Music Export Finland tarjoaa asiakkailleen mahdollisuuden tutustua musiikkialan konsultointiyritys Music Allyn uutissisältöön julkaisemalla Sandbox-uutiskirjeen artikkelin Musiikkiviennissä.
Best Face Forward
By Music Ally, Published in Sandbox on May 5, 2011
Could Facebook be doing more to help artists and labels with their social marketing campaigns? Recent comments from RootMusic CEO J. Sider were more nuanced than they appeared in print. As Facebook focuses on building a platform for other companies to innovate on, opportunities are emerging for startups and marketers to do just that.
Sider’s comments at the Rethink Music conference sounded pretty critical divorced of their context. “When’s the last time you tried to do something with Facebook and they listened to you?” he said. “We need a concise platform around music that’s here to work with you.”
He subsequently clarified those comments, telling the Evolver.fm blog that RootMusic has a “great relationship” with Facebook, which is not dissimilar to the partnerships being seen in the social games industry.
“I would say ‘Facebook does not focus on bands, so we do.’ Just like Facebook doesn’t focus on games so Zynga does. Facebook does an amazing job at providing a great platform and it is our job at RootMusic to improve and make the most out of it for musicians.”
It was likely co-incidence that a few days after Sider’s original comments, Facebook revamped its Music on Facebook page, which was originally launched in 2008 to tie in with the SXSW festival.
“Whether you're a musician, have a job in the music industry, or simply love good tunes, this is the Page to stay up-to-date with what is happening in music on Facebook,” explained its introductory posting.
The page contains information and advice on how musicians can use Facebook to connect with their fans, and provides a list of ‘preferred developers’ to build applications with. RootMusic isn’t yet one of them, but those citing music as one of their verticals include Livestream, Organic Spread Media, 909c, Personera, Ralph, Kremsa Design and 77Agency.
“We want to get better and better at helping people in the music industry connect with each other and their fans in a meaningful way,” Facebook spokesperson Meredith Chin told Mashable as the page relaunched. The strategy is clear: Facebook builds the platform, and while it will offer advice on how to use it, artists and labels are being directed towards external agencies and developers for the nuts’n’bolts of Facebook apps and marketing.
New startups are springing up all the time, too. In late April, for example, a company called Neurotic Media launched its Music Check-In Incentives service, which aims to provide free music downloads to Facebook users who check in at certain venues through the Facebook Places service. The building blocks are Facebook’s, but the service on top is the startup’s.
There’s an argument to be made that rather than Facebook doing more to work with the music industry, it simply needs to carry on developing new platform features that savvy startups can use to work with the music industry. Or, indeed, any creative industry.
At the recent MIPTV conference, Facebook’s head of international business development Christian Hernandez Gallardo cited the example of Hollywood studio Warner Bros, which is renting streaming films on its Facebook page.
Gallardo was at pains to point out that this wasn’t a case of ‘Facebook launching streaming movies’, but was rather a partnership between the studio and startup Milyoni. “We’re not going out commissioning content, we’re just providing a platform for distribution,” he said.
We think Facebook may have an equally important role in education going forward, however: providing case studies and best practice tips on how musicians and music companies are innovating on its platform. Of course, there is hardly a shortage of social media gurus and marketing agencies trumpeting stats, but data from Facebook itself will inevitably carry more weight.
That said, on the data side too, startups are emerging to make a valuable contribution to the debate. In April, for example, a company called Visibli published some stats on what Billboard termed ‘the half-life of a Facebook Post’. Which is to say that 50% of Facebook likes happen within one hour and 20 minutes of the item being posted – and 95% happen within 22 hours.
That’s valuable data for artists and marketers, even if it came from outside Facebook itself. Expect many more analytics data to be published from this kind of company in the months ahead, in much the same way that there is an explosion in apps data from companies touting their wares in that space.
Does Facebook need to do more for the music industry? A more accurate way of putting it would be that Facebook needs to continue helping other companies do more for the music industry on the social network.
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