Thanks to Music Ally (Bacardi talks music and branding) from March 26 we have a follow-up of the Bacardi-Groove Armada Pyramid Scheme that I had written about previously.
Despite some things to be desired, such as presentation skills and its length (38 minutes) I recommend checking it out - it is from the marketing perspective. I'll give you some of the stats that showed up 27 minutes into it (so you don't need to wade through the first 27 minutes). Bacardi managed more than 43,000 downloads of GA's new album (of which, we find out that 4 songs were "coached" by Bacardi as branding their product) and made Number 1 on a few charts including Hypemachine's. We do not ever find out how deep the free downloads got (recall that if you were able to get a certain number of your friends to download track 1, you were allowed to download track 2). I can venture a guess that those first four Bacardi brand songs were the free ones that were downloaded (for the record, I've not heard any part of GA's Bacardi album).
I mentioned that the presentation was from a marketing perspective, and portrayed as successful, with lots of free media attention that would have otherwise, they estimate, cost them many millions of dollars. However, we never find out how much money it cost them to do the deal, or how much it will cost them to do another deal. They also claim that it was very difficult to make the artist do what they wanted, but get them to think it was their idea (in the question/answer part of the video). Lovely.
Your thoughts on this?
Free air time is great, no doubt about it. Was this free air time best for Bacardi or best for GA? Not sure, but Bacardi seemed to come away with an estimated >$7M in free advertising. GA? Well, GA recorded four songs about something that they thought was their idea and these brainwashing songs were downloaded for free. I'm most interested, however, in the downloading pyramid scheme. At the end of the day, 43,000 downloads in 40 days is pretty good...even if each song is about how great rum is; too bad there was no value to each download...to GA, I mean.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The Different Approches
Amy's latest post here on Music Hounds, Free Music got me thinking about the different approaches people take to finding music. From her post she indicated her delight in sampling music from all over the web for hours. I do not share the same delight; I have a much shorter attention span.
I will work backward in the music hounding process:
Listening to a song. When I come across a new song it better catch my attention quickly - within the first 30 seconds or less; regardless of whether I am familiar with the band or not. It could be one of my favorite bands, but I'll disregard the song if it hasn't grabbed me immediately and I'll move on to another. I do not like radio stations in general, but it is because of this short attention span. I wouldn't mind internet radio if one could move through songs one does not like; if Pandora, for example, allowed such a thing...well I guess it wouldn't be much of a radio station.
Finding a song. I generally do not like recommendations from music recommendation sites. I have blogged about this in a couple of posts, the most recent being Signal Patterns Music Survey, mostly because they never seem to get it right...for me at least. I usually have something in particular I'm searching for and broad genre categories are often not represented properly simply because the sites hosting music do not allow much inclusion of different music styles without just grouping in "OTHER". This is a shame. Reverbnation is one such hosting site that comes to mind. So I wind up searching large amounts of music under "other", for example, with a strategy of crossing my fingers and hoping I like what I hear (for the first 30 seconds). I hate that. Pandora is a good example to use here - they make recommendations for their users based upon similarities to an entered "favorite band/artist". This seems a good way to find music, provided that Pandora accurately identifies "similarities". Its popularity suggests that it may have that down. However given the 30 seconds "rule" I have (see above), Pandora is frustrating to me. As I mentioned, I'm usually in the mood for a specific type of music. If I stumble across something that sounds good, I'm excited and have found something new (to me), but oftentimes it takes many, many tries with little or no success (part of the reason I get impatient with NPR's Second Stage). Perhaps I do not have entirely mainstream musical tastes, but I do like music that falls under the general categorization of a whole host of "genres".
What's the solution? To my knowledge (and I'd love to be proven wrong - so write if you have input) if I do not have a band name/artist name/song name/genre that I'm searching for, no such solution exists other than painstakingly clicking with crossed fingers and toes. I am building the Hounds to the Music search function because of my short attention span when it comes to finding new music. There is a ton of new music posted every day, but how to find it efficiently? I certainly do no think that Hounds to the Music will be the Holy Grail of music hunting, but I do hope that it will take a small step in that efficiency; ultimately one will always need to click and hope, but if the frequency of success can be increased, that will be a benefit I think.
How do you hunt for music? What sites do you use? Do hunt like Amy or me?
So, will Amy, who loves to poke around free music for hours on a weekend afternoon benefit from the music search function of Hounds to the Music? I hope so, although she may use it in a different manner than I plan to.
Hounds to the Music. What's the status of Hounds to the Music you ask? We are getting there...closer and closer each day. We plan on a limited launch to indie musicians/bands/labels and other interested parties around mid to late summer this year. We will also be entertaining investors starting in April.
I will work backward in the music hounding process:
Listening to a song. When I come across a new song it better catch my attention quickly - within the first 30 seconds or less; regardless of whether I am familiar with the band or not. It could be one of my favorite bands, but I'll disregard the song if it hasn't grabbed me immediately and I'll move on to another. I do not like radio stations in general, but it is because of this short attention span. I wouldn't mind internet radio if one could move through songs one does not like; if Pandora, for example, allowed such a thing...well I guess it wouldn't be much of a radio station.
Finding a song. I generally do not like recommendations from music recommendation sites. I have blogged about this in a couple of posts, the most recent being Signal Patterns Music Survey, mostly because they never seem to get it right...for me at least. I usually have something in particular I'm searching for and broad genre categories are often not represented properly simply because the sites hosting music do not allow much inclusion of different music styles without just grouping in "OTHER". This is a shame. Reverbnation is one such hosting site that comes to mind. So I wind up searching large amounts of music under "other", for example, with a strategy of crossing my fingers and hoping I like what I hear (for the first 30 seconds). I hate that. Pandora is a good example to use here - they make recommendations for their users based upon similarities to an entered "favorite band/artist". This seems a good way to find music, provided that Pandora accurately identifies "similarities". Its popularity suggests that it may have that down. However given the 30 seconds "rule" I have (see above), Pandora is frustrating to me. As I mentioned, I'm usually in the mood for a specific type of music. If I stumble across something that sounds good, I'm excited and have found something new (to me), but oftentimes it takes many, many tries with little or no success (part of the reason I get impatient with NPR's Second Stage). Perhaps I do not have entirely mainstream musical tastes, but I do like music that falls under the general categorization of a whole host of "genres".
What's the solution? To my knowledge (and I'd love to be proven wrong - so write if you have input) if I do not have a band name/artist name/song name/genre that I'm searching for, no such solution exists other than painstakingly clicking with crossed fingers and toes. I am building the Hounds to the Music search function because of my short attention span when it comes to finding new music. There is a ton of new music posted every day, but how to find it efficiently? I certainly do no think that Hounds to the Music will be the Holy Grail of music hunting, but I do hope that it will take a small step in that efficiency; ultimately one will always need to click and hope, but if the frequency of success can be increased, that will be a benefit I think.
How do you hunt for music? What sites do you use? Do hunt like Amy or me?
So, will Amy, who loves to poke around free music for hours on a weekend afternoon benefit from the music search function of Hounds to the Music? I hope so, although she may use it in a different manner than I plan to.
Hounds to the Music. What's the status of Hounds to the Music you ask? We are getting there...closer and closer each day. We plan on a limited launch to indie musicians/bands/labels and other interested parties around mid to late summer this year. We will also be entertaining investors starting in April.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Free Music
Love it or love it not? Good relationship with it or bad?
I recently flipped through a magazine article on music and wrote down an entire list of artists/bands it mentioned that I thought I would like to sample. After categorizing them and crossing off the ones I was already familiar with, I got onto Amazon's MP3 downloads site and started a search that lasted me a couple of hours more than I had planned. I love spending an afternoon in the fantastical tangled web of music sampling. Unfortunately, for me it's too easy to download the free music Amazon offers and not purchase anything (and purchased music is generally the better music, since you get what you pay for).
You might not be able to relate--some people's music habits cost them thousands of dollars a year and others, like me, are just plain cheap about it. Theoretically and on principle, I have great respect for musicians and the time and work they put into their craft. Especially because I consider myself a musician. It's not cheap to make an album, so it shouldn't be cheap for me to listen.
So is free music good for me and the general public, or bad? For the artist, it's a useful marketing tool. But the question is, do we use it as the "appetizer" it should be that encourages us to buy more songs, or do we treat it how we treat other things we don't invest in: without the value it and the artist deserves?
Do you download free music? Is it good or bad for your music searches?
I recently flipped through a magazine article on music and wrote down an entire list of artists/bands it mentioned that I thought I would like to sample. After categorizing them and crossing off the ones I was already familiar with, I got onto Amazon's MP3 downloads site and started a search that lasted me a couple of hours more than I had planned. I love spending an afternoon in the fantastical tangled web of music sampling. Unfortunately, for me it's too easy to download the free music Amazon offers and not purchase anything (and purchased music is generally the better music, since you get what you pay for).
You might not be able to relate--some people's music habits cost them thousands of dollars a year and others, like me, are just plain cheap about it. Theoretically and on principle, I have great respect for musicians and the time and work they put into their craft. Especially because I consider myself a musician. It's not cheap to make an album, so it shouldn't be cheap for me to listen.
So is free music good for me and the general public, or bad? For the artist, it's a useful marketing tool. But the question is, do we use it as the "appetizer" it should be that encourages us to buy more songs, or do we treat it how we treat other things we don't invest in: without the value it and the artist deserves?
Do you download free music? Is it good or bad for your music searches?
Thursday, March 5, 2009
RPM Challenge Over
With the end of February comes the end of the RPM Challenge. I have not looked to see the final number of bands or artists who completed the challenge, but if it was like the last two years it will have been around one thousand. That's preety neat - 1,000 groups cramming for nothing but the satisfaction of completing. I finished the challenge with the help of one of two bands, but only ONE album; truth be told I was ambitious and signed up for two albums - one for each band.
Now comes the question: you want to hear songs from the RPM Challenge, but have no place to start - no band name, no genre, etc to go by to find cool-to-you music. What do you do?! This is precisely why I founded Hounds to the Music. Ideally, by next February you will be able to use our web application service to find cool-to-you music from the RPM Challenge and everywhere else on the internet.
Now comes the question: you want to hear songs from the RPM Challenge, but have no place to start - no band name, no genre, etc to go by to find cool-to-you music. What do you do?! This is precisely why I founded Hounds to the Music. Ideally, by next February you will be able to use our web application service to find cool-to-you music from the RPM Challenge and everywhere else on the internet.
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