I thought I'd post this in advance of the panel I'm moderating at Brian Zisk's always-interesting SF Music Tech Summit tomorrow. It's a panel about Live and Online and by happenstance this project I talk about below is something that I'm right in the middle of developing. --jon

Background

As part of ongoing digital strategy brainstorming for Joe Satriani and his new album Black Swans & Wormhole Wizards, I had all sorts of hopes for finally incorporating some cool social media aspects on the tour to keep the conversation that we began with the killer podcast series going. Things looked good in that a friend and workmate (video co-director) Arthur decided to take a break from his routine and go out and drum tech. I had images in my head of daily ticket giveaways to the first people to respond to tweets and show up at local cafe's and photo galleries (did I mention he did photography of Woodstock for Rolling Stone, too?), plus occasional on-the-road video podcast episodes.

But as we know, reality always comes home to roost. Anyone who has been involved with touring knows that they have a life of their own and tend to suck up all available time. This tour was no different, especially with two new band members (Mike Keneally and Allen Whitman) and starting in Europe with rented gear and a constantly evolving stage production. Arthur was completely swamped, and the only content that I was able to get was from going over there myself and shooting a few shows. I returned home a bit disheartened about the likelihood of being able to create something that lives in the road experience and keeps the fans connected throughout in a way far beyond fans just posting reviews and shaky video and blurry photos (though, to be fair, there are fans who produce *amazing* content).

Let me take a moment to step back for a minute and describe something very relevant in Joe's social media world. For the past 12 years or so, we've had an extremely engaged fan community - every single album cycle we bring the fans into the process in some way, broke 100k members on SATRIANI.COM many years ago, and have done random drawing backstage pass contests for nearly every show for the past few years. Although Joe is a on major label, he lives in an uncommon bubble where he gets the great distribution from a major, but promotions depend heavily on his core fanbase instead of multi-million dollar media blitzes of the big-name Sony acts. However, when we did our first video podcast series back in 2006, Sony was so taken aback by the response and download numbers that they didn't know what to make of it-- none of their other artists had done anything like that before. But when Facebook added pages & usernames, we turned a new page. At the end of 2009 we took over the static page that Sony had secured that had just under 200,000 fans, which we already thought was amazing. Then we started posting content to it and engaging those users and within 6 months had doubled it to 400,000. We noticed interesting trends like a *huge* fan base in Indonesia (*almost* equaling the U.S.), someplace Joe rarely has the opportunity to tour. In the next 6 months, we launched our Black Swans & Wormhole Wizards promotions and doubled the Facebook fans again, and are just about to pass 800,000.

At this point I realized we couldn't wait any longer to find a way to tap this audience to help fan-source something that they love. Last week I posted a simple Note titled "Exclusive official photos & videos from Joe Satriani's Wormhole Tour for $5?". The idea isn't rocket science, and aspects of it have been done many times in different mediums, but I think it is time to test, adjust and standardize it. Most of the best ideas aren't always creating something out of nothing, but looking at what's available and then just going out there and *doing* it. When Jeff, Rob and I started IUMA way back in 1993, it was very much the same thing - the web browser just was coming out and Xing had a really great MPEG encoder and we knew a bunch of bands-- why not put it all together?

So here is what this is, how it can work and why it matters:

What it is: Fans pre-order access to exclusive content on the road. The funds go to cover production costs associated with putting a dedicated staff on the road whose sole job is to handle daily content productions (primarily videos & photos). Simple.

How it works: First, we put out a note to gauge interest. We also ran the numbers to see what our raw costs would be and determined that for a test (that isn't designed for revenue generation, just proof of concept, awesome content, and happy fans), we needed a minimum of 2,000 fans at $5/ea for a 3-week period covering around 16 shows. That would indicate enough interest that we felt it would be worth doing. Within the first 12 hours we had 3,000 so that was great.

For this test run, we have 3 phases:

1) Establish the demand (after our original post, we satisfied that)

2) Set up a page for fans to commit to subscribing. Since the test is for a set time with set deliverables, we're looking at Kickstarter. This has the added benefit of making the process simple to sign up and if for some weird reason people change their minds and we don't get the people we need, no money exchanges hands and no harm, no foul.

3) Following hitting our target for people putting their money in, we move into the basics of the production.

4) After the tour ends, we review how it worked, what changes we want to make, and then make plans for the next time.

Why It Matters:

Low risk: Bands are always being asked to try all sorts of crazy things and they tend to have great promise but up front costs and often no track record to depend on. Since it's all basically in-house we also know no start-up or big company is going to mis-represent us and piss off our fans.

Unmet Need: In this case, hundreds of thousands of fans who won't be able to see Joe live on this tour (if not others). These folks are desperate for more access to Joe while on tour and have no way to get that currently.

Great Deal: In an age of $1.99 iPhone apps and 99c song downloads, fans long ago got tired of the old-style fan clubs where you'd pay $25 and get a newsletter and a shirt and then silence for the rest of the year. For a paltry $5 they are going to get somewhere in the neighborhood of almost 3 hours of exclusive video content from sound checks, backstage, on the bus, with the crowds at each show, plus dozens of behind the scenes and live photos. Having someone dedicated on the road also makes it possible to do those Tweet-For-Ticket-Giveaway ideas, not to mention coordinating band Q&A sessions and other ideas fans would love - one we're considering is giving away a chance to be a reporter for a day where a random winner can come to soundcheck and take some photos to file along with a report and a meet & greet.

Demographics: After you finish, we will have a very good idea of who your hard core fans are that are willing to pay a few bucks for this sort of experience. We can use those numbers to help inform other traditional merch packages, not to mention continue to strengthen those relationships through other exclusive offers (pre-orders, limited edition items, etc).

Relationship: Perhaps the most important in my opinion, is that the fans recognize that they are important and they respond to that. Even fans who don't buy into it feel that they are having a conversation with the band about this and that is already a success. We are furthering our conversation and connection and both sides get something out of that.

Some other notes:

Bands have had video crews and photographers documenting on the road with them for decades, but the content tends to be very slow to reach the fan, if in fact if every does. Also, by the time it gets there, it is completely disconnected from the excitement and immediacy of it happening right *now*.

Some bands are great about posting blog photos and stories and videos from the road, but invariably they don't stick to any schedule whatsoever and fans are left to wonder when the next one may show up, and is likely to completely miss even hearing about it.

Companies like Ultrastar had a cool idea in funding content development by adding a buck to the ticket price and using that to put someone out on the road, but it never quite felt right to me to make people pay who didn't even know about it, and the connection between a fan who wanted something and the delivery of that thing was missed out on-- the fan wasn't a direct part of the relationship.

There's an obvious question about controlling the content. What's to stop folks who pay from just posting it all up online as soon as they get it? We think that when you make the step of paying for something in this context as part of a group, there's a reduced risk of that. But, this is also why we are adding other ideas into the mix where you get things that are not shareable. Access to a band Q&A for example, or the chance to be a reporter for an evening with extra access. We also have already worked out a partnership with one of Joe's gear partners to do daily gear giveaways and there's a good chance we'll be able to expand that as to include other partners as well.

There is a clear challenge to keep the content compelling on a daily basis. We've outlined a basic structure of the type of content we're shooting for on a show-by-show basis which includes creative mixtures of exclusive access (sound check jams), localized contextual (what city are we in and what's its character, who are the fans and what are they like?) and of course snippets of live performance. All of the other unexpected tour-related hijnix which are unpredictable we'll be there to capture and include, and new ideas will come up daily. But at the core there is this consistent, dependable *thing* that fans will be able to count on seeing while Joe is on the road. And when the tour is over, the fans will be there to reflect and relive it just in a tiny little bit of the way that the band does.

I should also note that this concept also shares some common ground with the general idea of directly funding artists and their development. There's been a few folks who have dabbled in that, including Todd Rundgren's Patronet, which I worked with him on many years ago. Although I think Todd took a wrong turn with the closed system u/i interface, I still love the idea of having that close of a relationship with your fans and I think the current state of social media is making it even more of a possibility, not to mention sites like Kickstarter and Pledgemusic.com basically doing the same thing.

And last, but not least, it goes without saying that you need someone you can count on to be on the road. It takes a certain personality to blend in and document, have the skills to edit, and not make anyone feel like the paparazzi is always in their face. Luckily, anyone who is in this business for very long develops those short lists of names just for times like this.

It's still too early to know whether this will be a fantastic success or just crash and burn, but based on my hands-on experience producing content from the the studio and the road for the past decade or 2, I am confident it'll do well and fans will be stoked. The question I'm really thinking about is how do we get half of Joe's Facebook fans to join us in the next one and what does it look like under those numbers? The possibilities are very exciting.

If you have thoughts, or related stories of people doing similarly structured things, I'd love to hear them.

Jon Luini
Chime Interactive
www.chime.com
facebook.com/chimeinteractive