Music festival sponsorship

A discussion of how sponsors are maximizing their sponsorship London's Wireless Festival.

I find far more articles about sponsorship in the British press than in the American press, which has been the case for quite awhile. For as much sponsorship as you see in the US. there still seems to be more focus on sponsorship there than here.

BBC NEWS, 6/21/07| Why just a logo is now a no-no: "Existing users could receive a barcode by text message, allowing them access to a VIP area with a bar and music.

Other offers included text messages containing news and gossip from backstage, while onstage performances were recorded and have been made available via mobile on the network's Wap site, advertised under the banner, 'Relive it'.

'It has gone beyond mere badging an event with our logo. We want to drive an emotional connection with our customers,' said the network's head of sponsorship, Amanda Jennings.

'I hope that everyone had a good time at Wireless, but that if you were an O2 customer, that you had an extra good time.'...

Digital consultant Ben Carter says that a brand can only bring its sponsorship to life by encouraging the customer to engage with it.

'Having exclusive content is a must-have,' he says.

'Signing up to sponsor a festival, concert or act is a very good way of securing the content that your customers want.'

Creating such 'exciting, original' content is a priority for broadband provider Tiscali UK, says its head of entertainment Rob Andrews.

It broadcast sets from the main stage at the Wireless Festival live on its website, which was viewed by 'thousands'.

And it also held 15 backstage gigs, each for less than 100 people, with acts including Badly Drawn Boy, newcomers Scouting for Girls and a rare acoustic set by Faithless.

The performances will be made available on the web and, eventually, television.

Creating IPod Tours of Your Music Scene

Here's a site that makes available audio tours via iPods. Some people sell them, others give them away for free. I don't see a lot being done with music yet, it would be make sense. Combine a tour of local venues with music from local bands that play there frequently. Find interesting little facts about the venues that would appeal to tourists and locals who want to know more.

Denver would be a perfect location because some of our hippest venues are in colorful parts of town and have long histories as converted bars, failed past music experiments, etc. For example, the Family Dog, which existed briefly in the 1960s and featured the Doors, Janis Joplin, and the like, is now a strip club.

And Denver, famous for "On the Road," is intrinsically colorful anyway.

AudioSnacks.com: Podcast and MP3 Audio Tours for Travel, Museums, and More!

Another way to market local music

NYTimes, 5/25/07 - Facebook Expands Into MySpace: "In its new effort, which was to be unveiled on the site Thursday night, Facebook will be relying on the work of entrepreneurs like Ali Partovi, the chief executive of iLike, a company in Seattle that gives users the opportunity to hear and buy the music their friends are listening to.

Facebook does not have a music feature, but iLike, which along with Amazon and Microsoft was one of 65 companies that appeared at Facebook’s event, is one of several that plans to make music-related tools available on the site.

If users choose to add iLike to their Facebook pages, the software will automatically see where they live and what bands and songs they say they enjoy. It will then recommend songs and local concerts.

ILike will get a commission if the user acts on either recommendation, and it will also show its own ads."

Concert promotion using mobile phones

This article discusses how Fall Out Boy and other bands are using mobile phones to promote themselves and particularly to enhance the concert experience. The assumption is that teenagers want to get messages via phone rather than email.

While the idea of taping into cellphones at concerts makes sense since that's the best way to communicate with audiences during the event, some of the other ideas seem a bit too gimmicky and too youth-specific.

My feeling is that mobile promotions are good when they appeal to audiences' this-concert-is-really-about-me mentality (e.g., allowing them to post messages and photos to giant screens during the show), but don't add much when they are just used as a way to create faux intimacy between a band's promotional department and the fans who sign up. It kind of reminds me of those 900 numbers where you could listen to a photo message from your favorite star for a fee.

Rocky Mountain News, 5/5/07 - Bands SPK 2 GR8 fans:

"• One fan will have the opportunity to go backstage and meet the band via a text-messaging contest held live during the performance.

• The band is encouraging fans to take camera-phone photos during the show and upload them to a section of their Web site called "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs," text-message shorthand for "thanks for the memories" and also the title of their current single.

• In some tour venues, fans will be able to send the photos directly to video screens on either side of the stage, a multimedia upgrade from the now-common practice of displaying audience text messages.

It's all part of a text messaging fan club campaign the group launched in late March. Fall Out Boy developed a set of five mobile trading cards that fans can only receive by signing up for the service and texting in updates on a regular basis. Each time fans text in a message, they receive one randomly selected card. Some are rarer than others, so the odds of getting the rarest card increase with the number of messages sent.

The trading cards are in the form of Tarot cards, designed around graphic themes from the band's new album, Infinity on High. Once downloaded, fans can use them for their phones' wallpaper images.

After joining the text-message fan club, fans will get updates on Fall Out Boy news such as when the band's next video will premiere, ticket alerts for local secret shows, updates about about the band members, and other information - all delivered directly to their mobile phones....

The group uses Mozes to manage its text-messaging efforts; the Palo Alto, Calif., company claims another 700 artists also use its service.

Mozes CEO Dorrian Porter said Fall Out Boy has signed up 'tens of thousands' of fans since the Tarot card promotion began, and recently had the fifth-most subscribers on the service, after Hinder, Korn, hellogoodbye and Boys Like Girls.

Mozes also runs the backstage pass contest at FOB tours. The company first tested the concept last fall with rockers The Plain White T's. For each show, roughly half of those attending responded to the content to get a backstage pass - a staggering response rate.

'It looked like a sea of teenagers pulling out their phones at once,' Porter said....

Concerts offer a variety of ways for bands and fans to interact using mobile phones. Artists already let fans choose which song they should play during their encore via text-message voting. Or they can remix a song played live that night into a custom ring tone available only to those who attended that specific show....

Kevin Lyman, the brains behind the [Vans Warped Tour] alternative rock festival, has already begun integrating wireless alerts into the tour - everything from announcing the day's lineup to giving a heads up on autograph sessions or exclusive backstage acoustic shows. Eventually, he hopes to send concert tickets directly to fans' mobile phones, scanning a bar code on the phone screen like a ticket to get in."

Mexico City and indie rock

Los Dynamite Noiselab Mexico City Rock - New York Times, 5/13/07: "Thanks mostly to the downloadable avalanche of globalization and the rise of MySpace the current independent rock scene is full of artists who may be from Mexico City but sound as if they could be from New York, Stockholm or Paris....

The debut of MySpace in 2003 couldn’t have come at a better time for the Mexico City indie scene. In the 1990s major labels could still afford to be interested in a diverse swath of rock and alternative acts, but by 2003 they were no longer signing bands whose sales weren’t projected to reach gold in their first month or who weren’t easy matches for telenovela soundtracks. In response a string of indie labels emerged to fill the void, and suddenly it seemed that there were more bands than ever. There were more young people making music on home computers, more places to play (galleries and storefronts as much as clubs) and more international acts — like the White Stripes, which made Mexico City a heralded early stop on a 2005 tour — coming to town.

Most in the scene agree that the watershed moment came in 2004 with the appearance of Reactor, a taste-making, state-supported radio station. Unlike previous Mexico City alternative rock radio ventures, Reactor made breaking independent and underground bands from Mexico as central to its mission as playing the latest from Franz Ferdinand. 'If a band has a strong following, we take notice,' said Raúl David (Rulo) Vázquez, the station’s lead programmer.

Everything, then, was in place for an indie explosion. MySpace just struck the match.

'There’s always what we call the Mexico City lag,' said Luis Arce, a member of Chikita Violenta, whose debut album, 'The Stars and Suns Sessions,' was recently released on Noiselab. 'In the U.S. there was the college rock boom — Pavement, Sebadoh, even Nirvana — and now in Mexico City we have our own version of that. This is our own ’90s indie boom, just a decade or so late.'...

'In previous generations the goal was to present yourself as part of the city, to define the city and express the city,' said Jorge Hipolito, a veteran of the Mexico City scene who works at Noiselab. 'Now that doesn’t matter so much.'...

One particularly controversial result of Nafta has been the growing number of young bands choosing to sing in English, even if the members don’t speak it particularly well. Most of these bands claim that it’s not a bid for crossover success, but a direct reflection of their musical upbringing. 'We’re more comfortable singing and writing in English,' said Mr. David of Chikita Violenta. 'We’re proud of being from Mexico, but this is the way we like to do music. It would be dishonest for us to sing in Spanish.'"

Alternative venues for indie music

Music venues have been closing in NYC, but shows in non-traditional locations are doing well.

New York Night Life - New York Times, 5/11/07: "'Anything is a venue,' said the promoter Todd Patrick, known professionally as Todd P. For six years he has made it his mission to program music in far-flung places, from divey bars in Greenpoint to Lutheran churches to private lofts. Now New York’s alt-location guru, he has recently expanded to work with bands on the verge of stardom (Animal Collective, which he booked in 2005) and even nationally known acts (Oneida, Trans Am) at large clubs like Studio B in Brooklyn, winning the attention of the music industry.

But Mr. Patrick’s hallmark remains the cheap, on-the-fly, do-it-yourself concert, promoted through his Web site (toddpnyc.com), his e-mail list (13,000 strong) and MySpace, blog and newspaper and magazine listings. Essentially a one-man band, Mr. Patrick, 31, has interns who work the door (ticket prices rarely go above $10) and stamp hands (he only does all-ages shows) while he helps set up.

'Because the idea is about D.I.Y., I like to show the strings,' he said. 'I want people to come to the show and see me build the P.A. system, see that there’s nothing glossy about what we’re doing. I think alternative venues are a great way of doing that. It just kind of throws it off. If a club is the quote-unquote appropriate place to see music, why do people have so much more fun in a warehouse?'...

Nearby, interns counted the door money; Mr. Patrick takes 10 percent before expenses (security, interns) and the rest goes to performers....

Along with low overhead other common traits of this scene include out-of-the way locations (a long walk from the subway is common), online promotion, candles instead of spotlights and a high tolerance for graffiti: GlassLands, where the Yeah Yeah Yeahs performed as part of a video shoot, has two rooms where anyone can scribble on the walls, markers and paint provided. Many places lack proper licensing; Mr. Patrick switches locations often to avoid the authorities. (Don Pedro is a legal establishment with a liquor license; the loft space was not.)"

Using music on Second Life to promote tourism

This article mentions concerts being conducted at a Second Life site as a way to promote tourism at a real world location.

Lst night three Denver bands played a concert which was simultaneously broadcast live on Second Life and on ManiaTV. I didn't have a chance to watch, though.

Galveston Daily News, 5/13/07 - Site breathes 'Second Life' into isle tourism: "[Galveston.com co-founder Jim] Cordell’s private company has a contract with the Galveston Park Board of Trustees to promote the island through its official Web site, which the company owns and manages. The park board helps pay for advertising on Google but does not otherwise fund the company’s activities, Cordell said....

Cordell quickly learned that joining a virtual world costs real money, lots of it.

His company has spent almost $16,000 so far buying virtual land and paying a designer to re-create the island. Another $1,600 goes for monthly expenses related to Second Life.

Most of the money — $10,000 — has gone to Adam Gillis, a programmer from Nova Scotia, Canada, who has re-created many of Galveston’s treasured landmarks without ever seeing them in real life.

'The entire process was based on photos, photographic replicas for the most part,' Gillis said. 'I can pretty much build anything as long as I have dedicated photos that show the buildings from a good number of angles.' ...

'We are reaching an audience that wouldn’t come to us otherwise,' Cordell said. 'A lot of people don’t even know the real Galveston exists, until they visit us in Second Life. The whole idea is to get people to come here.'

Just think what else the money could have been used for

In what amounts to a giant publicity stunt, Dr. Pepper is paying for a band to live in a glass bubble in NYC for three weeks while they record an album. We can watch them on-site, on the Internet, and on MTV.

Aside from the fact that I think all those involved (the band, the sponsor, and MTV) will look more desperate than cool, this plan strikes me as a huge waste of money which could have been used to promote music in many more effective ways.

Adweek Magazine In Print 5/7/2007- Dr Pepper Rocks Out With Big Idea From MEC: "NEW YORK A year in the making and carrying an estimated price tag of close to $20 million, Band in a Bubble, a new Dr Pepper reality show and special event created by WPP's Mediaedge:cia, shows just how far some media agencies and clients will go to cut through the clutter....

Dr Pepper is funding the entire project, which accounts for 22 percent of the $90 million the company spent on ads last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The company wouldn't comment on specific figures or say from which budget the money was taken."

How Gen Y consumes media

This was a survey of more than 2,200 Americans 13-75. Here's the part about Millennials (13- 24) and how the differ from other groups in terms of online use.

TV Week, 5/7/07 - 'Millennials' Defying the Old Models: "According to the survey, Millennials invested 51 percent of their Internet time with user-generated content and only 49 percent on company-generated content. The survey average was 34 percent of time to user-generated content and 66 percent to company-generated content. Millennials, therefore, invest 50 percent more time with user-generated content than the average user.

... In response to the question 'How often would you say you are doing the following activities in a typical week?' the interaction-based activities skewed highly:

Sixty-two percent of Millennials said they frequently or occasionally socialized on the Internet, versus 38 percent of the rest of the participants in the survey, a 63 percent advantage.

Other prominent Millennial online activities include watching content created by others: 71 percent vs. 51 percent (+39 percent); reading or posting on message boards: 51 percent vs. 38 percent (+34 percent); reading blogs: 55 percent vs. 36 percent (+53 percent); creating personal content: 58 percent vs. 34 percent (+71 percent); maintaining own personal Web site: 36 percent vs. 22 percent (+64 percent); and keeping a web log (blog): 35 percent vs. 18 percent (+94 percent).

Among the more mainstream Web activities, Millennials invest significant time in the following: searching, downloading or listening to music, 78 percent vs. 50 percent (+56 percent); visiting gaming sites where games can be played online, 66 percent vs. 49 percent (+35 percent); and watching You Tube or other video-streaming sites, 62 percent vs. 36 percent (+72 percent). Further, almost half (48 percent) visit a television Web site in a typical week."

Free digital music with a concert ticket

Press rlease, 5/7/07 - Ticketmaster Gives The Gift of Music: "With every concert ticket purchased online at Ticketmaster.com, Ticketmaster is providing a complimentary ten-song digital music sampler showcasing a variety of emerging and established artists. In addition, with the purchase of every ticket to any summer concert scheduled to take place between Memorial Day (May 28) and Labor Day (Sept 3) Ticketmaster.com ticket buyers may download one complimentary song of their choice from the iTunes Store (http://www.itunes.com)."

Hotels, tourism, and local music scenes

A big hotel chain may not want to bother with pairing with local musician (too much trouble overseeing quality control as it relates to the brand), but this idea could be used for smaller, independently run hotels. Local bands/musicians could make songs available for guests to download and take with them.

Design: Music: In tune with guest expectations - Hotel & Motel Management, 5/7/07: "Hyatt Hotels & Resorts introduced a digital download music program that will roll out to properties throughout 2007.

Each property will have a unique music library while meeting a set of music standards for the brand, said Walter Brindell, assistant v.p., rooms operations, Hyatt Hotels Corp. Different music collections are used in different spaces of the hotel, so the spa has a different mood than the lobby.

Guests can download the collections from both brands' collections and take their experiences home."

Online engagement

This chart shows the level of participation among American adults who go online. Most people are still passive, either lurking or not even checking out blogs, podcasts, social networks, and the like. They might be considered the traditional music audience -- those who are content to be entertained rather than wanting to be part of the show.

Micro Persuasion: The Participation Ladder and Its Impact on Marketing and PR

Here's more about the report that generated the Participation Ladder.

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): Forrester’s new Social Technographics report: "Many companies approach social computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed – a blog here, a podcast there – to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for. Forrester categorizes social computing behaviors into a ladder with six levels of participation; we use the term 'Social Technographics' to describe analyzing a population according to its participation in these levels. Brands, Web sites, and any other company pursuing social technologies should analyze their customers' Social Technographics first, and then create a social strategy based on that profile."

Marketing music through relationships

Live music can build relationships. This describes a form of music marketing that creates an "almost live" interaction.

MediaPost Publications - Getting Into The Circle Of Friends - 05/01/2007: "John Huffman, CEO of Real Hip Hop, who distributes indie artist musical ringtones and wallpapers on mobile, continues to push for promotional material that is more sensitive to the specific strengths of mobile. He told me the other day that he is trying to get artists and labels to get beyond their event-based marketing cycles and adopt a persistent connection with interested audiences.

'Marketing should be experience-based,' Huffman said. 'We used to spend four or five months of leading up to a release of an album. But now we should think about someone who shows an interest in your content -- and what mechanism do we have in place via mobile to stay involved and share what they experience. Don't just give me the final version [of the album]. Every other week you need to be thinking about giving me things that will keep me interested in your music.'"

What works for mobile content

A company that has designed 60 WAP sites shares what drives usage:

Wireless Developer Network, 5/1/07: "Specifically, Trilibis Mobile found that the most popular features (in the order of significance) were:

1. Votes/Polls when:
The poll or vote enables the user to influence the outcome of something he/she is passionate about.

The poll or vote enables the user to compare himself/herself to the overall population with respect to something he/she is passionate about. It appeals to the user's ability to be seen as an 'expert' in the population.

2. Blogs led by experts in the field (such as sportswriters). In addition, if users can contribute to blogs wirelessly, the stickiness of the site is enhanced.

3. Branded storefronts: Branded collections of ringtones, wallpapers, call tones, etc., continue to be popular, especially as the carrier decks continue to grow in size, making the navigation to specific content more difficult.

4. Informational content (e.g.): Most effective if content is valuable when 'on the go' and easily navigated.

5. Trivia: Particularly effective for sports and television shows, where consumers want to test their knowledge on something they're passionate about."

Ways to make money in music these days

Nothing really new here, but a good summary.

Analysis: What is the Role of the Artist in a Digital Age? | Digital Media Wire

Heavily targeted online radio advertising

TargetSpot is a company that will allow advertisers, even very small ones, to buy ads for online radio. The ability to create a drop in an ad to a specific group at the very last minute has its appeal, though it is likely that mobile ads will be pitched in exactly the same way. (For example, if you work downtown, you can get a cellphone ad for special deals from nearby restaurants."

The advantage of any of these concepts for local music is the opportunity for music venues to reach people making last-minute plans for something to do.

A Virtual Ad Agency for Online Radio - New York Times: "'A restaurant near Times Square could realize at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday that it had seven open tables for lunch,' he said, 'and then the owner or manager could go online and target people in the 10036 ZIP code who make more than $75,000 a year.'...

“[A chocolate maker] would be able to advertise to men in certain locales he identified, and select placement next to love songs rather than heavy-metal music,” said [David Goodman, president of marketing for CBS Radio], 'because those listening to love songs are much likelier to buy his product.'...

TargetSpot’s Web site will offer advertisers the ability to record ads by microphone, telephone, prerecorded audio files, computer-generated speech or voice professionals. Sound effects and jingles will be available on the site, as well as images or logos."

Mobile Phone Marketing

Sooner or later people will do this to market music clubs.

Product Tips You Can Use, by Way of Cellphone - New York Times, 4/24/07:Philips Simplicity Concierge, lets people send text messages to seek information about popular destinations in major cities — restaurants in Boston, for instance, or spas in London — and get a Yellow Pages-style listing of five options, including phone numbers for making reservations.

The recommendations made by the service, which will be available on the Internet and by cellphone through the end of the year, are being drawn from the content of Condé Nast Web sites. Under the arrangement, Philips is paying $5 million to the Condé Nast Media Group, a unit of Condé Nast Publications that handles marketing and sales for the company’s magazines and Web sites."

Tips for Hyper-Local Websites

This article has suggestions about hyper-local websites, essentially community news sites written by volunteer citizen journalists. Some of the ideas may be applicaable to local music sites as well.

Hyper-Local Citizen Media Sites Learn How to Serve Small Communities

Bringing younger audiences to the arts

This article has a number of excellent ideas about how to reach young adults.

Arts groups creating ways to lure young audiences - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 2/25/07

Here are some of the ideas mentioned:

1. Gallery crawls, which are pitched to 20-to-40-year -olds and offer hors d'oeuvres and music in addition to art.

2. Making sure people know you don't have to dress up to attend the theater and classical music concerts.

3. Bringing in young professionals as volunteers to help various arts organizations.

4. Offering affordable tickets.

5. Combining theater events with a pre-show cocktail party.

6. Promoting events via email, websites, radio, and word-of-mouth, not just through more traditional methods like newspapers, billboards, and posters.

creative class
classical music
Pittsburgh

The true live music business model

Some of the talk coming out of the Music 2.0 conference is that major labels can't afford to do artist development (including tour support) unless they get a percentage of tour and merchandising income.

Major Label Executives Express Continued Frustration, Mood Sours — Digital Music News: "In a previous era, labels gladly financed marketing initiatives for artists – including tour support – without receiving direct returns from areas outside of the CD. That approach is now becoming a critical problem, though a clear plan has not emerged to broaden the business. 'We’re going to have to get good at all of these ancillary revenue streams and see what works,' said Ring, while Ken Bunt of Hollywood Records pointed to a far broader approach that included 'touring, merchandise, mobile, DVDs,' and a large host of other areas. 'We could monetize file-sharing tomorrow, but it would just be one small part of the puzzle,' Bunt said."

Live Nation is planning to create a music venue site to bring together its own venues and competitors to market to concert goers and offering ticketing. Live Nation, in essences, wants to develop a database of live music goers.

Live Nation Concocts MySpace of Concert Websites — Digital Music News: "Live Nation is now tinkering with a new concept online, one that will give consumers more comprehensive live concert information. The company is now inviting competing venues to not only list their events, but also build their own pages within the site. 'It's like MySpace for venues,' said Live Nation executive Scott Fedewa..."


Here are my thoughts on the matter:

1. Marketing to the current group of concert goers is not enough. If Live Nation and other venues want to make money, then need to find ways to expand the number of people who go to see live music.

2. Major labels and even indie bands don't really have significant experience tapping into live music. Major labels and independent labels have been in the recorded music business. Sure, signed artists and indie artists tour, but both have still focused on recorded music.

From my observation, there is only one group of bands that really understands the live music market -- that's jambands. Their business models have always been driven by live music, tape sharing among fans, and relatively little exposure through radio or music reviews. It's been largely driven through word-of-mouth. While the indie/hipster segment of the industry has generated press about the viability of avoiding the major label system, in reality, their business has been more like a junior version of the major label system than the true DIY model that has existed for several decades within the jamband community.

live music
Music 2.0