FanSource FAIL: Multiple Musicians Promote With Fan Content, Forget Concept Of Sharing [Updated]
Turning to one's fans for content is now a well-established practice both to involve fans and to generate content with a less polished, more human feel. Luke Bryan's rather simple music video for "Just A Sip" is probably the strongest example of the three shared here. Alicia Keys is offering concert tickets and special passes in exchange for Tumblr photo posts while The Black Angels recently solicited Instagram pics to integrate into their Pitchfork Advance album stream.
Opening Note: General FAIL
None of these projects provided embeddable media for bloggers and other parasites of the media world to spread the word after the fact. I could have taken a screen-shot of something but none of the content was that compelling and, hey, who wants to be mistaken for a pirate in these troubled times?
More importantly, fans don't have content to share outside of the walls of such enclosed compounds as unembeddable music videos, Tumblr and Instagram. Clearly these actions were designed to drive initial sales without regard for longer term rewards. Think it through, people!
Update: I've been informed that The Black Angels Pitchfork Advance was embeddable during the campaign. So it was temporarily shareable though it's no longer available.
Also, given the size and popularity of Tumblr and Instagram, there are certainly benefits from doing campaigns within those borders. However, the Pitchfork Advance campaign for Black Angels is no longer available. Tumblr and Instagram are no longer new and no longer reach everyone. I still feel the issue of long term branding remains though obviously some campaigns are meant to be limited.
Key phrase: "after the fact." Bandwidth on the web is so cheap and so available at this point in history that certain limits just don't make sense.
Luke Bryan Integrates Fan Webcam Pics Into Music Video
Country musician Luke Bryan released a video for his song "Just A Sip," about making it through the week with the support of alcohol featuring integrated webcam pics of fans.
It's actually a smart fan integration featured at this website. Fans were given these guidelines:
- We’ll show you a frame from the music video.
- You copy the pose with your webcam.
- We add your image to the music video!
The video itself is organized around Luke Bryan doing simple poses to illustrate the lyrics. If the fan didn't like their initial post, they could try again.
The result is a down-home drinking song video featuring images that apparently weren't screened for age, I saw at least one youngster and plenty who may or may not be under 21, and there doesn't seem to be an age-related prompt for participation which raises some interesting issues.
Perhaps that's why there isn't an embedded version available on the site and there's no upload to be found on YouTube. Or it could be just a total failure at getting the viral part right.
Alicia Keys Solicits Tour Fan Photographers
Alicia Keys is currently on tour and she's picking a fan via Tumblr to document each show:
"The unbelievable art, photos and GIFs that the Tumblr community create and share every day, truly inspires me. Tumblr is one of my absolute favorites! Love how each person has their own world! So, I am super excited to announce that I will be partnering with Tumblr for my 'Set The World On Fire' tour."
"With each stop along the tour, I will invite one incredible artist from the Tumblr community to document the show. That artist will bring the show and their talents to life in the way only a Tumblr user knows how. To enter, submit an original post below and check which tour stop you'd like to document. Show me how you shine! Can't wait to meet you all on this tour!"
Each photographer chosen gets a "photo pass, two tickets to the show and two meet and greet passes."
Photos are being posted on Alicia Keys' Tumblr and there may still be time to submit for later tour dates.
"Tumblr Music Evangelist" Nate Auerback shared some thoughts on connecting with audiences via Tumblr including:
"It helps to have a team like Alicia’s that can help narrow down the search."
That would be nice.
Given the viral nature of Tumblr, this campaign benefits the most from sharing but still limits itself unnecessarily.
The Black Angels Adds Fan Photos To Pitchfork Advance Stream
The Black Angels recently streamed their new album "Indigo Meadow" on Pitchfork Advance and solicited fan photos to be delivered via Instagram:
"Instagram photos submitted by fans accompany album lyrics and the online stream at Pitchfork in one visually stunning package. The band released a call to action to their fans to participate in the contest by posting an image of their own conceptual interpretation of Indigo Meadow on Instagram, using the hashtag #indigomeadow."
Unfortunately the stream is no longer available and tagged photos via Statigram present mostly a sad array of album cover pics and shots of bandsite content from the web.
In Closing:
Please see opening note at beginning of post.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at All World Dance: Videos and maintains Music Biz Blogs. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Hi Clyde,
My name is Aaron and I worked on The Black Angels project mentioned above. I need to correct an error you made. You wrote:
“None of these projects provided embeddable media for bloggers and other parasites of the media world to spread the word after the fact.”
This is false as the project was, in fact, embeddable and designed as such. One can embed Pitchfork Advances within a simple iFrame. We specifically designed it with the assumption that bloggers knew how to use a simple iframe as they do every other time they embed a widget. The Black Angels advance is down but here is some code to embed a current one:
[iframe width=”550″ height=”413″ src=”http://pitchfork.com/advance/61-rkives/” frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”][/iframe]
(Using brackets instead of caret’s so it’s not stripped out)
We embedded code exactly like this into the first tab on The Black Angels’ Facebook page.
In fairness and in light of the fact that was embeddable, it would be great if you’d take the time to remove false information.
Aaron @ The Orchard
Thanks for that clarification. I’ve updated accordingly.
I agree with what you said about to other artists (though it sounds like you weren’t entirely right about The Black Angels’ project). The one part I’m confused about is where you say Alicia Keys’ Tumblr campaign “still limits itself unnecessarily.” It actually sounds like she’s doing a pretty good job, I notice that she even has an article about the campaign on her website so people can find out more. Do you just think she should focus on cross-platforming promotion?
I hear what you’re saying. And I’m probably being a bit harsh with my overall take but I do think limiting one’s campaign to a single platform or a brief period is generally a mistake.
The Black Angels thing was brief and meant to get people interested in the release. The guy from the Orchard said stuff was embeddable but he doesn’t give any examples so I don’t think that went very far.
At Keys’ level she’s probably doing all sorts of stuff in different places so it was a mistake for me to look at that as a separate piece given that she’s probably present in a lot of places, i.e., it’s not a campaign but a piece of a campaign.
That might well be true for Black Angels as well. But it was promoted to me as a separate thing so I critiqued it separately.
Luke Bryan’s effort seemed like a traditional funnel approach. That obviously still works but has all sorts of problems as well. Social media has transformed the traditional funnel so I think it’s a mistake to not have an embeddable video on his part.
My two cents. Mostly I write for people who can only do one or two things due to limited time and finances. My writing isn’t relevant to superstars and I don’t really care that much about them at the end of the day.