Hello from Rubber Towers!
February is habitually a short month, and this year proved no exception (except that it was, in fact, slightly longer than normal.) In a quick round-up, here's a dewy-eyed retrospective of the viral world in February '08.
Quick Links
News Round-up:
Michel Gondry's viral publicity machine rolls into town
Something Rubber Republic is itching to see is Michel Gondry's latest film Be Kind. Rewind launched next month, not least of all because of its excellent online (and offline) pre-launch publicity.
The film's premise takes user-generated content to whole new level as Jack Black & Mos Def have to re-film the shop's entire catalogue after it's destroyed by an overly magnetic Black. Recreating these films is a process called Swede-ing - or as Black's character explains “it's putting you into the things you like. The website takes this idea one stage further and encourages visitors to rebuild or ‘swede’ the world wide web.
In this post-ironic-life-imitating-art age that we live in there's already a proliferation of postings on YouTube . There’s even mention of a real life Be Kind. Rewind video store
Let's hope the film's as good as the marketing . . .
Rubber creates first ever viral library (maybe)
As you may (or may not) know, we're a pretty learn-ed lot at Rubber Towers. To match our brainy and bespectacled appearance we've decided to launch our very own library - what we've rather imaginatively called the Rubber Library (see what we've done there?!).
To share the Rubber book love with the world, we've sent a whole range of books to industry friends to get them thinking and inspired. The initial selection we've chosen are 3: the Tipping Point (an obvious choice), the Long Tail, and the Google Story.
The interesting (and relevant) thing about the Rubber Library concept is that it's designed to be viral, in that we encourage to people to share the books (and ideas) with others once they've finished. And the idea already seems to be working, with people reporting back to Rubber Towers to tell us that they're already inspired to spread and share . . .
Online music promotion grows...
Over the past ten years, the internet has affected many aspects of daily life, but arguably nothing has morphed quite as much as the state of the music industry and the attitude and trends of its consumer. At the turn of the century, the initial shift was catalysed by sites like Napster, the prevalence of online file sharing and the numerous loopholes in the law that allowed people - in a broad sense - access to music at home for free for the first time. Napster had even spawned a worldwide hit for Afroman with his song 'Because I Got High', after he put it on the site as a free download. As laws tightened the attitude towards the music industry had already begun to shift. By 2003-4 a wealth of artists were making their demos for free on their home computers and putting up their music free of charge on Social Network sites. In a sense, artists were managing to negate the need for A&R men and the necessity of label backing (and other 'traditional' routes) to make their music heard. Musicians had acquired their own marketing power in that they could actively seek out potential fans of their music, rather than waiting for support to find them through the reliance of third party promotion. This DIY ethic and process has gradually spawned successful and continually flourishing careers for many notable groups, DJ's and artists (Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen anyone?) and a more organically beaten path to success has become officially established.
Due to the already established points raised in my above - hugely inexhaustive, yet concise - historiography, a recent piece of research on the trends between physical (i.e. CD's, Vinyl etc) musical releases and the amount of online activity that surrounds them served to highlight these modern trends further, rather than reveal untold revelations.
Over 8 weeks, 108 album's sales ranking were monitored on Amazon, while a tab was kept on the online activity that surrounded each release, in order to discover if the power of the internet and it's users had as profound an impact as everybody suspects. 'Online activity', although potentially an immeasurable variable, was calculated by the total of articles, blog posts and Myspace friends each album/artist had acquired/written about them. The results found that albums on both independent and major labels enjoyed increased success from increased online activity, so much so that if more than 250 blog posts were written about the release, sales of over 6 times the average could be traced. A higher number of Myspace friends also correlated strongly with better sales, although not quite to the same degree as articles.
The research couldn't conclude whether online activity was the cause of better sales or simply a product of a band or artist being popular in the first place, as people who are going to buy an album are likely to talk about it before, during and after its release regardless. But obviously, a large volume of online activity is going to draw the attention of potentially new fans/listeners. The research also mentioned the importance of not discounting 'traditional' catalysts of better record sales; like an excellent review from a respected music publication for example.
What it can conclude however, is the continued importance of the internet, and the ongoing shift in the fluidity and the mechanisms of the music industry is as evident as ever. It will be interesting see where this goes over another ten years, and how many of the existing Major players in the record industry manage to adapt to this shift and maintain their position. Conversely, it will be equally as interesting to watch the ones that don't.
Details referenced from a blog post that can be found here.
Have we fallen out of love with Facebook?
A couple of issues back we reported that Google were working on a project codenamed Maka-Maka which was their own Soical Networking site that would include all our favourite bits as well as our favourite search engine, photo sharing, google docs, gmail, igoogle- the whole lot.
News broke a week ago that Facebook growth has reached its peak,
Facebook has experienced its first drop in monthly users, according to numbers from web analytics outfit Nielsen Online- it may mean we need to start looking for the 'next big thing'
Five percent fewer people in the UK visited Facebook in January compared to the December. This means that around 400,000 visitors were seemingly bored with the social network and did not bother to return.
Similar drops in interest have hit Facebook's competitors. Bebo has seen an eight percent drop in UK users since October. MySpace, meanwhile, has seen 14 percent of UK users desert it in the last three months.
Nic Howell, deputy editor of internet industry trade magazine New Media Age said this "Social networking is as much about who isn't on the site as who is. When Tory MPs and major corporations start profiles on Facebook its brand is devalued, driving its core user base into the arms of newer and more credible alternatives,"
Nomensa Article
A straw poll in the ofice shows that we're still using the site regularly, but are increasingly irked by Zombie invitations and the need to add more apps to interact with people through the site. There even appears to be a Facebook Purist movement emerging of people reverting to the original features alone to keep it simple.
5 of the best
February saw some great virals pop up- this month's winners are.....
Excit
A game based in a spreadsheet? To tell you about a data-presentation company? Not the most inspiring proposition but an excellent game that engages you and frustrates in equal measure.
Kick A Migrant!
Join a facebook group called "I kicked a migrant out of Australia" and post your score in this game- it makes it's point well and so far over half-a-million migrants have been tossed into the Pacific.
Love March. Love Music.
A quick campaign from Galaxy FM sees a classic game used as a driver for some great prizes, we've got all fingers crossed for the beauty products....
History of Evil
The chances are you've already seen this, it's been on YouTube for a month and had quite an impressive rise through the rankings. While the factual content is sometimes dodgy the v/o and design make this a real treat.
Unscrew America
Beautiful, if muddled. What we really need is for the US to change its lightbulbs over to stop climate change. Can you get energy-saving bulbs for when you open the door of your SUV?
