eMusic Campaigns for Independent Artists
In the years since the file-swapping free-for-all led by Napster in the late 90s, digital music has undergone a substantial facelift. Legal squabbles have since forced the aforementioned site to go legit and form a pay service, subsequently shutting down many other P2P programs and basically handing the digital music market over to bigwigs like Apple and Yahoo.
With all the “unlimited” music deals and cutthroat competition comprising the field today, a digital content provider like eMusic feels it’s all a bit cluttered. “If you think about the music services, they’re somewhat commodified in that they promote the same type of music, and they actually have a similar look and feel to their ad campaigns,” says eMusic Senior VP of Sales and Marketing Chris Hoerenz.
In response, eMusic is going against the grain by launching a multimillion dollar integrated advertising/branding campaign this week to reclaim “the soul of independent music”, spotlighting artists who themselves are independent spirits - past and present. “You’ll see everything from great, uncompromising icons like Ray Charles and Johnny Cash to up n’ coming artists like Arcade Fire and Bloc Party,” says Hoerenz.
While eMusic handled the majority of media buys through their in-house acquisitions division, the company hired Boston agency MMB to handle both the online and offline creative executions. The TV spots, currently airing on nets like FX, Spike and TNT, feature two different 10-, 30- and 60-second spots pay homage to independent music through a montage of concert footage, music videos and still frames of bands and fans. Along with the stills of Johnny Cash, the songs featured in the spots are Bloc Party’s “So Here We Are” and The New Pornographer’s “Bleeding Heart Show”. The commercials are translated directly into the interactive effort through a series of banners appearing on renowned niche sites like PitchforkMedia.com.
“The banners, which will bring people to our site, will reflect the stills of Johnny Cash and bring a lot of our taglines in,” Hoerenz explains. “The idea is to get them to click through to our pages, and then on those pages, they’ll have the ability to click and see the video footage.”
The eMusic exec says that the online marketing push gives the campaign plenty of added value. “[The banners] allow us to take advantage of what the Web can do that print media can’t do, which is bring the sound and video imagery. Hopefully, we’ll see fantastic conversion rates from that experience.” Additionally, eMusic negotiated online buys on the websites of many renowned music print publications including Spin, Relix and Paste.
As its core, the eMusic campaign is not just a branding effort for the second biggest digital music download service (behind iTunes, of course), but an opportunity to promote the company’s more indie-centric approach. “Essentially, we feel that independent music is underserved in the mass media channels,” Hoerenz says. “Especially here in New York, if you listen to the radio, you’ll probably agree with that. No matter where you are, you’re hearing the same 5 or 10 artists. But what we represent is the 30% of the music in the market that comes from independent labels. Our [model] is very different, and what we’re trying to do [with this campaign] is replicate that feel for everything we do online.”
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