Don’t underestimate the power of the Web
In the age of social media, many music artists appear to undervalue the importance of having their own online home.
This post was originally posted on our blog at https://subwoofr.com/blog/the-power-of-the-web/.
At Subwoofr, we’re big believers in artists using the power of the Web to engage with their biggest, most loyal fans. Social media and streaming platforms are great for finding a new audience, for spreading the word and expanding your reach — but they are not so great for creating an immersive experience that will keep an artist’s biggest fans happy. To do this, you need to have your own Web presence that embodies everything you do.
At Subwoofr, we believe that artist Web sites should, at a minimum, encompass Content, Community and Commerce.
Content
This is your music as well as your videos, photos, blog, tour news, event calendar and any other content that will be of interest to your fans. It may seem obvious, but we have seen a lot of artist websites recently that merely point to third-party sites so you can access their music. If you are going to host your content externally, at least embed the content within your site rather than link to it. Every time you send a user to a social network or other third-party website, you risk losing your audience. Every second counts, and you can’t afford to waste any potential promotion you’ve amassed in getting someone to your website on sending them somewhere else.
Community
Fans love to engage with other fans, and of course, with their favorite artists themselves. Fan engagement is not as simple as putting some content on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter so people can like or share it — it is providing a platform through with fans feel that they are truly connecting with the artist. Fan-only AMAs (Ask Me Anythings), forums and chat, fan-submitted content like cover versions, artwork and tributes allow fans to feel like they are part of the artist’s world, and sharing this content with other fans and the artist themselves is the pinnacle of engagement.
Commerce
When you connect with people on social media, how many of those people actually go on to contribute anything meaningful to your livelihood as an artist? How many go beyond watching a video for free on YouTube or listening to a stream on Spotify? And of those who do, how do you recognise them amongst the thousands or even millions of passive followers who will never spend a penny to listen to your music, buy your merch or see you live? When someone lands on your website, there is a large chance that they are a bigger fan than your average follower. Your site should offer the fan numerous ways to support you through purchases. Sell your music, premium content, subscriptions and fan club access, merchandise and more. According to MIDiA Research, 61% of all spend in the music industry is by aficianados (or “superfans”) who are happy to spend on music and the artists they love. If you don’t have anything to sell them, how are they supposed to buy?
Why then, do so many artists these days neglect to harness the power the Web has to offer? One argument I’ve heard touted is that the current generation only cares about social media and reaching more people — they don’t care about the fans they already have. I refuse to believe that this is actually true. Sure, young artists absolutely recognise the importance of a social media presence and how to use it to virally promote themselves and reach audiences that in the past required a heavy-hitting record label and PR company behind you. But to suggest that these artists don’t care about connecting with existing fans is preposterous.
A more reasoned argument is that the effort required to get a strong Web presence in place is too high, and in many cases the cost is prohibitive. Artists prefer to spend their time and money on music, and social networks allow them to get their content in front of a lot of people with minimal effort and typically zero cost.
We believe that the time and cost argument is certainly part of the problem, but there is another issue and that is the lack of instant gratification you get when you publish a Website. When you put up a social media profile, within hours you will probably amass a few hundred followers or likes, and you feel an instant reaction to your content. When you first publish a Website, the only noise you’re likely to hear is the tumbleweed rolling along the desert that is your home on the Web. Of course, the way to solve this is to push your content to your Website, and use your social media presence to drive traffic to your Website. But it takes time.
At Subwoofr, we want to help artists to create a solid Web presence that takes as little time as possible, is very low-cost and that makes it easy for artists to promote their content on social media to drive traffic as early as possible. We’ve released a beta version of our site builder, and in the coming months we will be releasing a host of improvements that are laser-focused on this goal.
Case in point: kendricklamar.com
If you’re still not convinced, let’s take a look at an example. Kendrick Lamar was probably one of the biggest music success stories globally in 2015. His latest album, To Pimp A Butterfly was met with virtually universal critical acclaim, made the No. 1 spot on many Album of the Year lists, and is a strong tip to pick up the 2016 Grammy Award for Album of the Year (he has 11 nominations in all for the 2016 Grammys). He also happens to be one of my own favorite artists at the moment.
Up until today, Kendrick’s official website at kendricklamar.com left a lot to be desired. It basically featured a headline image about his Grammy nominations (with no links to any follow-up content), the album artwork for his latest album, and links to buy his album on iTunes, Amazon, Target and Best Buy, and a YouTube video embed. All due respect to Kendrick and his management team, but it was just not good enough. As a huge Kendrick Lamar fan, I expected more.
Let’s take a look at what Kendrick might have been missing out on. He may have 6 million Twitter followers and 7.5 million Facebook likes; but every month there are an average of 1.22 million Google searches for his name. In March 2015 this number went as high as 3.35 million. Another 250,000 monthly searches are made for the title of his latest album. When you search for “To Pimp A Butterfly”, Kendrick’s official website is nowhere to be found. These are people who are searching for Kendrick outside of any social network — and he is not answering their call.
According to SimilarWeb.com, over the past six months the site gets between 35,000 and 85,000 visits each month. The average time a visitor spends on the site? Just 24 seconds. Compare this to the website of Taylor Swift, which is far deeper and more engaging. Of the 550,000 monthly visitors to her site, the average time spent by each visitor is 3 minutes and 8 seconds, with each visitor viewing on average 4.11 pages.
According to Alexa, kendricklamar.com has 478 external sites linking to it. This includes everything from Yahoo!, Reddit, ESPN, BBC and Huffington Post to music sites like Discogs, Pitchfork and Allmusic. By not having any compelling content for visitors who come from these sources, Kendrick was losing out on the opportunity to win over new fans and making more revenue.
Kendrick Lamar’s website is attracting an impressive level of traffic when you consider that there was probably very little (if any) promotion behind it other than organic traffic from the strength of Kendrick’s brand. If Kendrick were to put up any content on his site, he would likely experience a huge uptick in engagement and repeat visits. His bounce rate would fall dramatically and most importantly, he would better serve both new and existing fans. One can only imagine how well the site would perform if it was actively promoted. As it stands, as much as 85% of traffic to Kendrick’s site is driven through search engines. By pushing his army of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social followers towards his site he could scale his stats much higher again.
Earlier today, a new Kendrick Lamar website went live, and it is a world apart from the previous site. It features a discography, news, a tour schedule, photos and videos and a mailing list subscription option. It’s not perfect — you can sign up for an account, but this does very little other than allow you to leave comments on news items. It’d be great to see more fan interaction and community features — maybe they’ll follow in the future.
As I’m sure you agree, however, this is a site that a fan will be spend a lot more than 24 seconds on. I’m also far more likely to return in the future as I expect there will be fresh content added. As the search engines start to index the new site and third parties link to its content, you can expect it to perform much stronger in search results too.
Summary
We’re not trying to convince anyone that they shouldn’t be using social media to promote themselves and extend their reach. Our point is simple — if you don’t have a strong Web presence, you are not serving your biggest fans with the content they want. Instead of using your website to drive your social traffic, you should be doing the reverse — using your social reach to increase the numbers of eyeballs on your website. And when you have a Web presence, make it count. One page sites that are lacking in content aren’t going to fly. Provide your fans with content, community and commerce; and witness a level of engagement and interaction like you’ve never seen before.
