Building Authentic Relationships Between Artists and Consumers
Investigating and reshaping expectations around catalog marketing provokes the invitation to reexamine and redefine how people experience and have a relationship with music. Rather than relying on how the music industry defines it, such as a tangible product or transaction, the actual reality of music’s power is something much deeper than that– it’s an experience that evokes a feeling that creates a memory. With the music experience bridging social and emotional dimensions, the music industry can no longer rely upon a transactional relationship to consumers but rather understands the value of building a life long relationship with it’s consumer. Hearing the music for the first time is the beginning of the relationship.
The case to ditch transaction focused marketing is based on the fact that it is a one-time occurrence. It’s dated and provides very little value. It is in fact a commodity today, and rarely has a connection to the consumer’s experience with the music or the storytelling from that experience. You know you’ve reached the point of a relationship when your fans are creating and sharing more content than the artist.
In shifting to a relationship-oriented approach, interactions are no longer a transactional one-time deal focused on commodities such as a CD, vinyl, download, or stream, and with little connection to the consumer. The great foundation to any relationship is engagement and through creating memorable experiences.
An experience-based model centered on relationship-building offers the opportunity for cultivating a sense of community, for participating in fans’ ongoing documentation of their engagement through user-generated content, and for creating storytelling that allows fans to follow artists over time. In order to maximize this relationship-building, we’ve prepared a few best practice recommendations.
- Create a dashboard and take advantage of data tracking
A dashboard offers the structure to monitor engagement across multiple platforms at all times simultaneously, to track conversations taking place, and to facilitate, guide, and participate in those conversations. Real-time tracking technology offers the infrastructure to provide ongoing opportunities to invite the consumer to tell their side of the story. In order to understand where you’re going, you need to first have a sense of where you currently are positioned.
In coordination with a dashboard utility, data scraping tools have become a critical tool for making an effective case for focusing on emerging music markets such as Mumbai, Mexico City, and Sao Paulo. As Chartmetric similarly insists, “listeners aren’t just data points and ‘emerging markets’ aren’t artificial launchpads. Having a truly successful advertising campaign isn’t about budgets, click counts, and inorganic streams and views; ultimately, it’s about genuine connection with fans who truly appreciate your music.”
In the case of Metallica, for example, these markets have translated into significant gains in streaming metrics. With Mexico City, Santiago, and Bogotá leading the way in cities for Metallica’s analytics according to YouTube’s Music Charts & Insights, these locations alone accounted for more than 6 million views of the band’s catalog releases in the last month alone.
As with any relationship, the more that you engage, the deeper you go in the connection, and the richer the connection becomes.
2. Prioritize engaging with the hits
In today’s music world, marketing and engagement are still driven by singles and milestone events. A benefit of working with catalog is that there are already time-tested analytics available that demonstrate which singles have higher levels of engagement. With catalog, it’s essential to drive the hits, and focus on singles-focused campaigns to revisit already-established emotional connections and memories associated with specific songs. And yet we continue to see most catalog marketing centered around an album.
Justin Bieber’s recent rollout for his Justice album offers an example, with the record debuting at the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart. Bieber’s team skillfully utilized a singles campaign strategy, dropping a single a month for 5–6 months then ultimately wrapping them up into the full album release. As analyzed by Artist Coach & Marketer Amber Horsburgh, throughout this rollout process, each single was treated as a “mini-campaign– using music videos, performances, and bespoke merch.”
Horsburgh tallied that in the 6 months covering the first single to the album release date, Bieber released 59 videos on his YouTube channel– a strategy based in storytelling, behind the scenes footage that reveals more of the artist’s personality, and dialogue generation that can be adapted not only for current artists but also for catalog hits of the past. In addition, they released more than 30 pieces of merchandise for the single.
Most legacy artists have a treasure trove of video, photography and music content. Share it with the consumer on a regularly scheduled basis and you’ll see your subscribers growth on viewing platforms such as YouTube will explode.
3. Focus on the consumer
Real value is in the relationship, not the transaction. Create openings where the artist can participate in the relationship with the fans in a manner that is ongoing rather than one-time. By prioritizing the consumer’s desire for continued engagement, more sustainable connections are fostered and encouraged.
A starting-point for engaging with a community can begin with identifying and engaging with consumer-generated fanbase communities that already exist. Whether it’s the Grateful Dead’s Dead Heads, Mariah Carey’s Lambs, or Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters, the onus is on record labels and artists to stay attuned to self-organizing fans, and to find the best ways to engage consistently with those bases. In the long-standing case study of Jimmy Buffett’s Parrot Heads contingent, fans have self-organized into chapters, Meeting of the Minds conventions, and even a team for the Walk to End Alzheimers.
The value of this engagement cannot be overstated, as illustrated by the recent announcement of US-based investment firm Outlander Fund and Netherlands-based CTM BV joining forces to invest $1 billion in music copyrights over the next five years, as reported by Music Business Worldwide. The first catalog deal has already closed with the acquisition of over 1,000 songs from Sweden’s TEN Music Group, including works by Rihanna, Shakira, and Panic! At the Disco.
The partnership demonstrates the wide-reaching possibilities of catalog, as well as the intention to center consumer interaction and musical moments, notably with plans to “acquire rights that allow it to use songs and likenesses for holographic performances and the issuance of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the increasingly buzzed-about digital assets currently making waves in the music industry.”
While catalog acquisitions are making major waves, these moves bear the question of how the catalogs will then be subsequently managed and marketed. As discussed in a recent Music Business Worldwide report, Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s Merck Mercuriadis points to his belief that “there are two more years left to run in music rights acquisitions before the current ‘window of opportunity’ closes. BMG’s Hartwig Masuch takes a more expansive approach, forecasting that “there will be no shortage of repertoire coming to the market over the next five years, including a huge amount of rights with pretty iconic characteristics.”
The new critical role at a major label and catalog companies will be the Chief Consumer Experience Officer. Equally as important to the A&R role, this role will be responsible to define and build this lifelong relationship with fans as well as determine how to monetize this relationship.
4. Create rich and authentic content informed by fans
In the cases of fanbases for these aforementioned iconic artists, or the potential for fanbases to be created, it’s crucial to give people the opportunity to feel like they are a part of the artist’s process. Bieber’s campaign above not only demonstrates a masterful approach to content, but also displays the benefits of slowing down, nurturing relationships with fans, and thinking through how to best feed an interactive process to a record rollout.
US-based electronic music event promoter and music distributor Insomniac interacts with a vivid space between events and content, having created the Electric Daisy Carnival, Nocturnal Wonderland, and Electric Circus festivals while also managing a robust portfolio of content initiatives. Especially given the hiatus of live events during the pandemic, Insomniac has shifted to digital media platforms such as Insomniac TV streaming programming, Night Owl Radio mixtape series, video trailers for upcoming live events, and ongoing releases from Insomniac Music Group. These multiple points of interaction provide fans opportunities to continue to engage in ways catered to their interests.
Ultimately, when a marketing strategy moves away from a transactional approach, the objective becomes not so much about selling the product, but instead it becomes about honing in on the holistic experience of engagement. As artists and labels nurture connections with consumers, they also evolve with them, and create tailored strategies that foster relationships with the artists as much as the stories behind their creative output.
The final analysis no longer is about albums or tracks sold, or streams and views, but rather the lifetime value of the relationship between the fan and artists.
Written by Sara Skolnick and Michael Rucker.
Skolnick is a creative strategist with more than 10 years of experience at the intersection of music and technology. She manages label operations at Ok Fine Music, and is the founder of the record label APOCALIPSIS.
Rucker is a Managing Partner at Pinal Group and was the former Chief Marketing Officer at Fania Records. He has more than 15 years of experience in the marketing of music catalogs.
