EMI Launches “Your SoundCheck” Online Music Research Community
EMI has quietly launched Your SoundCheck, "an exclusive online research community of people with a passion for music". This new extension of an initiative which began in December with the relaunch of EMI.com will be gathering data about how people discover and purchase music.
Email invites began going out Friday to some registered users of EMI.com offering free access to pre-release content and an opportunity to share what they "think about new music, new bands and advise us on our music-making decisions". Opinions will, the invite promises, "go straight to the heart of one of the world's leading music companies, helping to shape tomorrow's music."
Suggesting that Your SoundCheck is still beta, one question in the introductory five minute online survey asks the user to rate alternative names for the service. Other questions ask age, location music discovery and purchase habits, but nothing about the styles of music favored. No other content is offered thus far.
Well, at least there is a label that tries something. The fact that they do not ask about preferences in musical style makes it plainly obvious that this survey of market research must have been initiated by the salespeople rather than the A&R department. The goal is probably to pick up music lovers where they are, to tailor the marketing more individually.
Too bad that this doesn’t make the music itself any better or any different, even if the marketing says so.
Artists could do better if the A&R and sales departments let them, if they were encouraged to experiment, to pour their emotions into their music more freely and explicitly, to not hold back trying to fit a demographic or some other statistical entity like that.
As a listener, I always enjoy music the most, when I can hear that the musicians had fun in the studio while they were making it. I enjoy it the most when you can hear that the singer is being honest. Tailoring your songs to an audience sitting underneath a bell curve doesn’t produce anything musically special but just the plain sameold average over and over again. Some of these acts even wear the same hats. Listen closely to the sounds and lyrics of albums by Gavin DeGraw, Daniel Powter, Josh Kelley, Jason Mraz, for an example of that kind of sameness.
The music of rather visual acts suffers even more under the bell curve, because of AutoTune and other ProToolery taken the honesty out of the music, whereas they of course benefit greatly from their looks because at least that is a department where they are still allowed to be unique. And next, they quit the music business for fashion, like Gwen Stefani.
Of course, you cannot tell this to a label when all you can do in their survey is just tick boxes. But I guess they don’t really want to know.
Of course, if you don’t fit their target demographic (UK/US), they’re not interested. They still don’t get that it’s a global economy. Money is money whether it comes from Manchester or Malawi!
This seems like a play at an EMI centric online community initiative…..I’d love to see them succeed but am having a hard time believing that people will ever have a social trend driven reason to type EMI.com into their browser.
The culture of record companies has been so much the polar opposite of what social networking sites have had to be to succeed. Do you think that it’s even possible for them to transition into that structure, inclusive, transparent and inviting as opposed to controlling, closed and exclusive? I mean can you see Donnie Ienner changing his priorities based on what suggestions from an open web forum?
brendan b brown
wheatus.com