I have been lucky.
Over the course of the last couple of decades, I have seen a lot of great bands: The Ramones, The Allman Brothers, Dispatch, REM, The Stones, numerous Dead Shows, Eric Clapton, The Who, Dire Straits, Keb Mo, The Police, Elvis Costello, CSNY and many, many more. Like most people – I love music, I play music, and I need music in my life. But society’s relationship with music is mutating due to a confluence of changing consumer trends and technologies, where the implications on branding are both unprecedented, but not entirely unexpected.
Gone are the days when big record labels call all the shots, while arcane, analog channels of distribution reign without challenge. Further, unlike in decades past, today’s consumers now tolerate, and even embrace, a degree of consumerism as part of their music offering, which once would have been verboten. To be sure, the idea of “selling out” was long a stigma associated with any band even remotely connected with promoting a product or being seen as too cozy with the capitalist machine. But this is no longer the case, and brands are now seen by many bands as an essential partner in the ultimate delivery of their “product” to the consumer.
Net net, these events have all conspired to push the music industry (sometimes kicking and screaming), down a Darwinian pathway steeped with uncertainty, but also great opportunity - and in doing so has created a unique aperture for brands and bands to work together as never before. Here, the three primary agents in the industry (artists, record labels and promoters), are all looking to gain an upper hand in the marketplace, while at the same time not entirely alienating each other. It is a symbiosis of sorts, with an interrelationship that is interesting to watch on a lot of levels and begs the question – who needs who?
The simple answer is that brands and bands need each other more than they know. First, in a multi-platform ecosystem, both brands and bands need to develop strategies to break through the clutter and develop a lasting relationship with their core target audiences. For bands, being associated with a certain brand that is aligned with its desired attributes, can provide more visibility and reach than they could ever potentially expect going solo. For brands, being associated with a band (or even a specific music genre) can provide greater definition to their core audiences and prospects as to what the brand stands for while potentially providing greater opportunities for audience engagement.
A fantastic example of brand and band fusion is the partnership between Starwood Hotels (parent of the W, Westin, St. Regis and Le Meridien) and Sony BMG, in 2008. Here, the two companies came together to create custom playlists from Sony BMG’s vast music libraries that would be played exclusively in certain Starwood chains and properties. This fundamental integration of music tailored to the unique brand experience of each hotel’s room guests provided Starwood another means of enriching its relationship with its customers, while also uniquely differentiating its brand experience across its properties, and from that of its competitors. On the flip side, the partnership allowed Sony BMG to align itself with various Starwood brands at previously inaccessible customer touchpoints, and at the same time, use the relationship to form an entirely new channel of distribution for their expansive music assets.
In the end, the relationship between brand and bands will continue to be forged by economic and strategic necessity, and predicated on the desire of both entities to capture the attention and loyalties of their shared, hard-to-reach and fragmented audiences in a truly harmonious way.
