GenDigital

Paris Lands on YouTube To Promote Her New Album

Those of you who doubted the staying power of Paris Hilton (myself included) in the past only to be chagrined as she persevered, here's another chance to say no way. This time however, I am going to lean on the side of her succeeding as she makes a transition from heiress/reality tv star/club promoter to musical artist. In a coup for the video site YouTube.com, Paris' new CD, which is available as of today will be one of the first products marketed on the site's front page. As reference points, according to our most recent Top Ten Report, YouTube is the 8th most popular site among teens and college students and Paris (for one reason or another) is the 6th most popular female celebrity. Based on her new album, I expect her popularity (prepare to gasp) to actually increase significantly over the next three months. Take a listen for yourself...her stuff is (I can't believe I am going to say this) pretty good and should certainly resonate among her target market of tweens, teens and young adults.

Concert Attendance Should Be Up This Summer

I just got back the results from our monthly trend report (email me if you would like a complimentary issue) and thought I would share one of the more interesting results. One of the most popular summertime activities for teens and college students is attending a musical concert. We began tracking summer concert attendance two years ago and have noticed an increase in attendance and planned attendance since 2004. This summer, 53% of teens and college students plan to attend (or have already attended) at least one musical concert, up from 47% last year and 44% two years ago. In addition to asking our proprietary panelists whether or not they plan to attend a concert, we follow up and ask which acts they plan to see. As you can imagine, the musical tastes of Gen Y vary widely by age, gender and mostly, geographic location. The increased popularity of this season's installment of American Idol should have a positive effect on the Idol Live Summer Tour, with more than 10% of panelists planning to attend one of the stops, making it the second most popular touring act behind only the Dave Matthews Band, and ahead of other big names like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, reggaeton star Shakira and former American Idol champ Kelly Clarkson. Oh, by the way, the Idol Live Tour kicked off last night in Manchester, NH, but without runner-up Katharine McPhee, who was sidelined with a case of laryngitis. As I've posted several times before, the whole concept of live event marketing and promotions works well with the Gen Y audience. Integrating a product or specific promotion alongside a concert tour has positive effects: your aligning your product next to something that is already deemed cool and relevant by your target audience, you're reaching out to them at a time when their wallets are open and they are in a good mood, and the opportunity to get right up to them with a product sample or something to that effect will never be greater. With attendance and planned attendance up, the hardest part for marketers and media companies is choosing the right musical act to partner with.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment Serves Up User Generated Content

Sony BMG Music Entertainment has unveiled Musicbox, a new flash-based site that offers videos, interviews, rarely seen footage and best of all, attempts to reach out to music bloggers and fan sites to link to the content. Because the footage is flash-based, the content is not as easy to pirate, which gives a certain comfort level for the music giant to take on a such a venture. Visitors are encouraged to link to certain portions of the site and the code and instructions for setting up the links is easily found on the site. This should be a great opportunity for Sony to promote their roster of artists both new and old on a platform that is sure to gel with the current technological tastes of Gen Y.

Customize Your iPod With a Skin

Courtesy of PSFK, Gen Y can customize their iPod with one of these wild skins. The skins made by GelaSkin are adhesive-based so they can be easily removed once the customer grows tired of their current one and yearns for a new one. The skins can be purchased for $14.95 directly on the site. And if you go ahead and purchase, GelaSkins will throw a free one in. My favorite is entitled "Crazy for Dance," by Yumiko Kayukawa.

Katharine McPhee Lands Record Deal

Katharine McPhee, the American Idol runner-up has landed a record deal with legendary music mogul Clive Davis. Pretty soon you will be able to listen to "Over The Rainbow" and "My Destiny" till your little heart is content. Her album will be released later this month both in stores and online. American Idol champ Taylor Hicks, Mr. Soul Patrol, is also under Clive's leadership at 19 Recordings Unlimited.

Can Mobile Marketing Help Up and Coming Musical Acts?

Music labels are notoriously frugal when it comes to promoting new acts. That said, many up and comers are turning to the third screen to create some buzz. The concept of utilizing mobile phones to create ring tones and wallpapers is to do something original and eye-catching that will hopefully expose an act's work to a larger audience. Several companies have popped up to aid the potential stars. Mobile content developer UrbanWorld Wireless has deals with several unsigned rappers to develop ring tones as part of its "Street Beatz" offering. Then there are other companies like Groupietunes and Xingtones that allow musical artists to create their own ring tones and sell them to their fans directly.

MTV's Urge To Set Sail

The New York Times reports that MTV's online music service Urge is expected to launch today, although I just visited the site, and nothing is going on yet. As a re-cap, the long-awaited digital music downloading service from the number one cable television network among teens and college students, is essentially based on a strategic partnership with Microsoft (which works well since they badly needed a music partner and who better than the king) that will heavily promote the new service on Windows Media Player, which by no coincidence, releases a new version today. For all intensive purposes, the service is just like Napster or Yahoo Music with a two-tiered pricing model where users pay $9.95 to listen to music or $14.95 a month to download. And of course, the biggest catch of all, while most portable digital music players including popular models from Samsung, are compatible with the MTV service, the market leader, the iPod is not.

Trend Alert: Social Networking Brings Social Music Site

Check out Last.fm. With the explosive growth of social networking sites a la Facebook and Myspace, here's a site that leverages a similar take except this is music exclusive. And, at the end of the day it is still all about music. Last.fm allows users to create their own music profiles and seek out others that have similar tastes. Yes, you can do this on Myspace, but there is a heck of a lot of other stuff going on there as well, this is more targeted. I'd imagine this is not the last time I will post about the site.

Kelly Clarkson Signs With Ford

Ford Motor Company recently promised a bigger ad spend and more creative concepts as part of a new plan called "Bold Moves." The effort is being lead by Ford's agency J. Walter Thompson Detroit. The official launch of Bold Moves is tomorrow when Ford will air a sixty second spot during American Idol featuring an unreleased song from former American Idol winner and now, super-performer Kelly Clarkson. Ford also said they will sponsor Clarkson's summer tour. 

Napster Offers New Ad Supported Music Service

Changing strategic plans again, Napster has shifted to a new advertising-supported model for its flagship digital music service. Of course like any offer (remember "no late fees from Blockbuster") there is a catch. Users can listen to a song up to five times, after the five times they will have to pay 99 cents for the song or sign up for the monthly subscription service which will cost you either $9.95 or $14.95 per month depending on which level you want. Again, as I've said in the past, I strongly believe this won't make a huge difference in site traffic and/or new members for Napster at the end of the day. The fact that users still cannot transfer songs to their iPod, kills more than 80% of your target audience right off the bat. I never went to business school, but I'm pretty sure there are some basic premises when devising a strategic plan that says if you are eliminating 80% of your target market on day one, better re-think your plan.