Musicians utilizing social media to increase brand awareness, further promote their brand and establish brand equity

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Content MUSICIANS UTILIZING SOCIAL MEDIA TO INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS, FURTHER PROMOTE THEIR BRAND AND ESTABLISH BRAND EQUITY by Mikey Collard A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS) May 2012 Copyright 2012 Mikey Collard ii Dedication I would like to dedicate this paper to my amazing wife Nikki, who has had to deal with my outrageously hectic schedule this past year – what a trooper. I’d also like to thank my parents and my siblings for always supporting me in everything I do. Mom and Dad – I hope I’m making you proud. iii Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis committee chair Jenn Floto for not only supervising me in the laborious thesis process, but for also being an inspiration – her passion for the PR profession is simply infectious, and I’m definitely one of the many that has benefited from her shining example. I’d also like to thank Brenda Lynch and Matthew Leveque for serving on my thesis committee and providing valuable feedback throughout this process. I’ve learned a lot these past two years at Annenberg from great faculty members like these – I’m going to miss this place. Lastly, I’d like to thank my amazing interviewees. As you’ll see, this paper wouldn’t have been possible without them. Duff – I especially owe you one. iv Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of Tables vi List of Figures vii Abstract viii Introduction 1 Glossary of Terms 3 Chapter One: Brand, Branding and Brand Equity 7 Chapter Two: How Social Media is Changing Everything, Especially Branding 11 Chapter Three: Social Media Creates Challenges 15 Chaper Four: Musicians and Social Media 19 Chapter Five: Social Media Allows Musicians to Engage Fans Like Never Before 22 Chapter Six: Musicians and Online Crowdsourcing 26 Chapter Seven: Social Media Becomes Primary News Channel for Bands 30 Chapter Eight: Does Musical Genre Affect Social Media Strategy and Approach? 33 Chapter Nine: Social Media Creates Musical Superstars 41 Chapter Ten: Social Media Tools that Musicians Consider Using 43 Chapter Eleven: Who Should Operate Which Accounts 52 Chapter Twelve: What Musicians Should be Doing on Social Media 58 Chapter Thirteen: What Musicians Should Not Be Doing 61 Chapter Fourteen: Social Media: Supplementary or Key Asset in Branding? 65 Chapter Fifteen: Duff McKagan Calls Author – All Because of Twitter 67 v Chapter Sixteen: Additional Thoughts and Analysis 69 Chapter Seventeen: The Conclusion 72 Bibliography 73 vi List of Tables Table 1: Musical Acts’ Type of Twitter Engagement 39 Table 2: Musicians/Bands Using Instagram 48 Table 3: Individual Band Members’ Twitter Accounts 52 vii List of Figures Figure 1: Twitter Conversation with @mtn_dew 19 Figure 2: Nikki Sixx Tweet 26 Figure 3: R.E.M. Tweet 30 Figure 4: At the Drive-‐In Tweet 31 Figure 5: Jason Aldean Tweet 31 Figure 6: Greyson Chance Twitter-‐View Becomes Trending Topic 50 Figure 7: McDonald’s Tweet 56 Figure 8: Twitter Conversation with Duff McKagan 67 Figure 9: Andrew W.K. Tweet 70 Figure 10: Additional Andrew W.K. Tweets 71 viii Abstract This paper takes a look at how musicians and musical acts are utilizing and/or should be utilizing social media to increase brand awareness, further promote their brand and aid in establishing brand equity. Social media, along with the advent of digital file sharing, has dramatically affected the music industry and its once traditional institutionalized paradigm. This paper dives into the role social media plays in the ongoing evolution of the industry – it analyzes best practices, tools and applications that cater directly to the needs of musicians, how specific musical artist accounts should be operated and much more. In 2012, bands are no longer just bands, they’re brands, and social media plays an integral role in the branding process. The principal conclusion of this paper is that all musicians should STRATEGICALLY be engaging in social media to sustain and/or further their brand. The ultimate goal of this paper is provide valuable insight into how to successfully be strategic when using social media to brand and market a musical artist or act. 1 Introduction In today’s digitally infused consumer world, creating, strengthening and maintaining brand equity is as important and challenging as ever. Successfully preserving and furthering brand equity while transitioning through drastic changes, such as the Web 2.0 revolution and the advent of the social web, has been a struggle for many companies and their respective brands, and continues to be so as the dynamic digital landscape evolves before our very eyes. The rise of social media over the past decade has drastically altered the way in which brands build and maintain brand equity. Social media is integrated into virtually every aspect of life, especially the relationships between brands and their consumer audiences. Corporate marketers, some quicker than others, have come to realize the importance of social media and having a well thought-‐out strategy. And similar to corporations, celebrities, musicians and public figures can leverage social media to increase brand awareness, further promote their brand and establish brand equity. Like any corporation or public figure in today’s world, musicians are being forced to re-‐evaluate their current and potential use of social media in various regards such as: • What is their expectation to utilize? • What are the best methods? • How is their approach similar/different than that of consumer brands? • Does the approach differ amongst musical entities? 2 • Is it always appropriate to employ social media? If so, to what extent? • How does social media strategy factor into musicians’ overall branding strategy? • The traditional music industry paradigm continues to shift and evolve – what role does social media play in that evolution? Through this paper, the author will identify how musicians are currently utilizing social media to promote and preserve their image and brand identity. He will then propose strategies for musicians to leverage social media to further promote and preserve their brand and image, while simultaneously staying relevant and connecting to their fans via the most appropriate channels and methods. 3 Glossary of Terms Brand: A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. The legal term for brand is trademark. However, in public relations, the term “brand” may identify one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller. 13 Brand equity: The value premium that a company realizes from a product with a recognizable name as compared to its generic equivalent. Companies can create brand equity for their products by making them memorable, easily recognizable and superior in quality and reliability. Mass marketing campaigns can also help to create brand equity. If consumers are willing to pay more for a generic product than for a branded one, however, the brand is said to have negative brand equity. This might happen if a company had a major product recall or caused a widely publicized environmental disaster. 11 The additional money that consumers are willing to spend to buy an authentic Coca-‐Cola rather than the store brand of cola is an example of brand equity. Crowdsourcing: Obtaining information from the general public about current events, products and retail establishments. For example, if a natural disaster strikes an area, locals can capture and upload images before a professional news crew arrives. In addition, rather than hire a professional poll taker, using a Web site, social media platform or blog to ask for public opinion may be the fastest way to generate comments and suggestions. 15 A recent example of a well-‐known brand successfully utilizing online crowdsourcing is Dunkin Donuts and its “Create 4 Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest, which generated over 130,000 “new donut flavor” contest submissions. 54 Digital File Sharing: File sharing is the practice of sharing or offering access to digital information or resources, including documents, multimedia (audio/video), graphics, computer programs, images and e-‐books. It is the private or public distribution of data or resources in a network with different levels of sharing privileges. 20 Facebook: Founded in 2004, Facebook is currently the world’s largest social networking site. Millions of people use Facebook every day to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos and learn more about the people they meet. 34 As of February 2012, the site touts over 845 million active users. 17 Flickr: Flickr is an online application that enables you to manage and share digital photos and JPEG images. It can be used to upload images taken with a camera, and in the upload process, Flickr allows users to title, describe, tag, and set security on the images. 57 Indie music: Short for “independent music” and technically can refer to any music produced by bands or artists that is released on an independent label, as oppose to a major label. The styles associated with non-‐commercially released music have become their own genres, however, such as indie pop and indie rock. Indie pop is a genre of alt rock music with roots in Scottish post-‐punk. Its key characteristics are jangling guitars, a love of sixties pop, and often fey, innocent lyrics. Indie rock music is rooted in earlier genres like alternative rock, post-‐punk and new wave. 45 5 MySpace: The major social networking site on the Web in the mid-‐2000s. Founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, MySpace was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation via its purchase of parent company Intermix in 2005. In 2006, MySpace was the most visited site on the Web; however, by 2008, it was overtaken by Facebook and has continued to decline. 15 Social Identity: A company's image as derived from its various relationships. An organization's social identity comes from the groups that organization belongs to or is affiliated with, the way it is structured, the industry it belongs to and other social factors. A company's social identity will impact how consumers perceive it, so social identity affects a company's bottom line and should be closely managed. 12 Twitter: A very popular instant messaging system that lets a person send brief text messages up to 140 characters in length to a list of followers. Launched in 2006, Twitter was designed as a social network to keep friends and colleagues informed throughout the day. However, it became widely used for commercial and political purposes to keep customers, voters and fans up-‐to-‐date as well as to encourage feedback. 15 A “tweet” is a post or status update that a user publishes through their account. Web 2.0: An umbrella term for the second wave of the World Wide Web, which was coined in a conference on the subject in 2004 by O'Reilly Media and CMP Media (later taking its parent name of United Business Media). Sometimes called the "New Internet" as well as "Internet 2.0," Web 2.0 is not a specific technology; rather, it refers to two major paradigm shifts. 15 The one most often touted is "user-‐generated content" – the social web, which relates more to individuals. The second, which is 6 equally significant but more related to business, is "cloud computing,” which is a model for delivering information technology services in which resources are retrieved from the Internet through web-‐based tools and applications, rather than a direct connection to a server. 9 7 Chapter One: Brand, Branding and Brand Equity What is a brand? What is branding? What is brand equity? While the aforementioned terms were defined in the glossary, in this first chapter the author will further define and explore them to provide context when explaining how they relate to bands and musicians. When hearing these words, how they relate to traditional consumer companies and corporations such as Gap, Inc. and PepsiCo may be what initially comes to mind, but since bands and musicians are money-‐ generating entities themselves that are tied to their music and other valuable commodities, these terms, of course, also apply to them. As former Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Warner Bros Records Inc. Mark Goldstein said, “We live in a world where artists are not artists, they’re brands.” First, let’s discuss the concept of a brand. Brands have three primary functions: navigation, reassurance and engagement. 58 o Navigation: Brands help consumers choose from a vast array of similar selections. o Reassurance: Brands communicate the intrinsic quality of the product or service and reassure customers that they have made the right decision. o Engagement: Brands use distinctive imagery, language and associations to encourage customers to identify with the brand. A brand is essentially the identifier that differentiates a product or service from its competitors. Marty Neumeier, author of “The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the 8 Distance Between Business Strategy and Design,” summed it up nicely by stating 58 : “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company.” Branding is simply the process to build awareness of a product or service and extend customer loyalty. Here are a few types of branding 58 : • Co-‐branding: partnering with another brand to achieve desired reach • Digital branding: web, social media, search engine optimization, driving commerce on the web • Personal branding: the way an individual builds their reputation • Cause branding: aligning a brand with a charitable cause; or corporate social responsibility These are a few of the predominant overarching types of branding, but there are other more niche classifications as well. When dealing with musicians’ relationship with social media, the author will be focusing mostly on digital branding and personal branding throughout this paper. There are ever-‐increasing amounts of potential “touchpoints” that create opportunities to facilitate branding, to increase awareness of a product or service and build its customer loyalty. These touchpoints include: social media, websites, mobile devices, in-‐store experiences, advertising, packaging, direct mail, tradeshows, employees, etc. For an entity to be successful at branding a product, it must comprehend the needs and wants of its customers and prospects. Integrating succinct brand strategies through a company at every point of public contact will make it possible to achieve desired results. The various touchpoints all aid in the 9 branding process, and through the strategic use of public relations, PR practitioners can attempt to control the outcome or output of some of the more influential ones. While marketing plays an integral role in the branding process, public relations does as well. With today’s digitally saturated media landscape, there’s now a large amount of overlap between what falls into the responsibility of the marketing team and that of the PR team. In an ideal setting, the two groups will both work toward achieving corresponding marketing and communication goals, and to further brand equity. As defined in the glossary of terms, brand equity is “the value premium that a company realizes from a product with a recognizable name as compared to its generic equivalent.” A company’s reputation is considered to be one of the most valuable company assets, and well-‐known companies such as Coca-‐Cola have spent decades, and in some cases, more than a century, building brand equity to get it to the level it is today. And while it may seem that companies such as Coke Cola don’t necessarily have to concentrate much effort into continuing to improve and/or sustain their brand equity, they do. In this fickle and constantly evolving society we live in, even well-‐established brands – and in some cases, ESPECIALLY well-‐established brands – have to diligently work at preserving and improving their brand equity, and the process definitely has its difficulties. But its important to note that as the case with the Polaroid Corporation – the company that invented the concept of instant photography and eventually became synonymous with the term – all the brand equity in the world can’t save an outdated product. 10 Improving the equity of a brand that has a rich history, and staying aligned with that history while simultaneously moving forward is no simple task. Many businesses faced and continue to face challenges when confronting consumers’ needs of enhanced social web capabilities. Businesses need to attempt to strike a balance between preserving brand equity vs. affecting positive change within an organization, which again, is easier said than done. The author will discuss this problematic situation and how the new digital landscape factors into the equation in a future chapter. 11 Chapter Two: How Social Media is Changing Everything, Especially Branding Social media is increasingly becoming the preferred method to consume and create media around the world. According to recent studies, 33% of all online content is user generated and six out of the top 10 websites in the world are social. Social is how we are increasingly learning about brands: 25% of search results for the world's top 20 largest brands are now links to user generated content. 41 In a way, consumers now own the brand. Social media’s power and reach continues to expand and there appears to be no slowing down anytime in the near future. To provide additional context to the current power, influence and sheer ubiquitousness of social media, here are some recent relevant statistics 4 : o One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook o 190 million average Tweets per day occur on Twitter (May 2011) o More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook o 30 billion pieces of content is shared on Facebook each month o Facebook averages 310 million daily unique viewers; Twitter averages approximately 22 million o 71% of companies have a Facebook page; 59% have an active Twitter handle These statistics reflect the social media landscape in May of 2011, so taking into consideration the fact that social media usage has continued to steadily 12 increase since then, these staggering numbers are actually lower than the current figures. During the late 1990s and early 2000s during the “dotcom boom,” there were discussions among companies as to whether or not they should invest in an Internet site. A few years later, that was no longer a question – an Internet site was an operational necessity. The same sort of thought cycle has occurred with social media platforms. Just a few years ago, there was a discussion among companies about whether or not to engage in social media platforms – many wondered if they were just a fad; but now it’s not a question of “If?” – it’s a question of “How?” and “Why?” Social media is now a major component in the branding process. It is one of, if not THE, key element in building awareness of a product or service and aiding in strengthening customer loyalty – it paved the way for the idea of customer loyalty to evolve to the point that is today. Brands have realized that it is not just the spenders – the ones who frequently buy their products – who are important, but also the influencers who indirectly account for sales through brand advocacy. This notion – made apparent by social media – was an important realization for companies and brands. 39 Social media has created and allowed online brand advocates to now play a major role in how a brand is perceived, and consequentially, consumers’ buying habits in relation to a particular brand. Many large consumer companies have realized and continue to realize the importance of their social media presence and tend to focus their digital strategy efforts on their social media platforms, as oppose to their websites. Some large brands’ websites are now even dedicated to redirecting users to their social media 13 platforms, such as the homepage for the popular Skittles candy (www.skittles.com), which simply consists of selected consumers’ Facebook and Twitter posts, branded YouTube videos and focal hyperlinked icons that link to its branded social media pages. This same shift of focus also rings true for bands and musicians. Social media has made it possible for up-‐and-‐coming unsigned musical acts to be able to share their music and their message with the global community in ways that were simply not possible prior to the social web. When MySpace emerged nearly a decade ago, its unique interface made it possible for musicians to forgo the expense of paying to create and sustain a traditional website, and post their music, artwork, messages and the like. This technological leap was monumental for musicians. It made it possible for unsigned acts to have a credible Internet presence. It, along with the use of digital file sharing, drastically altered how the traditional music industry model ran and operated. With bands now able to independently sell their music to a global community and successfully market themselves and their music to a global community via social media, the necessity of having a major label to back them and represent them started and continues to dwindle. Artists are no longer dependent or as dependent on institutionalized record labels like they were just a couple of decades ago. Prior to the social web, it was simply not possible for a group to achieve and/or sustain substantial levels of domestic and global popularity without the backing of a major label. Now there are incredibly successful groups such as Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails 25 and OK Go 36 that have dropped their major label to navigate their careers independently. The ability to pursue such a bold path was 14 made possible because of the advent of digital file sharing and, of course, social media. MySpace marked the first major milestone in the relationship between musicians and social media. While social media has been kind to the inhabitants of the musical world, it has also created challenges. 15 Chapter Three: Social Media Creates Challenges While social media has created numerous beneficial ways for brands to interact with their audiences, it also has created some inherent challenges. One of the most prolific issues is maintaining consistent and focused branding, marketing and public relations strategies that are universal and can be appreciated at a similar level in various global markets. This is problematic because what a brand stands for is very different in different markets. Chief Marketing Officer Chris Hummel of Siemens Enterprise spotlights the issue by saying 39 : “So if you take Germany for example, absolutely nobody wants to move away from the Siemens brand, but if you come to the United States, people go: ‘Okay, we can do something new – we can do something fantastic.’ So taking the global perspective creates an inherent conflict that in the past you could almost differentiate the brand – you could say ‘Okay we’re going to do a little something different in Germany, we’re going to do a little something different in Brazil or whatever.’ Whereas now, that’s almost impossible...The digital element makes it almost impossible to control how much gets contained versus what doesn’t.” With the worldwide access to digital media, it’s now more difficult to differentiate the brand in different markets because everyone has instant access to the same online marketing and messaging. Issues can be related to the advertising methods themselves (i.e. comparative advertising works well in the United States, but not in countries such as Japan 31 ), or to a brand and its cultural associations and/or identity. McDonald’s provides a great example of how a brand markets differently to various countries due to cultural differences 31 : 16 • McDonald’s offers products that cater to local demographics such as the McLak in Norway and the McKroket in the Netherlands. • Advertising in France was based around a historical animated cartoon of the nation that is not otherwise well known throughout the world. • In China, McDonald’s is known as the place to go for romantic dates because of the intimate setting its tables provide compared to the large group tables in other Chinese restaurants; and McDonald’s in Taiwan offer VIP rooms for family dinners because as with many countries in Asia, families want private space. The global perspective issues affect musicians in a similar manner. Prior to the Internet and social media, musical acts were able to market themselves differently in the United States compared to Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. Some acts that didn’t achieve huge success in the United States might have appealed much more to the European (David Hasselhoff to German fans in the late 1980s/early 1990s) and/or Asian audiences and therefore amassed larger followings overseas. (A commonly used term is “big in Japan,” which refers to Western rock bands that fail to perform well in their native county, but are popular in Japan.) They would then focus their efforts on those international markets and create messaging that would cater to the different cultures and lifestyles. Acts would employ such tactics as releasing special versions of albums that included bonus tracks and artwork in foreign countries to appease those audiences and show that the acts had a heightened appreciation for a particular country. 17 Social media has forced companies to realize, for better or for worse, that the customer now has an ownership stake in the brand. Acknowledging the validity of this notion was and still is hard for some companies to digest, but it’s inevitable in today’s digital world. “I think digital has definitely forced us to understand that we don’t really own the brand – the customer owns the brand, the marketplace owns the brand, and they are defining what’s important to them, how they understand it, and we’re keepers of the brand, ambassadors of the brand, and managing that, but there has to be an organic element,” said Leilani Brown, CMO of Starr Companies. 39 Another challenge/opportunity that social media has brought to light is that there is now more pressure to define every aspect of the brand. “I don’t think digital changes who you are as a brand, it just means there are more conversations going on, which actually puts the pressure on you to further define who you are as a brand, what your core values are, what you offer, what you stand for… I mean that should be something that is a staple. Like being an individual – you don’t change, you can evolve, but people are friends with you because of who you are and what you stand for. So it just means that more people are exposed to you and more people interact with you, but you still remain who you are, and I don’t think you should let go of that,” said Woozae Kim, Vice President of Global Consumer Marketing, MAC Cosmetics. 39 Companies are now forced to define every aspect of their brands and make those definitions available and coherent to the global community. This has created challenges for companies, but with challenges come opportunities. Brands have been forced to really define who they are, and because of that openness and 18 vulnerability in a sense, they are actually creating stronger relationships with customers and consumers of their products. Levi’s is an example of a brand that strayed from its core ideals and now in the digital age has refocused by going back to basics and re-‐established what the brand is and what it stands for – it’s the all-‐ American jean company. Social media also creates opportunities in that it provides for new ways for brands to tell and share their story. Brands can now use video, digital images, digital applications, etc. to give their audiences a greater sense of who they are as a company and what they stand for, thus facilitating stronger consumer relationships. In 2012, there are a lot of companies and brands that are doing this well. Chevrolet, for example, has done an amazing job of utilizing social media platforms and applications along with traditional and non-‐traditional advertising/PR to introduce its latest car, the Sonic. The various digitally integrated methods to market the car toward the targeted 18-‐30 demographic as “a car made for first-‐time discoveries and new adventures,” have aided in telling Chevrolet’s story that it is still a relevant automotive company and is in touch with America’s younger generation. 8 Something key to remember as well is that brand managers need to think beyond social media as a collection of tools. Social is embedded in all media and central to brand-‐building today, both online and off. 41 It is not simply a marketing/public relations tactic – it represents a completely new way of thinking and approaching branding, marketing and public relations – listening to and interacting with brands’ consumers is now more important than ever. 19 Chaper Four: Musicians and Social Media As with almost all other industry sectors, traditional music industry-‐related marketing is being replaced and/or supplemented by artists and bands using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to engage fans, promote their work and connect with others. 7 And unlike large corporations that consumers attempt to connect with via social media, there’s an obvious, more personable factor when dealing with musicians, or any celebrities/notable public personas for that matter. By being a fan of a particular product or company – and reaching out to said entity via social media – users may feel that their voice is being heard, and in some way, are helping play a role in that entity’s success/future plans. They feel as though they are in a small way actually responsible for affecting the brand or company’s success/direction. They may recognize the power of online crowdsourcing and their role in brand advocacy. An example of this could be as simple as suggesting the production of a discontinued product, and having a representative for the brand take note and directly respond, as seen below: Figure 1: Twitter Conversation with @mtn_dew 20 With musical entities, not only are online users reaching out yearning to achieve a similar connection, they are also reaching out hoping to achieve some sort of personal connection. The users are aware that they’re reaching out to certain individuals in many cases, not nameless representatives within a massive company. They feel as though by interacting via social media, they’re not only helping to promote the musical act, but they’re also making a personal connection and as a result, they have the potential to develop a deeper and more meaningful social media relationship with the artist than with a traditional consumer brand. Again, similar to other industries, there is no simple across-‐the-‐board solution to how musicians should utilize social media. Their social media strategy can be approached like a traditional consumer brand’s strategy in many ways, but it also cannot in various ways. When dealing with marketing music in any setting, remembering that music is an art form that can reflect and evoke incredible human emotion, is a major factor to take into consideration – this is especially true when determining public relations and social media strategies. When dealing with promoting products via social media, companies often approach outreach with the desired notion that they want to make existing and potential consumers feel that a particular product or brand of products will not only improve the consumers’ life in some aspect, but that the consumer will also use the product or brand to define their life in some way. Let’s use Axe body spray as an example. The parent company, Unilever, doesn’t simply project the image that its deodorant body spray simply masks unpleasant natural body odors. Through its 21 fairly extensive marketing and public relations efforts, it implants the idea into its 18-‐24 year-‐old male target demographic that using its products will successfully attract members of the opposite sex. Prospective users, albeit conscience of it or not, then theoretically buy the product because they want to be like the fortunate males portrayed in its advertising: they too want to be fighting off hordes of women all because they use the product. The Axe branded body spray helps define who the consumer is – he is a man that wants to actively attract women. The same kind of thinking is behind marketing and representing a musical entity, but because musical acts represent a significant form of personal expression, a creative outlet that can be incredibly personal, the level of commitment and dedication to the band or musical act as a brand has the potential to be much more passionate. Growing up as a self-‐proclaimed musical artist type in middle and high school, the author defined himself by the bands he supported and listened to. He would have almost literally done anything to meet the members or connect with them on any level. And now social media provides the ongoing opportunity for fans around the world to do just that with their favorite and most influential musical acts like nothing ever before the social web era. 22 Chapter Five: Social Media Allows Musicians to Engage Fans Like Never Before Prior to the advent of the social web, the methods with which the average musically inclined consumer could employ to interact and connect with established musicians were incredibly limited. One method – which still exists today and is on the whole the most statistically improbable – is if you personally are acquainted with the musician(s), or have some personal connection with someone within their camp, and then leverage your personal connection to interact with the musician(s) in-‐person or over the phone. Obviously, the more famous and notable a particular musical entity is or was, the more difficult and unrealistic achieving this notion becomes. Another way to connect with bands prior to the social web era was to join an official fan club via traditional mail service. Official fan clubs, those that are operated by official representatives of a particular musical act, gained popularity with notable clubs such as the Mickey Mouse Club that was established in the 1950s to celebrate all things Disney. 16 Similarly the Official Beatles Fan Club – which was operated by the band’s record company Apple – operated while the band was together and came to end in 1971 when the group disbanded. 3 As a teen in the mid 1990s, the author belonged to a few of these official fan clubs. The process was simple and relatively uniform: you would send in a letter or requested submission form to a certain physical address – which was usually found within a CD’s liner notes – and then you waited until you started getting periodic (monthly/seasonally/yearly) newsletters and/or other free tchotchkes. In the case 23 of the heavily political group Rage Against the Machine’s fan club, for example, fans would “enroll,” then occasionally receive politically themed materials that promoted the various social and political causes the group was aligned with, as well as free hard-‐to-‐find limited edition vinyl records. This strategy of sharing non-‐music related items with fans also aided in strengthening interest and passion for the group because they were divulging and exposing other parts of their life, which humanized them and allowed for their fans to get to know them as people, not just as musicians. Many fans liked what Rage Against the Machine stood for, whether it was the ideas themselves or the mere fact the band had the audacity to boldly express them, and consequently, liked their music. Social media allows musical acts to pick up where these fan clubs left off – it’s based upon the same principle, but it then builds upon it exponentially. Now fans from around the world can more easily be privy to personal messages and thoughts from a musician or band, and feel like they’re sincerely connecting and contributing to the act in some way or another. One only needs to examine the insertion of Twitter feeds into mainstream broadcasts such as “The Voice” to realize how commonplace this has become. In its second season, the popular reality talent show features tweeted commentary from celebrity judges immediately following each act. When speaking to Concord Records’ Direct to Consumer Marketing Manager Jeremy Gruber, he confirmed the power of engagement and provided a great example of one his label’s artists. “Our newly signed artist, Meiko, does a great job of sharing non-‐music images and content on her Tumblr/website/Facebook,” said Gruber. “People love HER and therefore they like her music. Think about your 24 favorite artists, you love THEM therefore you love everything they release, really regardless of the actual quality. There are tons of recent studies about this with food – that presentation doesn't just affect how we talk about the taste but it affects the actual taste – like the way our brain reacts. I'm certain it's the same with music – your mind is much more open when you feel like you're a part of it and you react more positively because the affinity is already there. Now instead of spending 10 years cultivating a relationship with fans through extensive touring artists can do that on social media. It's different and it doesn't always work, but when it does it's valuable.” Like the vinyl records fans received from Rage Against the Machine, there’s now so much more related content to release and vastly more channels to do so. Gruber suggests that “releasing free downloads of music, exclusive first listens, photos, behind the scenes videos and other types of new content always keeps fans engaged also.” Some of the benefits of following and interacting with musical acts online as oppose to an aforementioned traditional fan club are obvious. Like Gruber mentioned, there’s just so much more content available now. Being able to interact directly with the fans via social media isn’t just a benefit for the fans; it’s also a benefit for the musicians themselves. Brandon Kitterman, guitarist for Fictionist, a Salt Lake City-‐based band that recently signed to major label Atlantic Records (which operates extremely active social media accounts) said: “Fictionist has always been a band that wants to connect with listeners and have a meaningful relationship with them. Obviously, with no 25 listeners, there is no way to support making the music. And so, for us we've enjoyed the heightened ability to interact with fans...Of course, it's beneficial to our business, but it's also beneficial to us as artists, being able to share ourselves and be creative with the people that want to share in that. Contrary to the old view of the rock star persona, we want to connect with our audience just as much as they want to connect with us.” Musicians have much to gain from honing in on the interaction of their fans via the always-‐accessible social media platforms. By “listening in” on the online conversations that are happening surrounding their band, music trends, etc., they can better adapt to the wants and needs of their fans, as well as the ever-‐changing musical landscape. 26 Chapter Six: Musicians and Online Crowdsourcing Musicians can now capitalize on the large Twitter and Facebook populations and participate in online crowdsourcing: they can directly ask or imply questions and consequentially receive advice and information from fans to, again, strengthen the connection they have with them. One musician that consistently utilizes the power of crowdsourcing is Nikki Sixx from the rock group Motley Crue. He is constantly posting tweets to evoke followers’ thoughts on products he is personally connected to, or about current trends. A popular topic he tends to focus on periodically is current music trends. He’ll often ask which musical acts his followers are listening to, or what their favorite all-‐time acts are (to gauge what continues to resonate with his followers) such as in this recent example: Figure 2: Nikki Sixx Tweet Justin Bieber is another artist that often employs online crowdsourcing. In March 2012, he invited fans to go online and choose between two photographs of him – the winning photo would grace the cover of his latest single, “Boyfriend.” Fans would view the two picture options on his website, and then would vote for their favorite by tweeting with the hashtags #JBboyfriend1 or #JBboyfriend2. 53 While there are endless examples of musicians utilizing various forms of crowdsourcing to determine fans’ views of an entity’s music, CD artwork, musical trends, etc., a recent example of where a well-‐known band took crowdsourcing to the extreme is the situation with Maroon 5 and Coca Cola. 27 Coca Cola partnered with the band Maroon 5 to crowdsource material in a program that gave the band 24 hours to write a song. The session, which occurred on March 22, 2011, gave fans the ability to catch a glimpse of the band’s writing process and actually contribute to it for a whole 24 hours. Fans were encouraged to send in comments, words, pictures, etc. to help the band write a song within the short timeframe. Fans also were able to weigh in on lyrics, riffs and rhythms of the new single, as well as ask questions – some of which were actually answered by the band via real-‐time social media interaction. The session streamed live via Coca Cola’s music microsite and Facebook page, and updates were constantly posted though the company’s Twitter steam. 56 Fans are now not only able to connect with musical acts, but with examples like the Coke experiment, they have the opportunity to feel like they are actually contributing to the writing process. Obviously, these types of involvement were simply not available prior to social media. While the Coke and Maroon 5 social media venture into online crowdsourcing proved to be marginally successful 29 for both parties, an example of when a major brand aligned itself with a musical act ended up having dire consequences for the artist was the case with Dr. Pepper and the group Cartel. In the summer of 2007, Cartel participated in the “Band in a Bubble” experiment. The band literally lived in a bubble-‐like structure for twenty days – and were forced to start writing and recording their follow-‐up album to their popular debut, which was released in 2005. Cameras were set up all throughout the structure so that fans could go online and watch the happenings within 24/7. MTV 28 also edited the footage and produced a four-‐episode series on the project. Dr. Pepper sponsored the cameras and the project as a whole, along with other brands such as KFC and Circle K. After the 20 days were up, the band was to emerge and then put on a show and perform a song that was written and recorded during the time inside the bubble. 37 This whole scenario is obviously similar to the Maroon 5 concept, but didn’t result in the same type of results for the participating band, and here’s some insight as to why: In 2007, Cartel was an emerging pop band that was in the process of amassing a popular cult-‐like following after the release of their 2005 debut. Prior to and while they were involved in the bubble experiment, they started to receive major backlash from their fans, claiming that they “sold out.” Because of their indie-‐ like image, exposing themselves this openly before they had built substantial brand equity (like Maroon 5 had at the time of their Coke experiment), this venture didn’t work. The band became type cast as jokes, and many viewed the project as a PR stunt gone wrong. Many blame the incident for the band’s lackluster CD sales of their self-‐titled CD that came out a few months later in August 2007. 43 Also, fans were able to tune in and watch the band in the “bubble,” but there wasn’t that direct social media interaction like there was with the Maroon 5 experiment – there was no direct incentive for the group’s fans to tune in – they were left out of the process. By Maroon 5 integrating the social media element, it allowed for their fans to be a part of the project, and it implied that the band sincerely cared about their fans’ input. The Maroon 5 project was created with the mission of incorporating the band’s fans into their creative process and being an 29 actual part of it, whereas Cartel appeared to have simply been put on a pedestal for the world to see, with the only apparent goal to get the project’s sponsors such as Dr. Pepper, KFC and Circle K more exposure with their target demographics. Cartel simply being on display, and at that time in their career where they hadn’t amassed substantial brand equity, ended up turning many of their fans against them. Cartel still continues to perform as a band, but after the Dr. Pepper incident, they lost momentum and credibility from which it can be argued that they never fully recovered. 30 Chapter Seven: Social Media Becomes Primary News Channel for Bands Nowadays, when consumer brands have monumental announcements to make, a press release is usually drafted and sent across the wire and/or to the appropriate media contacts. Afterwards, or simultaneously, a social media post will supplement the announcement. Musicians, as well as other public figures and brands, are turning to social media as a major and supplementary source to broadcast major announcements. Here are a few examples of musical acts that turned to Twitter as the PRIMARY source to break a major announcement: • September 2011: Iconic band R.E.M. announced that after 31 years of making music together as a band, members were calling it quits and breaking up. The tweet included a link to the band’s homepage, which included a statement from the band along with a press release. Figure 3: R.E.M. Tweet • January 9, 2012: Post-‐hardcore cult favorite At the Drive-‐In announced via their seldom-‐used Twitter account that they were reuniting after an 11-‐year hiatus. The band then updated its website to reflect the news. The tweet posted the same morning the line-‐up for the 2012 Coachella music festival was announced, which included a performance by At the Drive-‐In. The timing of the tweet was obviously well-‐conceived to coincide with the timing of the concert announcement. 31 Figure 4: At The Drive-‐In Tweet • January 11, 2012: Country singer Jason Aldean announced via Twitter that he was excited to perform at this year’s GRAMMY awards in February. His tweet posted the night before the press release was sent across the wire and posted on the GRAMMY website. Given the verbiage of the tweet, and taking into consideration that it includes the specifics as to the date, time and channel that the GRAMMYs would broadcast, it’s safe to assume that it was crafted by a representative of the GRAMMYs for Jason to post. Many tweets or social media posts that are pushed out through musicians’ social media channels that have to do with an upcoming event or product that is tied with another organization, such as in this case with Jason and GRAMMYs, are often crafted by the musician’s publicist to appease the sponsoring organization, or by the organization’s publicist. Figure 5: Jason Aldean Tweet By posting news to social media accounts first, the musical acts are showing appreciation for their fans by letting them in on the news before the rest of the world (even if it is a only a matter of minutes). “Consider putting your content on 32 social media first before blogs and other sites – these are your fans, treat them special,” suggested Gruber. Again, this complements the idea of providing followers with specialized content – letting them feel as though they are privy to relevant knowledge first. 33 Chapter Eight: Does Musical Genre Affect Social Media Strategy and Approach? Depending on the type of consumer brand, the approach and social media strategy tends to inherently differentiate due to the nature of the product. When it comes to musicians, the author wondered if social media strategy and usage depended on the musical act’s proposed image, genre, etc. There are numerous factors to take into consideration – and while the general sense of what the entities are trying to accomplish by engaging in social media may be identical or incredibly similar – overall, their level and type of engagement definitely does depend on these differentiating factors. As stated in the introduction of this paper, in today’s world musical acts are brands. The musicians and related third parties such as managers are constantly trying to identify what’s monetizable to generate profits for all parties involved. They are trying to leverage the acts’ assets – whether that be the artist, a song, an image, etc. – to be as valuable as possible, and the amount and magnitude of assets exponentially increase as the act gains popularity and market share. When a musical artist or act reaches the upper echelon of fame, they often branch out and lend their established name to other non-‐music and/or entertainment-‐related consumer products. Acts such as Avril Lavigne are tied to numerous other consumer capital-‐generating projects such as a clothing line, signature perfume, etc. When dealing with artists of this magnitude, those responsible for the social media strategy have to keep that in mind. With musical giants such as Avril, the music almost becomes secondary at some point, and the 34 brand name and image tied to all its assets becomes the priority. So if she tweets something inappropriate or in bad taste, it will not only affect her musical career and the products, assets and individuals involved with that, it will also affect the consumer products that carry her brand name. The author also wondered if different genres had to approach social media differently. Some bands, such as many within the hard rock and metal scenes, want to retain a sense of mystery and mysticism – the author wondered if being too active on social media would diminish that and detract from that proposed sentiment. “It can but it doesn't have to,” said Gruber. “Genres lend themselves to different demographics and each demographic has a different level of engagement in social media. That's even leveling out as older generations adopt it more and more and engage in it more and more. There was a time when the common wisdom was that older artists didn’t need to focus on social media as much because their audience isn't there – but we're seeing every day that the audience is there and people engage in social media regularly. That being said, it's still true that a highly active pop star/starlet is going to have a different type of social media experience than a metal band that's on the road 362 days a year, but each are going towards the same goal – keep fans in touch all the time. Older musicians and more established artists tend to have a bigger mix of promo type updates. On Twitter musicians tend to engage a lot – Diddy, Katy Pery – or not at all like Jay-‐Z where it's all promo and retweets.” Along those same lines of desiring to retain mystery and mysticism, there are musical groups out there that project a rock n’ roll image that suggests they don’t 35 care what people think of them, that they’re “all about the music” – the author wondered how these sorts of acts should approach social media engagement. Would engaging heavily in social media show that a group such as this “cares too much” about what the public thinks about them, which would contradict their image? Is there ever a time where an act shouldn’t engage in social media? “No – there's no reason not to engage,” said Gruber. “Trying to preserve an image isn't a reason NOT to engage, but it is a reason to be careful…Trent Reznor was one of the Twitter early adopters and if the guy who is Nine Inch Nails can handle it, anyone can. He did it in an interesting way – in the 90s he was a larger-‐ than-‐life, completely inaccessible, ‘something more than human’ type character. During his re-‐emergence in 2005 (at the age of 40) he slowly allowed himself to be seen as human to his fans and I think Twitter was a big part of that. Interviews became much more engaging and on a daily basis as he was recording his material he started to let people behind the scenes a little bit. He did break down a bit of a wall one day when he drank too much caffeine and tweeted a bit too much about it – but that was once, I think his use of the platform showed his maturity and growth as a person and as an artist.” In 2009, Reznor temporarily called it quits from Twitter because of what he referred to as “metal sludge” – people that bombarded him with hateful messages regarding his recent comments, especially those having to do with his then fiancé. He said: “When Twitter made it's way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting, I approached that as a place to be less formal and more off-‐ the-‐cuff, honest and 'human.' I was not expecting to broadcast details of my love life 36 there, but it happened because I'm in love and it's all I think about and that's that." He later rejoined the site and is still an active user of Twitter. 22 Here in 2012, there is no reason that a musical act should not be engaging in social media. If there is an act that fits the description above, they should still engage in social media, and through strategically crafted messaging, they could do so successfully while managing to not detract from their image. For one of these acts, it may best most advantageous to have a social media account, but control the messaging so that it is more basic in nature, and revolves solely around the group’s music – push notifications for upcoming concerts and appearances, retweets from fans, posts about the songs they’re working on, etc. – they could refrain from releasing too much personal content and therefore diminishing the mystery. This level and type of engagement at least allows fans to keep up to date with the group and feel like they’re interacting with them in a sense, but because posts and updates do not give away too much personal band information or represent them in any potentially misleading way outside of their musical pursuits, it still allows the group to retain their rock n’ roll image and a sense of mystery, all while participating in the current forms of online digital communication and therefore staying digitally relevant. It really comes down to strategy and messaging. Rogers & Cowan Music Entertainment Group Manager Jessica Erskine – who works on the PR team that has represented such acts as REO Speedwagon, Kaskade, Chris Brown, Skylar Grey and Nickelback, and such musical events as the annual GRAMMY Awards – reiterates the previous point by stating: “If they [the band] ‘don't care about what people think 37 about them,’ then interacting with them too much might be tough, but they can still create messaging and materials that showcase how much they love music and love their music so I think this comes back to messaging.” Gruber adds: “It’s all about being a character. Steve Martin is a serious man who is interested in art and music – he also happens to be one of the funniest people on the planet. @SteveMartinToGo is a stream of jokes – if you met Steve in person I don't think he'd make those same jokes, I think he's cultivating a character for Twitter. As long as one maintains their character, there's no reason not to use it.” In an interview with ex-‐Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, he also noted the effectiveness of cultivating a character on Twitter: “There’s so many ways to operate a good [Twitter] account…Some musicians are good writers and can create a character, and do that way.” Another key point to keep in mind when determining strategy and messaging, is to make sure that whatever route the artist and its camp decides to go for social media outreach, that there is one consistent voice on each platform. “There are certain guidelines or ‘best practices’ that almost any artist should follow. No matter the artist or genre, a major aspect to note is that any page should post or tweet in one voice. If the posts sound like they're coming from different sources (people behind the scenes or street team members) then the followers will probably know it, and care less about the page because it doesn't seem official,” said Concord Music Group’s New Media Marketing Manager Zak Weil. Also, another reason that an artist should not refrain from getting involved in social media is the simple idea of visibility. In today’s media-‐saturated world, if 38 someone wants to discover new music, they usually look to online and social media channels first. “Every successful new band since about ten years ago has been involved with social media, and since EVERYONE is on social media it is hard to avoid,” said Kitterman. “There are other, more antiquated ways of marketing a musical act, but social media provides such a great platform for it, so why would anyone ignore or minimize it? If I were to hear about a band and couldn't find them on social media to ‘try them out,’ I would be much less likely to respect them or buy into them, unless I REALLY loved the music. In some ways it could be said that not using social media is a sign of a band that doesn't really want fans, or isn't organized or willing enough to reach out to them.” If an act didn’t operate branded social media channels, it would alienate digitally inclined fans and, like Kitterman said, suggest that the group isn’t willing to cater to their fans even at a minimal level. Fans also may lose respect for the group because of their sheer unwillingness to provide the form of communication that has become obvious and expected in today’s world. Whatever the social media strategy may be, groups need to make sure that there is a one first of all, and that it’s focused and consistent. To exemplify the various ways in which some of today’s biggest acts are utilizing Twitter, the next section provides details as to how artists from different genres and different stages of their careers interact with their fans. 39 Table 1: Musical Acts’ Type of Twitter Engagement Musical Act # of Twitter Followers ( as of 1/20/12) Genre Type of Engagement Skylar Grey 107,119 Pop/rock/soul/hip hop Operates own account. Minimal fan engagement. Conducts contests for free tickets/merchandise. Guns N’ Roses 239,096 Blues-‐rock/heavy metal/hard rock HEAVY fan engagement. Distinct and personable voice, but not a band member. Constantly posts pictures during live shows. Foo Fighters 571,422 Hard rock/alternative Very distinct and personable voice – written as if a band member, but may be third party. Heavy fan engagement. Constantly posts insider pics of the band members. Chris Brown 7,125,699 R & B/hip hop/pop Only has 27 tweets currently on his stream – which begin in September 2011. He has had numerous “Twitter meltdowns” in the past regarding his sordid personal life and has had to delete the majority of his posts. He operates himself, but he doesn’t do interviews, and is advised to be more cautious when tweeting. 40 Motley Crue 27,709 Glam metal/heavy metal/hard rock Exists, but currently inactive – no new posts since Jan. 2010. Infamous individual members such as Nikki Sixx (250,858 Twitter followers) and Tommy Lee (181,809) have popular active accounts. Nikki Minaj 8,439,339 Hip hop/rap/dance Operated by artist. Heavy engagement with fans – lots of retweets including retweets with commentary. Depeche Mode 949,691 New wave electronic/industrial /synth pop News, tour and music updates. Operated by a non-‐band member. Little to no engagement with fans. Impersonal. Conducts contests to win free Depeche mode merchandise. As Gruber mentioned, typically older, established bands such as Depeche Mode and Motley Crue, operate the least personable accounts and tend to stick to more of the more promo-‐type updates, if at all. Guns N’ Roses technically is an established brand name, but because of lineup changes over the decades, the band currently only performs with one of its original members. Its individual musicians aren’t older and established, so that may be why it operates its Twitter account differently than other older established groups. 41 Chapter Nine: Social Media Creates Musical Superstars Not only has social media created ways for existing musical acts to interact with their fans, it has created a channel for acts to be discovered – most predominantly through YouTube. Justin Bieber is the most well-‐known artist to be discovered through the use of social media – having been discovered after posting his music videos to YouTube – but there are many other notable acts out there that were discovered via social media as well such as: Greyson Chance, Colbie Caillat and Ingrid Michaelson. Then there is the remarkable development within legendary band Journey, who discovered a new lead singer, Arnel Pineda, through a YouTube video of him singing for a Journey cover band. 27 This not only helped Journey fill a job, it also demonstrated that the band is in touch with today’s digital world. There is even a full-‐scale national U.S. tour that features artists that became noticed through YouTube. The DigiTour started in 2011, and kicked off its second tour in spring 2012. It features musical YouTube sensations such as Asher Monroe and other artists that made their musical debut through YouTube and continue to focus their attention on the platform as the crucial element in their exposure and marketing. Because artists that were discovered through social media in a sense owe their careers to the technological medium, they are almost expected to be heavily involved in various social media channels, and they are. Justin Bieber, one of the most widely recognized musical acts on the planet, is also one of the most followed people on Twitter with over 18 million followers as of March 2, 2012. Here’s a glimpse of some of the other social media-‐spawned artists’ Twitter followings: 42 • Asher Monroe: 33, 783 • Colbie Caillat: 221,629 • Greyson Chance: 1,669,065 *as of March, 2, 2012 Asher Monroe released his first music video/single on YouTube in November 2011, his second video in January 2012 and his third in February 2012. He has achieved relative success and amassed a substantial Twitter following by simply releasing videos on YouTube – his focus wasn’t on radio airplay (at least not initially) and he hasn’t released an album yet. His debut YouTube video received over 1.5 million views its first week and reached #1 on YouTube’s most watched videos chart, and his third video released amassed over two million views during its first week of release. Social media is making it possible for indie artists such as Asher to bypass the traditional methods and timelines of releasing content and to do things their way on their terms and achieve varying degrees of success. 43 Chapter Ten: Social Media Tools that Musicians Consider Using In addition to the standard use and applications of Facebook and Twitter, there are various social media tools and applications that cater specifically to the needs and wants of musicians. Even as Facebook began to overtake MySpace in 2008 as the dominant online social platform, MySpace continued to be the go-‐to site for musicians because of its extremely customizable interface, which included integrated audio and visual media players. It took Facebook a while to catch up with MySpace as far as musician-‐related capabilities go, but it finally did years later and is now incredibly musician friendly. Here are some tools that musicians are using or should possibly consider using: • Improve Facebook page with Band Profile application o This is a relatively new application, launched in early 2010. Its allows musicians to quickly and easily create a customized profile for their band and their fans – complete with a free music player, photos, videos, tour schedule and wall. It's free, customizable, easy to manage and automatically synchs with ReverbNation. 40  ReverbNation.com is a website that provides music industry professionals — artists, managers, labels, venues, festivals/events — with powerful, easy-‐to-‐use technology to promote and prosper online. 44 o Prior to this, bands relied on ReverbNation’s MyBand application, which, in accordance with the previous versions of Facebook, would 44 allow a user to add a tab onto their band’s fan page which would spotlight a limited amount of information that was available on the group’s ReverbNation page. The Facebook fan page in itself revolutionized the way that bands could interact on Facebook, but like the author mentioned earlier, it lacked the familiar look and feel of sites that were native to showcasing music, such as MySpace. MyBand helped close the gap between MySpace and Facebook – it finally gave bands the opportunity to showcase photos, streaming tracks and upcoming shows front and center on their fan page. 40 • Share songs on Twitter with Twiturm o Introduced in early 2009, it allows bands to upload music and share it directly through their Twitter profiles without sending listeners off to another site to access streaming music. By integrating with bands’ Twitter accounts, Twiturm allows them to post their music and track listens. Bands can also choose whether or not listeners can download the track. Additionally, users can share the track with their followers with one click. 40 • Reward increased engagement with FanBridge o FanBridge is a fan management tool with musicians being one of the few audiences it is directly geared toward. It is a paid subscription service that provides various services including fan email list management, and the ability to offer and provide such incentives as exclusive multimedia to those who sign up for the band’s email lists. 18 45 • Build and share a digital album package with Bandcamp o The Bandcamp Facebook app puts all the functionality and content of a group’s Bandcamp site into a tab within Facebook. 2 o Bandcamp is a do-‐it-‐yourself solution for digital music distribution. It is a publishing platform for musicians that is focused on the idea of creating a self-‐contained digital album package that fans can interact with, beyond just listening to an audio stream. Incredibly customizable, a BandCamp page features name-‐your-‐price (or free) download options in whatever formats the artist chooses, from 128KB MP3, to FLAC, to Apple Lossless. The artist can add album art, lyrics, list-‐building features and real-‐time statistics, and have a fully custom album package with back-‐end coding. 40 o This app is geared toward the up-‐and-‐coming indie artist, and not the established artist • Live stream major announcements or band chats via services such as Ustream o An example would be when underground artists Kottonmouth Kings turned to Ustream to tell fans all about the new album and when they could expect it in local stores. 46  The video was watched live and formatted like a press conference, with fans getting the chance to ask questions and share their feedback. This technique provided a way to help 46 “give back” to the loyal fans of the underground band who had been following them for years. • Measure metrics with Band Metrics o As with any marketing campaign, the best way to monitor and confirm the success of promoting a musical act online is to exhaustively measure how people respond to promotional tactics. For bands, this can be a difficult proposition. Many pre-‐packaged measurement solutions do not have the features necessary to support analytics across streaming audio and video, social networks, email lists and fan-‐ initiated conversations. Band Metrics, is a measurement platform built specifically for musicians, and it measures the ways that fans interact with artists to pull out real-‐time and actionable information. 40 o As with the other social media tools for musicians, this one is relatively new, having launched in early 2010. o Section 101, a company that assists artists wishing to take control of their digital world, bought Band Metrics in March 2011, and now it is currently in the beta testing stage of a new and improved tool – the new Band Metrics Artist Analytic and Insight Tool is expected to be available to the public sometime in 2012. 48 o In addition to Band Metrics, emerging bands can also utilize Next Big Sound to analyze how their social profiles are performing. 47 • Share images from shows and/or anything band-‐related with Instagram o Instagram is an iPhone app that provides an easy, quick and enjoyable way to share experiences through a series of pictures. You snap a photo with your iPhone, choose a filter to transform the look and feel, and then send to Facebook, Twitter and/or Flickr. Instagram is also a social network in and of itself of other people's photos. You can "like" or comment on the photos, and see what's new through its own timeline. The app’s easiness to use along with its utilization of unique filters have made it an incredibly popular app – as of August 2011, there had been over 150 million photos uploaded to the site since the app launched a mere nine months earlier. To give a basis for comparison, it took Flickr nearly two years to hit 100 million photos on its service. 21 o Musicians have been using the service in a slew of interesting ways, such as to facilitate social media competitions or as a quirky photo diary. The following table demonstrates some of the ways in which musicians are using Instagram (numbers as of January 21, 2012) 5 : 48 Table 2: Musicians/Bands Using Instagram Musical Act Genre # of Instagram Followers Type of Engagement Deftones Metal/hard rock 60,640 The band spotlights a wide range of images, from really energetic photos from their shows to pictures of fans and even the odd behind-‐the-‐scenes shot of something completely random. It provides brilliant insight into a well-‐known and interesting band. The band also uses the app to host competitions. In one case, the band asked its fans to submit photos from each of their tour venues as a unique way of documenting their experience of the shows. Selected winners were showcased on the band's social media platforms and some even won a guitar signed by the band. Moby Electronica/techno /ambient (doesn’t have an Instagram account) He used the app to promote his album, “Destroyed.” The singer invited Instagram users to take a photo of their city at 2 a.m. and then use the hashtag #destroyed to have it show up on his microsite, destroyed.moby.com. Unusual idea, but it aligned with Moby as a brand. The National Indie rock 67,769 Share photos of shows and candid shots of the band on tour. The Vaccines Indie rock 2,768 Mostly share photos of the band on tour, performing and drinking. It gives the hardcore fan more insight into the people behind the music. They also used Instagram as part of a competition – they asked fans to tag photos they took at festivals with #vaccinesvideo, which the band then used as part of a music video. Young the Giant Indie rock/alternative rock 24,431 Showcases behind-‐the-‐scenes pictures, but they also include a lot of personal photography shots in their feed. The digital landscape is immensely dynamic, and as a result, social media apps, tools and the like are constantly evolving or being created. Kitterman sheds 49 some light on what tools his band uses: “Fictionist is involved in other social media platforms, including Last.fm, TheSixtyOne, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg, Ustream, The Hype Machine and YouTube. Many of these platforms have been at least minimally helpful, but Facebook and Twitter remain the largest and most updated platforms for us, proportional to their general usage in the Internet community.” Also, Gruber added “There's also deeper level stuff like scavenger hunts and things like that which I don't see done as often but were used fairly often in Twitter's infancy. Still happening fairly regularly with check-‐in services like FourSquare but not sure of their effectiveness in long-‐term success.” FourSquare is something that musicians haven’t really tapped into like other apps, but the author believes we’ll see them utilize it more in the future to further provide insight into the lives of musicians and quench the insatiable thirst of eager fans. Another tactic that musicians should look into participating in is the live Twitter chat. A musician can advertise when he or she will be online at a particular time to answer questions, and then fans can tweet questions up to and/or during the promoted time period using a promoted hashtag, and then the artist will select a few questions to answer in real time. An example of a musician that hosted one of these recently is Tom Petty. In December 2011, Tom Petty publicized that he was going to host a Twitter chat the same day he was announced as the headliner for the New Orleans Jazz Fest. He announced that the chat would last for one hour at a certain time on a particular day. If fans wanted to tweet Tom a question, they simply had to include the hashtag 50 #tompettytcs (the “tcs” being an abbreviation for Twitter chat session) in their Tweet during the time frame. 19 Pop artist Greyson Chance did a “Twitter-‐view” on March 2, 2012 for M Magazine that proved successful. Twitter-‐views are a social media tactic that M Magazine regular employs – they’re a live Twitter chat, where the artist takes over the magazine’s official Twitter account (they provide the artist with the username and password) for a scheduled 30 minutes and answers back to questions that were tweeted to them with a promoted hashtag from the magazine’s account. This tactic provides exposure to the artist as well as the magazine. In the instance of the Greyson Twitter-‐view, the hashtag used to ask Greyson questions (#GreysonMMag) became a national and worldwide Twitter “trending topic” during the 30 minutes while it was happening. (It’s important to note that the hashtag referenced Greyson AND the magazine, giving both entities exposure.) Figure 6: Greyson Chance Twitter-‐View Becomes Trending Topic 51 Twitter chats are a great way for fans to be able to interact directly with their favorite artists – it’s just another way to strengthen the relationship between an artist and its fans, and to create or enhance brand ambassadors. 52 Chapter Eleven: Who Should Operate Which Accounts As noted earlier in this paper, instead of vocalizing personal thoughts through a band’s branded social media outlets, in many instances members will express opinions and views through personal social media outlets, so as not to directly misrepresent the band. There are many examples of band members that merit more attention than the actual bands. These band members have thriving accounts, which bring more attention to their bands, and reduce personal responsibility because the member is not representing the band as a brand, they are simply representing themselves – a person that happens to perform in a band. They are still representing the band though to a certain degree, but at a less significant level, so they have to keep that in mind when posting and engaging. Here are some examples of band members that have more active and popular Twitter handles than their bands (as of January 16, 2012): Table 3: Individual Band Members’ Twitter Accounts Band Member Band # of Personal Account Followers # of Band Account Followers # of Tweets Generated By Each Account ?estlove The Roots 1,860,288 25,136 Personal: 35,013 Band: 189 Fred Durst Limp Bizkit 1,530,280 No band account Personal: 5,586 Band: NA Eddie Van Halen Van Halen 86,320 44,286 Personal: 70 Band: 9 Travis Barker Blink 182 1,013,362 287, 130 Personal: 7,570 Band: 484 Mark Hoppus Blink 182 2,023,998 287,130 Personal: 4,161 Band: 484 53 While these are a few of the examples where individual band members have a stronger social media presence than their corresponding bands, there are countless examples of members of well-‐known bands that don’t have a stronger presence per se, but they have a solid presence that still succeeds in bringing attention to the group or brand. Public relations practitioners have posited several questions related to social media use that are particularly relevant to musical groups. For instance, who operates the bands’ accounts? Should individual members each own and operate a Twitter account AND have a band account? Or should just individual band members have accounts (which is the case for some rock groups like Limp Bizkit and Motley Crue)? Or should the individuals not have personal accounts and only operate through the band’s account? Does it depend? If so, how and why? Does it even matter? Here are some of the responses from industry experts: • “Doesn't matter, either way is cool. A band page is imperative – individual member pages are not necessary but can be beneficial.” – Weil • “Twitter is for people, not brands and a band is a brand. If a brand has a twitter it needs a distinct voice or no voice – that is a human has to run it (look at the airlines now) and read and respond to people, or it needs to just be a promo tool. I think the best method for bands is to have individual Twitter accounts for anyone who is going to use it 54 regularly then a band Twitter account for news, updates and retweets of the band members’ Twitter.” – Gruber • “This definitely depends. It goes back to each individual band having its own strategy. Many bands brand themselves as a BAND where it's not so much about the individual parts but more about the whole and, thus, keeping messaging, imaging, etc. streamlined is important through ONE account on the platforms. BUT, in the case of groups like Chickenfoot [rock group consisting of ex-‐members of Van Halen, guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani and Chad Smith, the drummer for Red Hot Chili Peppers] that come together as a "super group" where each individual has their following and different followings, it is important to try to drive those audiences to the new Chickenfoot platforms to keep as much of their communication streamlined, but knowing that each of these members has different ongoing projects outside of Chickenfoot, it important for them to maintain their individual accounts, too. When they do this, however, it is also important that these individual accounts disseminate similar news as the main Chickenfoot channels and that they show continued enthusiasm for news and things taking place through the Chickenfoot platforms.” – Erskine The author believes the best method for bands is to maintain individual Twitter accounts for anyone who is going to use it regularly, and then a band 55 Twitter account for news, updates, fan retweets, retweets of the band members’ Twitter accounts, etc. As far as who should operate an artist or band’s account, it depends on their varying situations, but overall, it should be a combined effort between the artist(s) and a third party such as a publicist and/or manager. Erskine sums it up by stating: “It has become pretty typical for there to be a combined effort where the artist/band has access and can include their own messages (i.e. when on a tour bus and seeing a really moving landscape that inspires new lyrics for a song that they want to tweet about) but that someone in marketing/PR/management has access to, to make sure NEWS announcements, re-‐tweets for organization alignments, etc. are all properly messaged. With that said, it is often still in a tone and with language that the band would usually use.” In some cases, smaller, up-‐and-‐coming acts or newly signed acts ask people close to them that volunteer to run their social media. In the case of Melodramus, a heavy rock band based out of Salt Lake City, a “superfan” handles the group’s social media. He makes sure that news items, retweets and the like are posted, but like Erskine suggested, members of the band also have access to the group’s social media platforms and will post to them periodically when it makes sense to do so. To let fans know that a message is from a certain band member, that authoring member will annotate the post with a particular identifier. (i.e. If Zakk from the band wanted to note that he authored a post, he would put a “-‐Z” at the end of it.) Large corporations such as McDonald’s that have more than one person operating an account utilize similar actions. For example: 56 Figure 7: McDonald’s Tweet *The “^MO denotes that Megan from McDonalds’ social media team authored the post. Famous pop star Britney Spears’ Twitter account used to be blatantly updated by members of her team with occasional tweets from the singer herself that were signed “-‐Britney” and “-‐Brit.” 7 Her account now is operated in a unified voice that makes it appear as though she is authoring every tweet. Another Salt Lake City band, Fictionist, handles its social media in a similar fashion to Melodramus. “We are fortunate enough to have a few good friends that keep track of our social media,” said Kitterman. “We pay them as we can, but mostly they believe in our project and want to help out, sometimes with the hope of being up-‐streamed with us (e.g. becoming manager of our fan club, etc.). All of the members of the band contribute posts and tweets and whatnot, but usually this is at the request of the social media guys, when fans ask a specific question or we're doing a series of ‘get to know the band’-‐type posts. Also, we all participate (the band and the social media managers) in contributing social networking ideas, such as promotions and contests to get fans excited and grow our network.” After interviewing representatives of up-‐and coming-‐bands, the author assumed that only lesser-‐known acts employed friends and/or fans to run their social media accounts, but after interviewing superstar Duff McKagan, it became clear that sort of representation also occurs with more famous acts. McKagan solely 57 operates his personal Twitter account, but his Facebook fan page “is co-‐operated by me and a personal friend – a fan that used to write about me for Seattle Weekly,” said McKagan. Entertainment public relations practitioners should note that it’s important to ensure that social media channels are being operated through one consistent voice. In many cases, a huge fan of an artist that understands that notion of a singular consistent voice and the role that social media plays in the particular act’s marketing campaign, has the potential to adequately fill that role of a social media assistant because he or she can provide an elevated level of authenticity. 58 Chapter Twelve: What Musicians Should be Doing on Social Media First, musicians SHOULD be getting involved with social media and creating branded accounts – there is no excuse for them to not get involved, no matter what the genre of music they perform and/or the image they’re attempting to project. Earlier in this paper, the author addressed the issue and mentioned some of the reasoning behind why a musical act should never abstain from utilizing social media accounts. Of all the individuals that interviewed for this paper and asked whether an artist should ever consider not directly participating in social media, the author received the same response from all interviewees: a resounding “no.” Weil provides another solid reason as to why a musical act should never abstain from utilizing branded social media accounts: “This is never a good idea [to not participate in social media] for one simple reason: if the band doesn't create an official FB page, then there will be dozens of unofficial pages created by impostors that misrepresent the band. You may not care about what people think, or be ‘all about the music,’ but you WILL care if somebody is pretending to be you on Facebook!” Gruber suggests to “Use it regularly and don't stop for any reason.” The Los Angeles Times’ Alex Pham provided these tips for musicians 42 : • Be real o "It can't just be about commerce. People want to connect with you and get to know you. They don't want to connect with you if you're just telling them to go buy your record. They don't want you to be perfect, 59 either. They want you to be real." – Evan Greene, chief marketing officer, the Recording Academy • Pick a couple of services you like and focus on them o "There are so many services out there that trying to do everything and be everywhere is impossible. Play around with them. It's okay to mess up. And don't have a PR person handle your tweets. It should be all about having a real conversation with your fans." – Kevin Rose, founder, Digg • Offer something unique o "There's so much already out there, and people have so little time that having something unique about yourself and your music can give you a competitive advantage. Figure out what's unique about you and ask: What is the distilled message? It has to be something so remarkable that other people will have to share it." – Pete Cashmore, founder, Mashable • Share things you are most excited about o "Share things you find, love, hate and create. Share the things you've made, even if it's not finished yet. That's what makes it engaging." – David Karp, founder, Tumblr • Embrace anarchy o "We had an event called the summit. A thousand people would participate and become part of the recording process. I got a Twitter message from someone in Iran who was frustrated they couldn't 60 come. We came up with a program that allowed them to sit at home and participate. It’s a world of chaos at times. But there are lessons. It’s a fertile ground for creativity." – Jared Leto, vocalist, guitarist and songwriter for the band 30 Seconds to Mars 61 Chapter Thirteen: What Musicians Should Not Be Doing Throughout this paper, the author has discussed various tactics and strategies that a musician may choose to employ to strengthen their online presence and fan dedication. Now, here are some pitfalls that a musician should avoid. “The absolute worst thing is using a Facebook profile page, instead of a fan page,” said Weil. “A profile page is needed to set up any Facebook account, but the absolute first thing anybody should do is create a fan page for all the activity. There's 100 reasons for this, but this biggest reason is that you won't get capped off at 5,000 friends.” Erskine shared these tips: “Social media is meant to be an INTERACTION where there's a two-‐way conversation and many musicians, actors, actresses and brands, alike, just use it as a form of one-‐way communication. If there isn't a call to action or a reason for people to keep coming back, then they won't, so it's important that they feel like the social media channels that are maintained are a destination for them, that they belong and they get something in return.” Erskine brought up another good point: the issue of over-‐sharing. “…Over-‐ sharing is a problem (nude photos, etc.). These [social media channels] are an opportunity to MANAGE the brand and image and, often, overuse of these channels over-‐saturates the market and doesn't provide as much ROI on each conversation. Additionally, providing the wrong content creates the same problem – bad image/brand.” As a band that operates as a brand, the goal is to develop that deeper connection between an act and their fans, and sharing personal information and 62 pictures is a key element in that process. However, there is a fine line between giving fans insight into an artist as a person, and therefore strengthening that connection between the two entities, and over-‐sharing, which in some cases can have disastrous consequences. As McKagan put it, “You gotta [sic] be careful. Sometimes you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I’ve tweeted some stuff that got taken way out of context. You gotta be careful and really think twice. Ya gotta be a little more thoughtful before you tweet.” Along the same lines of over-‐sharing, an artist has to be careful to not be TOO personal on Twitter. Cee Lo Green, a famous soul/R & B/hip hop singer, performed on NBC’s 2011 New Year’s Eve show, and for the performance, he covered the classic John Lennon song “Imagine.” But, during the song, he changed the lyrics “Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too" to "Nothing to kill or die for, and all religion's true." This immediately caused uproar among the Twitter community. Cee Lo saw the initial backlash and tweeted “Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world where u could believe what u wanted that's all.” 6 But that didn’t calm down Lennon fans that considered what Cee Lo did to be blasphemy. They berated him via Twitter. Cee Lo fired back to many of the tweeters using extremely profane language. He directly responded to numerous tweets that night, but then deleted them all the next morning – a fairly common “tweet and delete” occurrence. As previous mentioned, bands are now brands, but unlike large companies that have communication/marketing representatives or PR agencies that handle 63 their Twitter accounts, in most cases the individual artists at least assist in handling their accounts. Therefore, they are front and center to the instant negative feedback that may occur via the medium. Cee Lo isn’t just an artist, he is also currently one of the stars of NBC’s hit show “The Voice” and a popular spokesperson for 7Up, so again, his Twitter account doesn’t just affect his music, it has the potential to affect any project or product that he’s affiliated with, such as that show and soft drink. It can be difficult to not react to the negative personal feedback on social media, but in many cases, an artist has to, because they are a brand and their negative or questionable social media posts can affect that brand name and whatever it’s associated with. And as McKagan put it: “You just have to remember that it’s a fantasyland.” “For me, I started to notice social media when there was a Velvet Revolver fan forum,” said McKagan. “Fans would comment in there and write all kinds of stuff about us. Our first record just came out – it was around 2003/2004. People were really being hard on the band for different reasons. I would really read this stuff and think ‘These people’s voices are really getting to me.’ I got obsessed and a little bit affected. And then, during our tour for the album, we were playing in Europe, and this guy came up to me at an autograph signing. He said ‘Hi, my name is ________ otherwise known as _________ (the screen name of the harshest critic in the fan forum), and this guy had to have been about 14. It was some snot-‐nosed kid! ‘This was the guy that was affecting me?’ I thought. It was an ‘aha moment.’ You can’t take it too seriously – take it with a grain of salt. People can hide behind fake names and whatnot – you just have to remember that it’s a fantasyland for some.” 64 Also, as with many issues brought to light in this paper, it all comes back to proper messaging and branding. In Cee Lo’s case, lashing out at Twitter followers didn’t align with the image he is or should be trying to project. But if, let’s say, a heavy metal rock group with a “f*** you” attitude were to lash out at some fans, it might make sense and, depending on the conversation, might even strengthen brand loyalty. It all comes back to strategic messaging that is aligned with a well-‐conceived projected image. 65 Chapter Fourteen: Social Media: Supplementary or Key Asset in Branding? When it comes to branding a particular musical act, the role that social media plays can also differ depending on the artist – for some, mostly older established acts, it plays a supplementary role; for other newer acts, it usually plays a major role in marketing and branding. Gruber agrees that it depends on the artist. “For a new artist, it's essential. That's where people are going to go – it's your net to catch new fans. Use live shows, the Internet, publications to generate interest – social media is where people are going to land and stay in touch…it's your opportunity to invade their world on a regular basis. “When I was a kid my favorite band came to town once a year for a show, that's the only time I saw them provide me with a message they control. Now you can get your messages out to everyone anytime. Is it supplementary? Yes, but only in that it must be a part of the overall. You still have to make good (good being subjective is defined as 'people want it') music. You still have to have the goods and the right image and persona to work on social media. I've seen musicians that do great without it. I think more established artists can choose their level of involvement and outsourcing. Some musicians (Steve Martin comes to mind) do a great job of being a character to drum up interest and others (Trent Reznor comes to mind) do a great job of being themselves which has drawn people in to a new world with the artist that wasn't accessible before. A LOT of established artists 66 avoid social media though – especially in the older generation. Or they outsource the actual work and use it as a primarily promo-‐only medium.” Many older, established artists avoid social media or use it primarily as a promo-‐only medium. Established band REO Speedwagon that has been around for nearly four decades for instance, just started a Twitter account in September 2011, and its feed is strictly promo-‐type tweets. The author posits that they’ve already made a name for themselves and already established personalities and personas, and so they don’t see the benefit of social media. But like Gruber said, there are older established artists such as Steve Martin and The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan who are doing extraordinary things with social media and extending their fan base and reach through uniquely crafted social media personas. 67 Chapter Fifteen: Duff McKagan Calls The Author – All Because of Twitter To exemplify the power social media, the author reached out to a few musicians via social media to see if any would respond in an effort to demonstrate the ability for musicians to interact with their fans in new and instantaneously ways. Once of musicians he reached out to was Duff McKagan, who is one of the original members of the notoriously famous rock band Guns N’ Roses, and has been in other famous acts such as Velvet Revolver and Loaded. McKagan happened to respond within minutes of the first tweet. Here is a snapshot of the conversation that then ensued via Twitter. Figure 8: Twitter Conversation with Duff McKagan After this exchange, the author emailed the series of questions to McKagan’s manager, and then approximately two weeks later, McKagan actually emailed the 68 author and told him that it’d be easier if he called and responded to the questions that way, as oppose to writing the answers in an email. So as a result of simple tweet, the author received a phone call from one of his favorite musicians of all time – it was a prime example of the sheer power of social media and the ability to connect musicians with their fans. The author was already a fan and advocate for McKagan and his musical ventures, but now that admiration and promotion will be exponentially increased because of events that transpired via Twitter and beyond. “I like to use Twitter when I’m on tour – it’s great for touring. It also put you [the author] and I together. I just happen to look at my Twitter, and I don’t have as many Twitter followers as some other musicians – I have almost 100,000 and that seems like a ton of people, but still, that’s not as many as others – and I saw your thing, and every once and a while I’ll see something and think that’s really killer,” said McKagan. 69 Chapter Sixteen: Additional Thoughts and Analysis In many ways, the core ideas behind promoting and discussing bands and music are the same as they were before the social web; just the delivery mechanisms have changed. Instead of handing out fliers promoting a show, you now publish social media posts that promote the show. Street teams used to help with the legwork in different markets when a group was on tour, and now they do, but they’re much more organized and in-‐step because they can communicate via social media. Instead of going to a local music venue/club to discuss music with likeminded individuals, you can discuss in fan forums, on webpages and/or through social media. And the list goes on. But because of the social web, digital file sharing and other digital innovations, the methods with which a band markets and promotes itself, and the reasons behind that marketing has drastically changed. Prior to these relatively recent digital developments, musical acts could direct a greater portion of their focus on the music they created, because if an album was well received and sold a lot of copies, the act would receive large profits from the album sales. But now, the entire money-‐generating paradigm for musicians has shifted, and continues to do so. As McKagan said: “Obviously, records don’t sell anymore – I mean that cat’s out of the bag – people don’t buy records…The new bands these days want to tour and have that extra income that they’re missing from album sales, and so the artist has to use social media to better the band and take them to another level. People are coming to shows buying t-‐shirts, buying vinyl records…and that’s how groups are making money…A lot of new indie bands out there have really honed in on how to 70 use social media. It’s a new paradigm for new bands – they don’t even know that records use to sell, you know? Young bands are really savvy on merchandise. Digital music killed a whole revenue stream – you can use it [social media] to help fill and replace that stream.” Since musical acts are brands, and are now in a place where they need to focus on promoting their image by distributing branded merchandise, they should consider utilizing some of the common social media tactics and engagement mechanisms that work for business-‐to-‐consumer (B2C) companies – one of those common tactics being to host online contests. “Everyone wants something free. Contests are huge,” said Beth Mansfield, Director of Public Relations at CKE Restaurants and operator of the @CarlsJr Twitter handle. Engaging fans via social media contests has become a popular and fairly standard tactic for B2C companies. Musicians, who now need to focus more so than ever on their merchandise to generate revenue, should follow suit, and many have. Rock artist Andrew W.K. is an avid Twitter user and constantly holds contests via his feed to award fans prizes, which is generally branded merchandise. Here is one of the many recent examples: Figure 9: Andrew W.K. Tweet In addition to simplistic contests such as this, he also uses new and unique approaches such as hosting live webcam parties where he interacts with fans in 71 real-‐time via social media, awards prizes to fans and announces news to his core fans first. Here are a couple of those examples that showcase an intelligent use of social media: Figure 10: Additional Andrew W.K. Tweets Giving away free merchandise via an online contest is an effective tool that is cost effective, relatively simple, sparks engagement and helps promote a brand by distributing branded merchandise – musicians should definitely host social media contests if they’re not already. 72 Chapter Seventeen: The Conclusion Not only have musicians been dramatically affected by the drastic changes brought about by the Web 2.0 revolution, they have also been affected by the advent of digital file sharing, the slow demise of record labels and essentially a complete music industry paradigm shift over the last decade. All of this has affected how they market themselves, brand themselves and how they attempt to achieve success in a often tumultuous industry. Musicians that can properly adapt to the dynamic digital environment, and have a musical repertoire that can support their online tactics and communication, stand a chance at achieving success and awareness like never before, made possible via social media. As demonstrated throughout this paper, there are countless examples of musicians who are currently utilizing social media to successfully promote and preserve their image and brand identity online. As with any consumer brand, it all boils down to knowing your product, knowing the market and your audiences, knowing what tactics are available and as a result, crafting effective messaging and strategies that will align with the brand’s communication and marketing goals. 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Asset Metadata

Creator Collard, Mikey (author)

Core Title Musicians utilizing social media to increase brand awareness, further promote their brand and establish brand equity

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 05/06/2012

Defense Date 05/05/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag bands,brand equity,increase brand awareness,Music,Musicians,OAI-PMH Harvest,Public Relations,social media

Language English

Advisor Floto, Jennifer D. (committee chair), LeVeque, Matthew (committee member), Lynch, Brenda (committee member)

Creator Email mikeyecollard@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-32050

Unique identifier UC11290148

Identifier usctheses-c3-32050 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-CollardMik-782.pdf

Dmrecord 32050

Document Type Thesis

Rights Collard, Mikey

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This paper takes a look at how musicians and musical acts are utilizing and/or should be utilizing social media to increase brand awareness, further promote their brand and aid in establishing brand equity. Social media, along with the advent of digital file sharing, has dramatically affected the music industry and its once traditional institutionalized paradigm. This paper dives into the role social media plays in the ongoing evolution of the industry – it analyzes best practices, tools and applications that cater directly to the needs of musicians, how specific musical artist accounts should be operated and much more. ❧ In 2012, bands are no longer just bands, they’re brands, and social media plays an integral role in the branding process. The principal conclusion of this paper is that all musicians should STRATEGICALLY be engaging in social media to sustain and/or further their brand. The ultimate goal of this paper is provide valuable insight into how to successfully be strategic when using social media to brand and market a musical artist or act.