Empowering Context
The Future of Music Sharing Online
Why does sharing matter?
It is the most powerful form of marketing available It feeds on our natural herd mentality People share content to create and enjoy a mutual connection (context) – experience => emotion
History of Music Sharing
USENET MP3.com Napster / Gnutella Torrent RapidShare/Megaupload/Mediafire/etc Nearly any music website/widget lets you share streams
Viral Web
YouTube era changed everything – everyone can share when content is public and free Rush to build content repositories
Inefficient when content owners are uncooperative Those who survived had to give up rights/ownership
Ultimately doesn’t matter where content lives or who owns it. The winners are those who can index and serve the content effectively.
Demo: Playdar
http://www.screencast.com/users/ jherskowitz/folders/Jing/media/ 4b9b4612-72e4-4512-8669-7e50c6f8025d
How do people share content?
Nearly infinite options Add to any – content WANTS to spread, doesn’t care how Key is making it easy to share
Music Interaction Data
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Sharing Data
Favorite Method of Discovery
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Sharing Data
Most Recent Method of Discovery
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Mechanisms for sharing
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Demos
Demo: Playtapus – share to Twitter Demo: The SixtyOne – share to Facebook Demo: Water & Bodies – incentivize share via Email
What about discovery?
Discovery is being on the receiving end of public/indirect sharing As with sharing, context wins – generally needs to be a trusted source or have a compelling story
Demo: FriendP3
Get an MP3 podcast of recently scrobbled songs from your Last.fm friends: http://pipes.yahoo.com/ pipes/pipe.info? _id=f8b4f18b8d3902e50e0d54f9f0815d7c
How do you take advantage of sharing?
Flashmobs form around your content, creating shared context, it’s your job to turn those into an organization that you lead First, what you don’t do: try to contain it What you can do: steer it
How do I steer?
1.Establish direct channels of communication
• •
Email, mobile #, Twitter To a lesser extent, Facebook, MySpace
2.Leverage those channels to encourage your fans to do the same with their fans/ followers
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Facebook users share 28 million pieces of content a month (links, blog posts, photos, music, videos, etc) – more than 18 million people update their status messages at least once a day (Newteevee) – empower them with content and instruction to share
How do I steer?
3.Learn about your fans, both explicitly and implicitly
• •
Explicit: Twitter is an instant polling mechanism Implicit: look at data about your fans
How do I steer?
4.Exceed their expectations
• •
Keep your promises - includes serving quality content Give them more than they ask for
•
See Metric Deluxe bundle:
What would make people share more?
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What is the future of sharing?
Content wants to be free, but may not be convenient – you can make money by making it convenient and compelling If you can give the sharer compelling context, help the sharer create their own context for their network, and maintain a close connection with them, you win – that goes for both artists and web services
How do we get there?
Identify most effective (both volume and efficiency) sharing channels Make it as easy as possible to share in those channels Actively encourage sharing Enable unique context to be added And...?