so despite the occasional mis-leading statement, on average it will tend to be more right than wrong.
2. Keep a particular eye on the links which can easily be changed.
3. Wikipedia enforces a strict link policy and will not allow links to fan sites, social networking sites (with the exception of Last.fm and MySpace) or shops.
4. The Wiki is an encyclopedia and not for press releases or subjective statements like “this is the best album yet released by Artist X”. The objective nature of the information is what is so appealing to fans who want facts, not hype.
5.  Encourage fans to visit the Wiki from the official site. The Wiki is complementary to your own biog and not in competition.
6. Ensure the discography is correct and remember the global nature of the Wiki means you should not focus entirely on one country, or assume everyone knows what ‘Top Of The Pops’ is…