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While some sit around and lament the decline of the “old” music industry, the digital industry is growing at a healthy rate around the globe.
According to the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry – ironic), digital revenues increased by over 6%. For the first time, the business generated the same amount for digital (46%) and physical (46%) sales.
As an artist, manager, or business trying to earn a buck in this music game, understanding your fan base will be critical to your success. Innovations in the tech industry are making it easier to act on the data services like Spotify, Rhapsody and others generate when a user engages with their platform.
Many artists and musicians are familiar with BandPage, which was founded in March of 2010 by entrepreneur J Sider. The technology allows artists to create a central profile to engage fans on streaming services and social networks like Rhapsody, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter and others.
BandPage simplifies the process of managing an artist or group’s social media presence while providing tools to sell music to fans and mining other valuable data. The application, which powers over 500,000 artist pages, struck a deal with Rhapsody a few months ago to incorporate Bandpage’s behavioral data algorithms.
Rhapsody and BandPage started beta testing a service that allows musicians on Rhapsody to reach the listeners who stream their music the most.
It works like this.
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You are playing your favorite cut. A notification pops up. And just like that you’re interacting with your idol.
Bandpage analyzes the track in real-time as a Rhapsody user listens to the music and ultimately sends a highly targeted push notification.
In the world of marketing, this technique is known as “identifying the user at the time of intent.”
Many marketers are beginning to utilize “intent data.”
This is information that can be analyzed in real-time to deliver an offer or an ad, triggered by a user’s actions.
The end goal is to increase open and click-through rates and to retarget the most active fans.
And then the possibilities start to materialize: a discount offer on merchandise, or a message to alert you to the fact that your favorite rapper is doing a secret show nearby.
It is an interesting use of push notifications and seems to be resonating with music fans, according to the early data released by Rhapsody and BandPage.
On average, Rhapsody artists using Bandpage’s algorithm had a click-through rate that was twice as high as Google Search. It was ten times greater than the average for Facebook Ads and over 50 times more effective than web display advertising.
Rapper Flo Rida has been promoting his single “I Don’t Like It I Love It” with Robin Thicke and Verdine White. He is using the current promotional push to experiment with the service and is seeing favorable results.
“This is an important path forward for musicians, and I hope all streaming services make efforts to support musicians in this way,” Flo Rida told CollegeHipHop.com in a statement.
“I, for one, will be directing my fans to use the streaming services that do this, and I suggest the same to my fellow musicians. We are the musicians, we are innovative, and creative entrepreneurs and the streaming services that are innovative with us will benefit by having our support,” Flo Rida continued. “It’s a win-win. The solutions that BandPage has created are the kind of innovations that change industries, and it’s time for us as an industry to act on it.”
