Adam Duritz ofCounting Crows is many things. Apart from the crafter of hits like ?Mr. Jones? and much loved movie music like?Accidentally in Love,? Duritz is a full-blown social marketing thought-leader. I had the chance to catch Adam this week giving a presentation at the Pivot Conference, part of Social Week in NYC. His session was called ?The Audience Imperative: a New Relationship Between Artists and Fans.?
It will come as no surprise to those who know Adam?s history he?s an independent thinker. He?d have to be to look at the longstanding system of artists, record labels and radio stations that made him famous and helped him sell 40 million records, and say it?s broken. To realize that even though it worked for him, it doesn?t work for most artists. And it?s not because those artists aren?t any good.
The social landscape, and specifically how Facebook is changing the music & radio industries, is putting an enormous amount of power and opportunity in the hands of both musicians and the fans who love them. Do labels and radio stations have a place in this going forward? According to Adam, they could, provided they see, understand, and help facilitate what?s going on. Adam?s comments:
-Artists can?t get famous from behind a computer screen. They still need to be out there, meeting as many people as they can, making face-to-face personal connections.
-You screw up when you directly market your music online, because viral isn?t linear. At best it?s reciprocal. If you want your fans to do something, you have to be giving them something first, such as a vested interest.
-What made you a million dollars today may not make you a million dollars tomorrow. That?s how fast things are changing. Companies gorge themselves on research and obsess over every number. But today?s research may not even apply to tomorrow.
-Radio screwed up when research changed the way it programs stations. It?s misuse of information. Social can make this same mistake if they go overboard on analytics and operate with no gut instinct, pure originality or common sense.
-Radio has almost completely dismissed the importance of discovery. In the process, they also got rid of the passion music should inspire. When a fan discovers a new group, they feel personally and emotionally invested in seeing them make it, they want to be a part of it.
-When radio stations stopped interacting with their hardcore fans face-to-face & on the phone, and went to random surveying, they messed up. Social is about listening closely to those who love you the most. Nobody knows better than they do what fans want from you, what you?re doing right, and what you?re doing wrong.
-When someone complains, it?s not a negative thing. They?re trying to tell you how to make your product work better for them and people like them. To dismiss them is arrogant and puts a wall between you and the real human advise you need.
-Radio messed up by getting rid of the on-air talent, and by taking away the talent?s ability to discover and expose people to new music. There were no bigger fans of music, no greater lovers of radio, and no greater friends to listeners then jocks. Radio has severed its lifeline, its umbilical chord to its fans.
-The public can?t tell you they want something that they don?t even know exists yet. You can research them and focus group them to death, and they won?t know what to tell you. But they know it when they hear it. And when they do organically discover it?they can?twait to tell the world about it.
-People are on a blog, or a site, or a Facebook Page because they?re totally into what that stream is about. That kind of focus on a specific interest can be far more powerful than traditional mass media.
-People want to be part of a ?scene.? So make a scene.
-Social media is driven by the way real people act toward each other. If your band or your station isn?t talking to fans like two human beings talking together, you?re off the mark.
Mike Stiles is a writer/producer with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue, and head of Sketchworks comedy theatre. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files.
Find him on Facebook or on Twitter @mikestiles
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