What happened to my radio?: The new profitable tastemakers

In my last post, I alluded to some of my views on licensing songs and the ties (or, more accurately, lack thereof) to Lifetime Value (LTV) of fans, and thus careers for the musicians. Now I would like to clarify my thoughts on ties between bands and brands and give a sense of how I believe the most mutually beneficial relationships can be built.

I believe that bands and brands have very strong natural ties, and that bands should really be thought of as brands in their own right. The key demographic for up and coming bands is generally the teenagers and young adults, which today is Generation Y. Known as the first generation to grow up with a true comfort with technology, having known no life without computers, we are distrustful of advertising and seek deeper relationships with the organizations to whom we give our time and money.

Music is a well-known key to human emotion. It also influences relationships - people who like the same music are almost instantaneous friends, thanks to a connection felt at a more primal level. Friends are also known to enjoy similar products and brands - they make similar connections influenced by shared experiences and compatible ideologies.

The key, then, is finding where these connections (between consumer and brand, and between that consumer and band) have potential overlap, and leveraging that connection to benefit both parties.

Your car commercial has a catchy tune in it, don't you think some folks might catch onto that (don't you want them to?) and want a download of that song? They would, and they would appreciate you for being the one to recommend it to them. You're building customer loyalty among people who aren't even necessarily your customers yet.

Afternoons had a song in a Lincoln commercial that premiered during The Grammys. I would love to have that mp3 by going to LincolnMusic.com, would be thankful to Lincoln for introducing me to it, and while I'm not in the market for a car right now, I'd have a slightly more favorable opinion of Lincoln. Lincoln, in turn, would have my email address (which they could use to introduce me to more music and further build my trust and respect, NOT to spam my inbox with nonstop car ads), my potential to spread the word to more friends (and thus fans of Lincoln), and a potential lifetime fan of their brand (bringing them perhaps as many as five to twenty purchases).

Traditionally, radio has made a living off being intermediaries -- brokering these relationships through their professional tastemaking and controlling the distribution channel (the AM and FM frequencies of our car and personal stereos). Thanks to the Internet and digital music, the distribution channels are no longer restricted -- brands and bands have access to each other and to the fans through a single channel with no need for intermediaries. (In fact, the Gen-Y fans would prefer not to have intermediaries.)

Many brands, of course, will be slow to understand these benefits. Corporations aren't often used to the concepts of direct ROI from marketing spends -- the people working the income sheets and the people spending the marketing money are on different floors and probably have never met. The onus (and thus, business), then, is on consultancies like Brands + Music to show the finance departments why they should be hired to project manage the marketing department's relationships regarding music. In the future, however, it would in no way surprise me to see brands whose target audience is largely Gen-Y starting music departments to help identify and build relationships with bands with similar demographic fanbases.

While brands may be somewhat sluggish to realize the potential of deeper relationships with artists and mutual fans, successful artists (remember, an artist is a brand, too) can coin themselves as tastemakers and built their own brands. You already see it happening, both with an increased number of vanity imprints (artists starting their own labels to help bring legitimacy to their friends and other bands they like) and with artists like Kanye West, whose blog mentions send page views through the roof for anyone fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a link. In both cases, the artists leverage their existing fans' trust of their brand to become tastemakers and drive benefits for other b(r)ands, and in turn themselves.

The hope, of course, is to be able to automate some of the identification process for all parties involved -- many of the biggest changes to come about in the Internet era have come as a result of taking manual effort out of business processes. The technology will soon exist to have your brand grow many times in size by being the modern equivalent of the cool DJ in town, an opportunity you may not immediately think relevant. Of course, technology is just a tool, and the brands and artists who employ the tools make their own fates and fortunes with their usage -- technology will never be a substitute for genuinely identifying with the brand you sell and using your own passion to connect with the fans of your brand and desire to add value to their lives.



As a side-note, I'm sure questions will arise as to the potential of "regular" individuals to become tastemakers. To some extent, there is, but it will have to be through a channel they define for themselves (generally through blogs), rather than through sites like SUURGE. Musicane's (and many others) original business model presupposed fans would appreciate being rewarded for their music recommendations to friends. What they failed to realize was how pithy rewards from not having a substantially large sphere of influence is actually a demotivator (people would rather recommend out of passion than see a couple pennies). Where Amie Street separates themselves is by becoming a tastemaker in their own right by aggregating fan inputs (their biggest sales driver is moderated weekly emails with personal recommendations) -- their users buy based on their view of Amie St as a tastemaker, and getting small discounts is a nice side benefit that makes them feel good for being a part of the community.

The DUH Effect (or, the WWID generation)

Let me preempt these comments by saying the following generalizations are not necessarily true of all members of my generation. They are, I believe, more prevalent in my generation than those who have come before us, however.
I just read Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier, way to build a successful web application by the guys over at 37signals. The book is smart, well-pointed, and a fun read the whole way through. However, one word stuck out in my mind after nearly every sentence: DUH!
The same word has gone through my head with every business book I've read recently: The Long Tail, The Tipping Point, Wikinomics, and nearly every Seth Godin book out there.
This mental commentary is not reflective of the authors; rather, it is reflective of the difference in mindset that a few years makes.
The readers of my generation don't need to be told that niches exist, that collaborative knowledge is powerful, or that breaking down barriers (including broad advertisements) between a company and customers can bring lots of benefits. DUH!
We know these things. We assume them. This is how our world works. All the processes that these books are built to break down, we never knew existed. We digest the world in snapshots and snippets, diving deeper into only the specific realms that pique our interests (for example, the reading I've enjoyed recently has involved the brain's cognition and processing of music and the many definitions and significances of infinity).
Take social networking for example: it took someone of my generation to get it right after other, slightly older tech geniuses got bogged down after building great promise. While many of us were frustrated with it's abrupt implementation, the Facebook News Feed proved to be the most significant feature of it's growth. Zuckerberg noticed that students were spending hours on Facebook digging through each others' profiles and walls trying to find out who had changed something recently or had a conversation with someone else recently.
We as humans seek transparency into the people and companies we care about. Due in large part to lack of technology, past generations rarely realized or acted upon this human urge--but why were newspapers started? Why have sit-coms succeeded? Why do tabloids make billions?
The personal focus, the focus on the individual, manifests itself in countless ways. There's the urge to participate, to make yourself feel like you made a difference--volunteering at a homeless shelter or contributing an entry on Wikipedia. There's the urge to get your personal message heard--sending Christmas cards or blogging or, most recently, Twittering. There's the urge to know what other individuals are up to, as noted above.
My generation recognizes this personal focus and has an understanding of the tools necessary (mostly web-related) to act. When we get stuck creating something for public use, we simply ask "What would I do?" and chances are pretty good that there are some other people out there of the same mindset--be it a large market or a niche one. And if asking WWID doesn't work, we look at who we want to reach and explore their wants, needs, and what they're doing. Then we go back to our drawing board and change accordingly.
Duh.