Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Musican - Fan Commongrounds

A look at a new marketing scheme that could make musicians and fans love each other again.

 A sad truth about many music goers these days, we'd like to see change!


Let's face it, musicians these days are getting hurt.  Not necessarily by big label companies, or by sneaking paparazzi... but their fans!  Pirating of songs has been around for a while - since the 1960's actually even though it was a lengthy project back then : (Source).  But basically if you know anything about computers and music, you know its a LOT easier now than it was back then (even if you weren't born back then, you probably know this).  And there isn't much musicians can do, short of the random lawsuit, and ask Gilbert Gottfried to speak on their behalf. 




 Now while he makes some good analogies, and is fighting for a good cause... lets face it, how many people will actually stop downloading their music because Gilbert Gottfried tells them to go f*@!k themselves?   If a person is acting outside the law, that means they don't really care, or care as much, and a simple "please stop" or "F*%#king STOP!" wont really do much, so there needs to be a plan to solve this dispute, besides asking nicely.

The Best of Both Worlds - The Base Idea

     Instead of musicians fighting pirating fans, musicians should use addicting marketing schemes to make fans prove their loyalty over each other by marketing them things which they will not be able to pirate.  If musicians can give their songs away for free, but still get their fans to buy merchandise and go to concerts, both sides would get what they want.  Fans get to listen to all the music they want without guilt, and musicians get paid for their hard work.

Our Inspiration
http://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html
     Jesse Schell was the Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, along with a few other titles under his belt, so its not a leap of faith to say this guy holds a least a little credibility.  And he has an interesting look at the future where apparently everything you ever do is tracked, and rewarded.  If you have ever been to TED.com, you would know that although some "TEDTalks" are about some pretty outward thinking ideas, they have at least some truth to them, otherwise TED wouldn't film and sell tickets to these TEDTalks.  So lets look at what Jesse is saying, and why we think what he is saying is important to music.  Right around the 20:00 mark, he starts talking about being "watched" and given points for everything you do.  As creepy as this sounds some of it may be the future of marketing.   And not just for Coke and Pepsi, but for emerging and fabled musicians.  But we don't just want this to be a 'fairy tale' idea.  So lets talk about what needs to happen for this to work in the next post. (Click Here)

And here's another anti-piracy video just for kicks:

2 comments:

  1. The blog has a lot of good points and it really isn't fair that musicians are not getting paid for all their hard work. But one thing, I think this part of the blog could be deleted "(even if you weren't born back then, you probably know this)". The sentence could end before this and it would still make sense. Nice work.

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