It’s no secret that the advent of peer-to-peer sharing online has hurt the music industry in recent years. ‘Sharing’ meant ‘pirating’ which led to massive losses in record sales. But now new technology platforms including local company Posse have turned ‘sharing’ into ‘crowd sourcing’ and are transforming the way music is made, marketed and sold.
Later this month Posse presents ‘Music Social’; events designed to help artists anticipate trends and new technologies in digital marketing and how to harness the power of a crowd for good. ‘Music Social’ takes place at the MTV Headquarters in East Sydney on August 24 and in Brisbane at the Powerhouse Theatre on August 22.
Partnering with ARIA, MTV, Music NSW & Q-Music, the events will feature international technology leaders including Lars Rasmussen (Founder of Google Maps and currently Director of Engineering at Facebook), Ernesto Soriano III (Product Manager at YouTube), Gavin Parry (Chair of the ARIA Digital Committee & Head of Digital at Sony Music) and Rebekah Campbell (Former artist manager & Founder of Posse). The Sydney event will be hosted by ARIA CEO Dan Rosen.
Posse launched last August and already is offering a drastic change to the way tours can be promoted. The Posse platform enables artists to empower and reward their fans for promoting their tickets through social networks. Bands offer rewards or commissions to fans who can generate sales of tickets to friends who see their posts on Facebook, Twitter or blogs. Over 200 artists and festivals have used the site since launch and offered fans the opportunity to win backstage passes, exclusive merchandise and even dinner with the band before a show.
Posse CEO Rebekah Campbell said ‘When Posse launched we knew we had a good idea. We’ve spent the past 12 months evolving the platform, learning from both bands and fans what works and what doesn’t and we’re now at a point where the site is working. It’s exciting to see bands using us to encourage and reward fans for doing what they love. Our system is just a neat piece of technology that makes the process really easy through integrations with social networks and the ticketing websites like Moshtix and OzTix. We also track the success of the fans and enable the band to incentivize and communicate with their advocates.’
Campbell also said ‘The process of breaking an artist has changed a lot since I started managing bands 10 years ago. I think the internet has been a net positive for the industry. A band these days can get their record funded by their fans using crowd-sourced sites like ‘Pledge Music’, sell direct to fans via a platform like ‘Top Spin’ and now Posse lets you crowd-source the marketing as well.’
