What Impact Social Media Has Had on Music Marketing

¶ … Social Media on Music Marketing

The objective of this research is to examine and analyze how music artists have social media for marketing purposes. Examples will be used to illustrate the major points made in this report.

The music world has entered into a new era in marketing. Social media such as Facebook, MySpace, and others bring together individuals who are like-minded. Dave Allen reports in the work entitled: "Social Media, Blogs and Music: Some Philosophical Thoughts" the marketing world of music is electrified with "phrases such as "Social Media, Social Advertising, Facebook Ads, Mass Media Networking Advertising." (Allen, 2008, p.1) Allen, a panelist attending the LISA Service Seminar in Portland and the Hawaii MusicTech Conference in Honolulu. Reported is: "L.I.S.A., which is an acronym for Lessons In Social Advertising, was aimed at marketers and advertisers who [for some reason] don't understand social networks or haven't yet worked out how to advertise effectively to them. It focused on topics such as 'What is social advertising?' And 'How do you get young people to recommend your brand?' The Hawaii MusicTech panel was presented by the Northwest Chapter of NARAS [The Grammy Org] of which I am a Board Director, and we discussed how musicians could effectively use social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to reach an audience and communicate with them." (2008, p.1) Allen additionally states that while "one group wants to advertise, or push, their messages to a mass audience…the other… wants to create a network of like-minded people who hopefully will pull content such as free MP3s and then "evangelize" on behalf of the musicians by spreading messages by electronic word of mouth." (Allen, 2008, p.1) Allen reports a well the fact that when implementing a new model or form of business it is necessary that these be firmly implemented and indeed almost it is somewhat akin to a push or show of force by the CEO backed by the investors which enables them to think outside of the box of "ways of traditional mead and advertising." (Allen, 2008, p.1)

I. Counterintuitive Communications Media (Allen, 2008)

Allen goes on to write that Neil Perkin in his slideshow entitled "What's Next in Media" reports that social media is "counter-intuitive to communications media." (Allen, 2008, p.1) The following illustration shows just "how counter-intuitive things have become for marketing online." (Allen, 2008, p.1)

Figure 1

Marketing Online: Communications Media and Social Media

Perkins (nd) cited in Allen (2008, p.1)

According to Allen "The right hand side of the graphics above and below are where bands and artists ought to be focusing their efforts. Meanwhile, the old way of marketing is through push messaging and therein lies the mistake of many of today's marketing managers. Take a look at this slide to see how things don't stack up nicely into a marketing message or 'drop' that has been long planned waiting its turn on the calendar. The following illustration categories linear and networked marketing.

Figure 2

Linear and Networked Marketing

Perkins (nd) in: Allen (2008, p.1)

According to Allen the linear model is reminiscent of "traditional TV and Print advertising. Some people in advertising and marketing today still view the Internet as a "channel" rather like TV." (Allen, 2008, p.1) The work of Buskirk (2009) entitled "Social Media Networks are Music's Curse and Salvation" reports that downloading music "is still big business and it pays a lot of bills. Artists and labels have already earned around $4 billion from iTunes sales alone. But the dynamic is shifting to the cloud, where tracks are always available and listeners generally don't have to fork out money. These networks represent something of a threat to iTunes, the labels and their record-store-style pay-per-download music sales. But a new report says the same social media sites that threaten the old-school, sales-based approach will eventually save whatever's left of the music business." (Buskirk, 2009, p.1) While social music may not be the source of a great amount of revenue generated the effectiveness of the music industry monetization is going to improve according to Mark Mulligan of Forester Research." The key, in application on social media sites involves the categorization of users into "useful demographics based on media consumption, so music-oriented sites can offer advertisers more value than the ones where all people do is talk. The debate continues about whether streaming services can replace music ownership." Buskirk, 2009, p.1) The adoption of mobile data packages allows unfettered access to online streaming music with media players such as "the iPod Touch." The outcome is that music ownership "becomes less important if the songs you want are available on demand and on the go." Buskirk, 2009, p.1) The focus of many companies is stated to be in the area of social media including "Yahoo, which just turned Yahoo Music into a social artist directory with hooks into Pandora, YouTube and elsewhere, and plans to launch an open app development platform similar to Facebook's app platform." Buskirk, 2009, p.1)

Rankings of key social media networks are stated as follows:

FM -- 20 million users

Bebo -- 22 million users

Pandora -- 24 million users

Imeem -- 25 million users

MySpace 139 million users

Facebook -- 175 million users

YouTube -- 344 million users (Buskirk, 2009, p.1)

Social networking is stated to mean the "tracking of individual preferences and behavior and giving users the ability to draw upon implicit or explicit connections between them and other users to do something useful." Buskirk, 2009, p.1) COO Peter Chernin, My Space is noted as having stated: "We remain incredibly optimistic about social media. But there are specific challenges

1) Tons of inventory. Lack of scarcity creates a liquidity challenge. Working on bringing big brands aboard.

2) People who are visiting social networks are there for different reasons, different uses. Figuring out how to target.

3) What's the value of a "friend"? Trying to figure out new metrics to communicate with marketers." (Buskirk, 2009, p.1)