Awesome way to market through social media

Hey,
So recently a lot of music artists/bands in Australia have been releasing music online before physical distribution (if they physically distribute at all) and have found an awesome way to penetrate their target market and create a viral buzz. They set up a website for themselves where their fans can go and download or stream their new song or video. But before the fans can access the new material they need to enter their facebook or twitter user name and password and agree to let the site promote through their account. So every time someone downloads the song or listens to it or watches the video online, a tweet is automatically sent from their account or a link is sent through their fb page with a message saying "listening to (band name)'s (song name) for free, RT" or something similar to that. This may seem very small and insignificant but actually has a huge impact on the traffic to the site.

When one person does it, that message reaches all of their social network contacts of which a few are bound to do the same and it begins again. When some of the bigger bands release something, my facebook and twitter time line is often completely flooded with messages about what ppl are listening to or watching. This way of marketing is effective, virtually free, has a sense of credibility as it is coming from friends and peers and has the potential to snowball and get very big very quickly.

Here are some recent, bigger examples of what I'm talking about.

http://www.heroesforhire.com.au/

http://www.theamityaffliction.com/

Check them out :)

Who buys music any more????

We are in an era where physical forms of music purchase such as CDs or tapes are completely obsolete. CD sales have consistently been plummeting since napster was invented and artists have now given up hope of making money out of their recorded releases and now rely on money from live shows, label payments and endorsements for their living.

The only saving grace is that music is sold online through iTunes and other such mediums. Therefore because the product is being sold online, it needs to be marketed online. iTunes has come up with quite a useful program called 'genius' which reads your play list and suggests other bands/artists/albums that are similar and the user is likely to enjoy. This is great targeted advertising as it is not pushed and doesn't even look like advertising. It exposes new music to consumers who are most likely to buy it and offers the sale. Sites such as iLike serve a similar purpose of matching listeners with new music they might like.

A huge problem facing this industry is illegal, free downloads. Everyone does it and it is so easy to do. So when a product is readily available for free on the same medium as it is available for sale and there is no considerable difference in difficulty of acquisition or quality of product, why would anyone pay for music???   

eBay makes ppl SO angry

hahaha SO angry!!!!
But seriously.
The anonymity that the internet creates for it's users is often a dangerous thing as people can try things that they wouldn't try in a non virtual environment. There is less accountability, less guilt and if done properly, less chance that a person's real name or image will be damaged. This is a major barrier for online marketing. Marketers in real life, face to face situations have the image of liars and scam artists, imagine how people feel about them when they can't even see them or know any of their real details. Has anyone ever thought that pop up saying "CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE THE 500,000TH VISITOR. YOU WIN $2M" is legit??? I did the first time I saw it when I was little... We had to get a new computer because of the viruses.

Yoohoo

YO!!!
So this is my first blog and all. It's for my e Marketing class and so pretty much every week I'm going to just come on here and say a little something about electronic marketing. Hopefully it will not be boring. Stay tuned y'all :D