Thanks for all the support guys, it really has been a blast!

Check out this interview at Upstart Magazine where I talk with Ryan Jon about country music going online (Note: I did not choose the title of said article).

The ULTIMATE Country Music Fan Experience with the ULTIMATE Opportunity for Consumer Engagement!

Quick Stats:

• 65,000 fans in attendance
• 55, 000 visited the Exhibition Hall
• Bigger crowds in free areas with River Stage and Family Zones
• 56 hours of free concerts
• A focus on Sport, Fun and Family Zones with ‘fun and friendly activities’
• Overall, the festival generated 700,000 active consumer impressions through product samplings, dedicated registrations and brand impressions.

Conclusions?

Corporate sponsors were able to benefit from an established community of country music brand evangelists through a series of activities and events tailored to engage the target consumer: families.

If you are interested in witnessing country music and social media in practice then look no further than the CMA‘s Tweet n’ Greet:

The “Tweet ‘N’ Greet” will create an interactive feed between the fans and artists. Fans will have a direct connection to some of their favorite performers, not only allowing them the opportunity to ask questions, but also providing them with behind-the-scenes access. In addition, CMA (@CountryMusic) will be updating fans with information on the participating artists’ upcoming album releases, tour dates, and appearances. The official hashtag for the event is #cmatv. Fans using the hashtag will be entered to win prizes during the show. For more information, visit: CMAfest.com/tweet.

Source

Please click here and here for more information.

Back to my case study chapter!

I highly recommend checking out this blog post by Sedona Grisham over at No Depression titled ‘Transient Invisibility: Has Music Lost Its Soul’.

Happy trails!

“Don’t be a tape player hater” – Luke Bryan/Galen Griffin/Patrick Jason Matthews

I have a confession to make. I spend hours and hours a week consuming information from HypeBot, Digital Music News, Billboard, Pitchfork, Mi2N and a bottomless list of blogs concerned with music futurism.

What am I reading about?

As music news goes, I am reading about whether Apple will finally introduce cloud-based technology and why songwriters can’t make a living and yet more music is being published now than ever before. In recent months my inner nerd especially enjoyed the blog post discussing the number of clicks it takes to access music content.

What else am I doing?

Instead of consuming the music product like a fan, I load the album (if I do in fact have the actual CD) into iTunes, grab my laptop and analayse. For example…

• I examine the length of introductions to see if they sync with Jay Frank’s future hit methodology.
• I consider whether the three verse model is still viable in popular country music.
• I question why Big Machine Records opted to place Taylor Swift‘s “Mine” under the ‘pop’ category in iTunes.

I love music. And yet, I am more concerned with monitoring online conversations, engaging in discussions and analysing digital media strategies.  I admit it. I am 22 years old and I am already an over analytical musical cynic.

What am I going to do?

For one week I am putting forward a music mandate to enjoy the music and consume it.

I will buy Steve Forde‘s Hurricane from an independent music retailer, I will load the album into my car and I will drive until the last track is finished.

I encourage you to do the same.

I promised myself that I would not enter into the blogsphere, invest a little time in a blog and then abruptly abandon the cause. I am not lazy (well, a little). I am not lying by a pool somewhere sipping mocktails and listening to The Mystiqueros. I am not even sitting on a couch watching ABC News 24 reporting on a group of Belgians who used 800,000 begonias to create a majestic flower carpet.

Instead, I am permanently attached to my ergonomic chair, sitting in front of my iMac and performing a textual analysis on two notable country music websites.

Every morning I wake up at 5am, check my Blackberry for emails (because it makes me feel like I am working), catch up on Google Reader, browse my Twitter feed, brew a cup of coffee and return to my desk for eight hours of academic neurosis. This has been my living pattern for the past sixty days and will continue for the next sixty.

In the meantime I will post some solid outside content, some random quotes and function as a non-automated link farm. Why? Because I have 22,000 words due in less than sixty days. I am also too much of a realist to know that I simply can not commit to maintaining this tiny little blog in the way that I would like to.

With that said, here is some solid outside content from my own daily source of inspiration, HypeBot:

Marketing To An Audience With An Audience.

Brian Solis, recognized as one of the most prominent thinkers and published authors in new media, is always insightful and thought-provoking. In the video below, where he talks about the troubles that marketers face when marketing to an audience with an audience, is a small snapshot into why his opinion and books are so influential:

“Good communications is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Ben Bennett of the Country Music Association and speaker at Social Fresh Nashville discusses the state of social media use within Country Music as a whole. Some standouts include Taylor Swift, the Zac Brown Band, and Rascal Flatts.

Music and art have the potential to be about participation, engagement and collaboration and this project is a testament to that.

“If a song can’t be written in twenty minutes, it ain’t worth writing.” – Hank Williams

Source via HypeBot.

These are a few of the books that proven to be invaluable to me as I navigate my way through my own country music research:

• Clinton Walker – Buried country: the story of Aboriginal country music
• Richard A Peterson – Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity
• Bill C Malone – Country Music, U.S.A
• The Encyclopaedia Of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide…
• Graeme Smith – Singing Australian
• Diane Pecknold – The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry…
• Charles K Wolfe – A Good-Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry

Any suggestions?

Legendary songwriter Hank Cochran passed away earlier this week at his home. Cochran penned a number of iconic hits for Patsy Cline, Eddy Arnold, Merle Haggard and George Strait including “Make The World Go Away“, “She’s Got You” and “I Fall To Pieces“. RIP.

Buddy Williams was the first Australian born country singer to reach national prominence.

Williams (alongside Tex Morton) played a central role in establishing the Australian hillbilly song and sound which became “a ballad, with a simply major key tune, accompanied by pick-and-strum guitar with a few bass runs” (Smith, 2005: 89). Graeme Smith (2005) compares Williams’ role to Jimmie Rodgers in delineating American country music describing Williams’ music as featuring “direct narratives of rural life, often romanticised through stereotypic images such as the horsemen and cattle, or the old wattle tree” (2005, 88).

His most popular tracks include “Music In My Pony’s Feet”, a celebration of the Australian outback, “Where the White Face Cattle Roam” and “Mareeba Rodeo”. Astonishingly, Williams released his first single in 1939 (“The Dappled Grey Bronco of Mine”) but didn’t release his first full lenght album until 1973 with Aussie On My Mind. As you will hear below, while Williams’ vocals were limited, they were also soulful and emotive.

Williams toured Australia widely for over three decades and was added to the Country Music Roll of Renown in 1977 alongside Tex Morton and Dawson.

Thanks to Smith, Graeme (2005) Singing Australian: the history of folk and country music. North Melbourne: Pluto Press.

Listen to Buddy Williams singing “Music In My Pony’s Feet”:

Colt Ford’s debut album Ride Through The Country peaked at #24 on the Billboard Country Charts in December 2008. The highest charting single of his career so far is “Cold Beer”, a collaboration with Jamey Johnson that peaked at #53. Despite the lack of mainstream support from country radio, Ford has sold over 170,000 copies of his debut album and 65,000 of his recently released Chicken & Biscuits.

Ford has generated an unconventional following through his constant touring schedule and is proof that country radio is not needed to sell records. However, that is not the objective of this post.

This is:

Filmed in Nolensville, TN – this video is a parody of the Twilight phenomenon. Why is this of interest?

(Colt Ford reaching out to Twilight fans via his Twitter account)

He has now placed himself in a circumstance where he can establish mainstream interest on television as well as the Internet. Why?

Because he has adopted something that is culturally to the point (Twilight) and that makes people take notice.

I must get back to work. In the meantime…

Celebritweets Theatre with Taylor Swift:

Thanks to justinkistner and allnick.

Source

This video has been making the rounds for in recent months and my lack of awareness reflects the assertion that my head has been buried in the sand.

Social Media Revolution 2 (based on the book “Socialnomics” by Erik Qualman) is a reboot of the original video “with new and updated social media & mobile statistics that are hard to ignore”.

Also note the use of Fatboy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now“…again.

Enjoy:

In general, I have declared war on the concept of “viral media.” As a model, it leads media producers to think in the wrong ways about the value of their content and its relationship to the audience. Taken at face value, it offers us a smallpox-soaked blanket approach to media distribution: Unknowingly infect your consumer and let them spread the germs to their friends and neighbors. In fact, in a world with many media choices, consumers are actively selecting what content is meaningful to them and circulating it consciously to people they think may be interested. They are deploying media content as gifts for their personal networks, as resources for ongoing conversations. Until marketers understand the consumer’s active agency and the social mechanisms shaping their circulation of content, they are doomed to insult and alienate the very people they are hoping to attract.

Beyond that, I am very concerned about trends in social networking sites that take away the public’s ability to set their own privacy settings and to govern what kinds of information they send out to the world. Here, the word “viral” may be more accurate, but the behavior is making many people ill – Henry Jenkins

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