Social Media Has Shifted the Power: More people now experience The Joy of Discovery
Community Guest Blog post by By Hal Schlenger
The music industry impacts all of us; everyone at the TAG E2.0 February meeting identified themselves as someone who listens to music regularly. An industry whose content and distribution were controlled by companies like A&M, Capitol, Epic, and Apple (check your Beatles history) continues to transition to independently produced content and online distribution channels.
The recently developed Uplaya tool is helping this by taking control from recording label executives and giving it to the music writers and performers according to E2.0’s guest speaker, Kevin Lawver, CTO of Music Intelligence Solutions.
Kevin noted that “the music industry is at wonderful, horrible time.” Much as online distribution removed the industry’s control of the physical distribution of CDs, “Record labels are dinosaurs,” Kevin said. “They act like peer evaluations but our technology is stealing their pie. They are not serving the listeners as they must serve their sponsors and advertisers.”
Uplaya created a tool that rates the commercial success of a song and identifies consumer preferences. Their claim and results have them working with companies that include MTV and Second City Comedy along with the growing indie music community. Uplaya, Kevin claims, “can do the music industry exec’s job of selecting winning artists and content better than they can.”
However, Kevin, and CEO David Meredith have learned that if you build it, they will not come. The three year old product is still in the growth phase in spite of strong user satisfaction.
Knowing that they don’t have the support of the industry’s power brokers, they have turned to the writers and performers by using consumer-oriented tactics. From blogging and contests to “a special promotional offer of 2 free song evaluations”, they have been taking their message to the street --- and dorm rooms and clubs.
“Being social is hard,” was Kevin’s introduction to how Uplaya has grown its customer base. “You need to be authentic. If users see you as inauthentic, they will think you’re a jerk and will stop talking to you. They’ll say mean things about you. Being inauthentic causes more harm than good.”
When being authentic, “be useful or find something else to do,” continued Kevin. “It’s OK to be controversial if you are authentic. Even disagreeing with you moves people to action and keeps them engaged with you.”
“If your stuff isn’t good, if it’s not useful, it’s not worth finding,” Kevin added. “SEO is on the ‘out.’ It will be unnecessary if you are good for your audience.” Kevin advised those new-to-social media to “start with a blog as it allows you to prove your competence and have a conversation with your audience. If you don’t know enough, learn it. Ask a lot of questions; then provide as many answers.”
Kevin cautioned, “Be humble. Cocky doesn’t work. People love proving how smart they are --- give them a chance. You may even find your next employee or biggest fan.”
Kevin, http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinlawver, who is based in Savannah, GA , can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . He recommended you read The Clue Train Manifesto www.thecluetrain.com. The book and website both challenge what the manifesto calls outmoded, 20th-century thinking about business in light of the emergence of the Web, clearly listing "95 theses", as a reference to Martin Luther's manifesto which heralded the start of the Protestant Reformation. As an example of its usage, a veteran of a firm now free-falling out of the Fortune 500 described the company as "The clue train stopped there four times a day for ten years and they never took delivery."
