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Artists Creating Their Own Online Social Networks

Posted on: Monday, 31 March 2008, 14:55 CDT

A growing number of entertainers, from 50 Cent to Kylie Minogue to the Pussycat Dolls, are launching their own social networks as next-generation versions of their Web sites.   

The new social networking component gives fans another reason to spend more time on the artists’ Web sites, while providing the artists with additional opportunities to sell advertisements and make downloads and other merchandise available for sale and download.   

Such options don’t exist today on popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

For example, rapper 50 Cent has more than 1 million friends on MySpace.  But should he ever leave the social network, he’d also be walking away from those friends. After establishing his own site - www.Thisis50.com, fans still enjoy all of the social networking features, but the artist now has direct access to the site's users and their e-mail addresses.

"The thing that separates Thisis50 from MySpace is we control the e-mail database," says Chris "Broadway" Romero, during an interview with Reuters. Romero is director for new media at G-Unit Records, which oversees Thisis50.

"We can e-mail members if we want to," he added.

The artist networks aren't meant to replace MySpace or Facebook, which tend to attract a broader audience and more users. In the case of Thisis50, the site serves as a platform for the artist to showcase his music and other music he likes, as well as comment on news and user profile pages. Rapper Ludacris created his site, WeMix.com, as more of a hub for aspiring artists to upload their music.

"(Artists) think about MySpace and Facebook as funnels for their own social networks," said Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, which provides the social networking tools for Thisis50, Sara Bareilles and others .

"They take and use services where they don't know the users, don't have access and don't have full control, and funnel those fans to something they do control," she told Reuters.

The key to getting users to return to the sites is artist involvement, either through comments on user pages, blogs, exclusive footage or other content.  

"The biggest thing we push to artists is, 'Embrace the site,'" Evan Rifkin, CEO of Flux.com, a social networking platform partly owned by MTV, told Reuters.

Creating a social network is a relatively low-cost initiative as long as artists utilize one of the growing number of companies that provide the tools and hosting. For example, Ning charges $34 per month for a site and hosting. Flux, on the other hand, works with artists and labels through a revenue-sharing model, where artists set up their main site at no charge and pay a percentage of revenue from advertisements and sales on additional pages.

Romero said that while artists tend to pay for labor to run their site, fans that get involved and add content to the site can reduce the need for a staff.

Many artists are simply turning their main Web site into a social network. Ashley Jex, director of new media for Suretone Records, said the company is working with Flux to incorporate social networks into all its artists' sites to reach hardcore fans and maximize the time they spend on the sites. With Flux, which also has deals with Virgin and Universal Music Group, users create one profile and with a single click they can join the network of any artist using it, saving the time from having to create new profiles for each.

Earlier this month, artists DJ Pooh and Ice Cube and DJ Pooh launched UVNTV, a broadband TV and social networking site that allows artists and brands to establish their own channel, where subscribers create profiles and chat with one another. In addition to getting detailed information on their users, the new site allows artists to sell advertisements, merchandise, downloads and subscriptions to their channel.

The service is in beta and free to artists. Its formal launch is expected in January 2009. So far, artists such as Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and brands such as RockStarGames and Source have all established channels on the new service.

The fact that the artists own and control the content is seen as another significant benefit of the service.

"You know the demographic of anybody watching your content," DJ Pooh told Reuters. "You know what they watched and clicked on."

Even more important, however, is that fans are embracing the artists’ social networks, and seem to be buying directly from these sites.   Nearly 25 percent of users on Kylie Minogue's KylieKonnect, launched last 2007 through New Visions Mobile, have made a download, ringtone, or merchandise purchase, according to the company’s director Julia McNally.

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On the Net:

www.Thisis50.com

WeMix.com

Flux.com

UVNTV

Reuters

Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports

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