Steve Aoki Unveils New Music Using Turntable.fm

Electro house musician Steve Aoki has chosen to unveil his latest tracks in the context of a Turntable.fm DJ room – making him the first established artist to fully orchestrate a listening session using the platform. While many artists have debuted their tracks online before, this strategic move is a solid example of how one artist has a keen understanding of his audience, and therefore understands the best way to properly engage them.

Aoki and SOL REPUBLIC (the headphone company Aoki represents as a "Savior of Sound") did their diligence and recognized that a high percentage of their audience consists of Turntable.fm users. Appropriately, they partnered up to host a listening room where 200 people at a time could give the tracks a listen. SOL REPUBLIC even gave away free headphones during the listening session.

"For us, we're a passionate brand and we have a lot of fans that feel as strongly about music as we do," said Seth Combs, CMO of SOL REPUBLIC. "Turntable.fm is that fusion of die-hard music fans and technology where you get a lot of passionate listeners and they're all about music." 

By first developing an understanding of their audience, Aoki and team were able to anticipate how their audience would embrace such a campaign. Judging by the high levels of fan engagement, it seemed to have worked rather well.

"We maxed out a room for about six hours," said Aaron Ho (a.k.a SoSimpull), popular Turntable.fm DJ. "For this event, we released a first 'over' technology where we had an overfill room that had a bot play the same thing up in the main room. I'd say we had over 1,000 people show up throughout the day and we pretty much maxed out both rooms.”

Hosting an online listening session using the Turntable.fm platform allowed Aoki to gather his fans in an environment where his music became a supplement to the overall fan experience he was providing. It became a social event, where his fans could participate and immerse themselves in a unique Aoki experience.

"Steve has an audience that's very in touch with our base," said Jordan Davidoff, Artist Relations at Turntable.fm. "It was extremely engaging, and the best part was that Steve appeared to be having a lot of fun during the session."

Given the stats from the Turntable.fm users, and with over 1,000 people logged in on a live uStream feed, this campaign proved that when an artist possesses an understanding of the lifestyle and consumption habits of their audience first, they increase their overall chances of providing compelling ways to engage them.

Turntable.fm plans to run similar campaigns with more artists in the future.

This post is by regular Hypebot contributor and independent music business professional & musician, Hisham Dahud (@HishamDahud)