It’s been a rough few years for the music business. The rise of illegal file-sharing networks like Napster and Kazaa and legal music download services like iTunes and the new Napster has all but utterly destroyed the old business model. Label and brand loyalty seems to be going the way of the dodo. If music fans can download their tunes a song at a time to their cell phones, without even bothering to take in a whole album, why should they bother with the concerted efforts of an entire label?
But every change brings with it new opportunities, and the latest digital music revolution is no exception. An Australian mobile marketing services company is ready to capitalize on the digital music world using a piece of technology that, until now, has been the nemesis of the Old Music model—the mobile phone.
BroadcasterMedia, an Australia-based mobile marketing services company that specializes in ongoing, graphics-rich mobile content, can set up a personal communication channel for music brand users, reachable by an SMS number. The number can appear anywhere—billboards, bus stop shelters, music websites and online bulletin boards, confirmation e-mails for music downloads. Like the best guerrilla marketing, the number doesn’t sell more songs directly; it gets customers to agree to receive content from the label.
Users who text the number can download the hottest news from the label, browse music catalogues, play online games, and enter contests with music and memorabilia as prizes. The BroadcasterMedia system develops an online community on users’ cell phones—continuously evolving and self-updating, giving users the sense that they can not only carry their music with them no matter where they go, they can take the world that produced that music, too. Forget fashion labels—music labels could be the next lifestyle statement.
“Consumers like to feel they are part of an exclusive club and that feeling results in brand loyalty,” BroadcasterMedia CEO Tammy Halter explained in a company press release. “Whether they are waiting for a bus, are on a train or at the beach, consumers want to be able to instantly check what's new from your company.”
Content providers as diverse as Toyota (download info on the entire fleet with one SMS) and Ohio theme parks (roller coaster line lengths at teenagers’ fingertips), and Detroit Ignition (soccer stadium communication with the fans), have used the system to generate loyalty. It has even been used for charitable purposes—Wildlife Warriors Worldwide, the wildlife preservation foundation created by the late Steve Irwin of Crocodile Hunter fame, used it to develop a text-to-donate system. Its uniquely adaptable architecture makes it open to nearly all music fans, regardless of mobile service provider or handset manufacturer, around the world. Members can enter online forums, sign up for e-newsletters, and, of course, buy more music through the system.
The system also allows content providers to track what users do with the information they download—update it regularly, download video and audio, and forward to a friend. Think Information Age epidemiology. Credit to : Lily Steiner
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