Collective Artists Launches Web Promo Cooperative For Musicians

Recently TalkApolis and Hal Willis, the former CEO of Country Music Television, announced the formation of Collective Artists, an opportunity for musicians to cross-promote on the web to increase awareness and social media reach. The announcement may overstate its points but, in a video presentation, the demonstrated ability of TalkApolis shows to build audience via cross-promotions suggested the potential power at scale.

In a recent press release, the formation of Collective Artists was touted in relationship to a Time article on various collective and cooperative arrangements currently being explored by musicians and related business people.

But the point of Collective Artists was illustrated more clearly by a video released to the press featuring Talkapolis CEO John Bransford. Among other points, efforts to raise audience and social metrics were shown to be quite successful from cross-promotion efforts between TalkApolis talk shows.

Now they're expanding the idea and working with Hal Willis to create an effort between artists who agree to cross-promote via their web properties and social media accounts. Though the exact details aren't clear, the basic concept is straightforward and sound.

From the video:

"The Artist collective is limited to a set number of hand picked artists."

"Revenue will come from a small percentage [of] audio downloads from signed artists."

And though the presentation is understated, the following outsized goal is declared:

"First Year Plans"

"Build a reach group up to 3,000,000 by adding selected artists to the collective and building reach of Individual Collective artists."

I'm curious about the monetization details but this seems like an opportunity that relevant artists should take seriously.

It's certainly a good use of site space that content-related sites would use for advertising. If an artist has built a base to monetize web traffic and social media attention, the return would be higher than if they did run typical web ads.

In addition, if well-curated, network effects could emerge as such recommendations are seen as relevant to listeners. Such a response would then support ongoing audience building.

Collective Artists should be worth watching to see how this arrangement develops.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

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