October 30, 2006
Music Industry gets the message
A California hip-hop station, XMOR-FM, where Diddy made a guest appearance, opened a contest to all high schools in the area, asking students to send a text message with the word "Diddy" during a four-day period. Reuters reports.
"Chula Vista won the contest, logging 34,000 messages. Some students reported sending in hundreds of messages each. In all, the station received more than 170,000 text messages.
The Diddy campaign is just one implementation of many that show how record companies and radio stations use text messaging as a promotional tool.
"Every artist with every track, and all the merchandising and all the advertising, we're using (text messaging) to try and drive business," says David Ellner, executive VP of operations for Universal Motown/Republic Group. "The consumers, from a texting standpoint, are completely literate with this."
Typically, this takes the form of a CD insert listing a special "short code" to which fans can send a text message to buy ringtones and other content.
"I don't think you will see a (marketing) tool coming out of Atlantic Records -- anything from an album, flier or advertisement -- that doesn't have some sort of mobile promotion," says Cyndi Allnot, Atlantic Records' mobile marketing manager.
Labels also are incorporating text-message responses in their TV, radio and print advertising as sort of a mobile URL, and consumers are responding.
According to October figures from mobile traffic measurement firm M:Metrics, 7% of the U.S. mobile subscriber base has used text messaging to respond to such ads. Compared with Spain and the United Kingdom, which boast a 29% and 18.5% response rate respectively, that number may seem low. But it's on par with the 10% reported in France and actually beats the 3.5% reported in Germany.
...Compared with other entertainment industries, like film or TV, the music industry is more sophisticated in its usage of text messaging as a promotional tool".
For anyone wanting to know more about the music industry's interest in mobile phones, read Ringtonia.com, one of the 3 blogs from the textually.org network, which has been covering this side of mobile news daily since 2003.
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