Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

By Simon van Wyk

Music is a powerful tool. It can affect people emotionally and physically. Hearing a few bars from a familiar tune can immediately take you back to a time long past, when you first heard that song or when something significant happened while the song was playing.

It’s no surprise that sharing music has emerged as one of the most popular ways people have used the personal realm of social media.

As most people know, music was one of the first media to be transformed by the Internet – think Napster and Kazaa. But just as illegal file sharing led to iTunes, music has moved from a grassroots phenomenon online to one that is becoming entwined with big brands.

And just as the music industry has been transformed by a bunch of computer rebels into the most sophisticated content business in the world, the relationship between musicians and big brands is transforming the way these big companies do their marketing. They’re operating on the musicians’ and fans’ terms, quietly building relationships rather than beating people over the head with their brand message.

I recently spoke with Andrew Reid, strategy and research director of Peer Group Media, a company that blends art and commerce through the connection of brands with music and entertainment.

Peer Group owns a street magazine publisher (The Music Network) and runs a creative agency, a sponsorship agency, a PR consultancy, music industry research and talent management company. It holds the rights to a number of high-profile music festivals and even hosts a cutting-edge art gallery on the first floor of its building in funky inner-city Glebe. “We have one foot in industry and one foot in the branding/marketing space,” according to Andrew.

Peer Group represents the growing trend of brands using music to identify with their customers.

“Engagement is the new ‘e-word’, like e-commerce and e-business,” Andrew says. “The question more and more brands are asking themselves these days is ‘How do we engage people with their love of music?’”

Well, it’s not enough to just sling your name on a festival as a sponsor.  The music community thrives on social media, and as with all social media, a brand needs to be authentic and talk with, not at, customers, and listen to what they have to say.

Brands need to find “tribes” that closely match the demographic they want to attract, and then they need to become part of those tribes by offering tangible support to their musicians. By consistently doing this, they will eventually gain the support of those tribes.

Support means things like identifying new bands and helping them to get off the ground. Andrew Reid says it is a long haul. “A multi-year campaign is needed – you have to be prepared to get involved in the community.

“You might want to just test the waters, but if you test and get it wrong, there are implications. The brands that succeed in this space are those who are committed to the long-term.”

Adopting music as a branding strategy is not without its risks. “It’s a high wire act – the rewards are great, but so are the risks,” Andrew says. “You need to be sensitivity of the creativity of artists. This is truly a merger of art and commerce, not a takeover. It’s a reality check – you are dealing with creative people and sparks will inevitably fly.”

Andrew says the most surprising insight he’s found since getting involved in music marketing is the connection between the ‘dark side’ of online music – file-sharing – and the commercial side. While not condoning the illegal practice, he said his research shows that file sharing can lead to commerce. “Illegal file sharers are actually an integral part of the industry. They begin by sampling, but they move on to buying.

“Exposure to an artist is doing a lot for that artist. You need to balance how much money is being lost vs. how much exposure an artist is getting.”

Mind you, bands like the Grateful Dead worked that out years ago. They made no effort to stop people taping their concerts and producing bootleg recordings, secure in the knowledge that more people were getting exposed to their music (which wasn’t the type of music that was getting much airplay on major commercial radio stations), and that when those listeners wanted a higher quality recording they would buy their albums.

If you’ve ever met a “Dead head”, you know how much of an influence musical artists can have on someone’s life. For brands who want to put the effort into it, there is a powerful vein of association to be tapped.

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Tags: Andrew Reid, filesharing, iTunes, Kazaa, music, Napster, Peer Group Media, podcast