SanFran Music Tech Summit Brings together Music, Technology, and all Things in between

I’m at the SanFran MuysicTech Summit today—one of the more intimate and conversational conferences in the Valley. Brian and Shoshana Zisk put this celebratory event once a year—bringing together music, technology, and the people who care about both.

We’re starting this morning with a panel dedicated to reaching fans. On the panel:

Dave Champaine- Local Music Vibe

Jeremy Welt- Warner Bros Recrods

Dvae DeVore- FanMail

Panos Pannay- Sonicbids

Aaron Clark- Mozes

Moderated by Sean O’Connell- Music Alliance

Welt speaks about the subtlety of channel use and making sure both artist and fans know how to use the channels. “You need to let the fans what you’re doing on each channel. If you’re on facebook, let them know this is where you put information, but if they want to communicate with you, they should use MySpace.”

Clark speaks of the importance of authenticity in communication.

Pannay highlights the evolution of communication between fans and artists. Fans now expect to have a say, to have a two-way communication.

Welt: The evolution of communication also means artists get to hear what fans think—it may not always be positive.

DeVore: “There’s a lot of bad messaging in the music industry. No one really knows who’s in charge. Who’s role is it to be in charge of understanding the fans and developing the strategy for communicating with these fans.”

Welt: “It’s really hard to connect to fans if you don’t have a strategy. You have different rights owners, each person is communicating with the fans in a different way.” There’s no consistency. That’s a challenge artists need to face. Someone needs to coordinate all that.

Champaine: “More and more it’s up to the artist to reach the fans.”

Pannay: “I believe there are all kinds of new ways to develop new audiences.” Paradoxically, bands don’t think of these. You have to think of a new—or perhaps an old school way—of how to develop a fan base. “The music industry has a lot to learn from politics.”

“The brands and the message need to be owned by one entity. In era when there are so many messages who are going in and out, having someone who owns all these channels is critical.”

Welt: Artists should have their own site not owned by otheres. Make sure you can control that. Make your hub first and then start building it out. If you have your own hub, you can bring all the other channels into it.

Champaine: “By encouraging the artist to put their external links on their webpage, more people end up coming back to it because different fans live in different social networks. By having one location where they can reach their music, they start there and then extend.”

Clark: Bands need to consider how their decisions impact their fans. The more channels, the more confusing it gets for fans to determine which channel they need to use.

Jake Owen leverages text messaging and IVR. He opens conversations via text messaging, calls them back or texts them messages. He sets up a camera, then films himself as he reviews the feed--reading comments outloud—and keeps the camera on as he calls fans back. Using this method, he became real and so has the conversation with the fans.

DeVore: Cost of new (music) customer acquisition is 10 times the cost of reaching out to existing customers/fans.

Welt: There are various examples of using creative strategies to differentiate artists and build the conversation with fans. Michelle Branch used the internet. InSync, Backstreet Boys were all the rage, and the fact that she took a different direction: just playing the guitar, speaking to important messages to the fans, helped to drive her forward. Authenticity of music, different path.

Ashley Tisdale’s strategy was to go on YouTube and converse with her fans. Once the fans came to see her messages, we surfaced the message about her upcoming records, etc.

Mastodon do incredible visual merchandising like shirts. They connected with their fans through this creative commerce.

The panel emphasizes it’s important that artists stay authentic in how they communicate with artists. Some do it via twitter, facebook, SMS…others Jack White of the White Stripes does that through creating new music bands. While the panel is partial on whether artists must be on the internet, using social media tools to reach fans, they agree unanimously that whatever the channel, it needs to speak to where the fans go to get information.