Artist Website Review: Matt & Kim

Their music is a good time and their live show is one big party...but their website? Bore-city. For two kids from Brooklyn who sold out their 2011 Sidewalks tour, Matt and Kim sure are missing the mark on what a good website looks like. I was completely shocked to find such a lack of excitement online considering the energy that seeps through the lines of their music.

Greetings! from ugly website land

Home Page
The beach ball of death finally stops spinning and visitors are greeted with content galore! (this explains why it took so long for the page to load). An embedded YouTube video, with no border or banner to make it blend with the page, is the first item seen by visitors. Below the video is their Twitter, News, and Voicemail (I'll come back this later) feed. Lining the right-hand side of the page is their social media buttons, a mini-photo stream, upcoming show dates, toolbars to receive access codes for digital downloads, and an archive hub. Phew! Could they cram anymore stuff on there? Answer: NO.

Overall Layout
The layout of the site is nothing fancy. It consists of their banner at the top with ten tabs underneath to access all the different pages: Home, News, Tour, Releases, Music, Videos, Photos, Stores, Links, and Contact.  Each tab lights up when the mouse drags over it which, would be a neat feature if there wasn't all this other STUFF to look at...sensory overload! Every page has a different layout in order to tailor to the content being featured but again, the pages are so busy I have zero desire to sift through all the information. The best layout award goes to the Music page because it features clean cut media players where visitors can listen to their singles. The blue and white color scheme highlights the album art perfectly while the orange text compliments the blue tones. The entire layout has a great deal of potential but it's simplistic approach doesn't support the mass amounts of content the band wants to share.

Content
One thing I have to praise Matt & Kim for is keeping their site FULL of up-to-date and brand appropriate stuff for fans to sift through...even though there is crap ton of it. The best part about having too much is that it would be easy to scale everything back as opposed to having to create content in order to fill in the gaps. I think the website would benefit from a professional de-cluttering...TLC's Hoarders style. If they eliminated the side-bar, condensed some of the pages (such as "Music" and "Releases"), and maybe even created a blog to post about live videos and interviews, the site would feel SO much more organized...and I could breathe when I look at it.


Voicemail Feature
This has seriously got to be one of the funniest/craziest/awesomist ideas I've ever seen. I attended Matt & Kim's show at Terminal 5 back in early July and at the end of the show, they gave the audience a cell phone number and encouraged everyone to text/call whenever they'd like. I still have the number in my phone but I never actually took advantage of it because it appeared to me they were just trying to be "cool" and the number was actually just a gimmick. I was very wrong. On their website, under Home and News tabs, is a stream of text message conversations and voicemail recordings to the band from the fans. They even include the area code from the number that contacted them. It's like Texts From Last Night but minus all the stories about throwing up in strange places. The messages are also divided up into sections: Hate Mail, Kim's Favorites, and Random. With Matt & Kim's career on the rise, I really hope they continue the Voicemail campaign in order to connect with their current and future fans in an innovative way.



Aesthetic

Forrest Gump once said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." Well whoever designed this site was in the Forrest State of Mind because the background is a huge surprise every time a page re-loads. The band's roots are in New York City so all the images are blown up shots of everyday NYC stuff...subways, streets, buildings etc. This is conceptually an interesting idea but wasn't carried out well enough by the designer. Some of the photos used for the background are not only pixilated but clash completely with the blue/white theme on the stationary pages.  The New York State of Mind that Matt & Kim love to preach is displayed quite well just by their banner with the graffiti-ed buildings. They really just need to cut the flare and go with a basic, black background aka: the triple B.

We get it Matt & Kim, you're fun. You like have a good time and run naked through New York streets but that doesn't me your website has to be as loud as Kim's kick drum.


KGC

Tech Review: The Power of the "Like"

based on the article, "To Spread Your Brand On Facebook, Don't Target Your Fans--Target Their Friends" 

A new study has been released by start up company Social Essentials, a team project powered by Facebook and comScore, that says bands shouldn’t focus on their Facebook fans, but rather their Facebook fan’s friends. Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, and Microsoft Bing have all used the service to power their brand’s popularity on Facebook and measure their social standings. After comScore’s extensive study using volunteers to track their Facebook usage and news feeds they found a very shocking statistic: 16% of companies messages are actually being received by fans who “like” their page.

Facebook’s news feed is formatted to only display the most popular posts within a network therefore, if a fan’s friends has not “liked” a particular page then it’s updates will not appear in the fan’s news feed. This is why it is crucial to encourage the clicking of the “like” button and market to friends of fans. For example, Starbucks currently has 23 million fans on Facebook making for 670 million friends of fans that have untapped marketing potential. Tapping into these markets is easier than one might think because the gateway to fan-land is sitting right in front of us: the current fans.

Rewarding top users and encouraging them to spread the name of your company via their personal Facebook page is a perfect way to boost one’s brand without the message relaying directly from your company (no one wants that corporate ramble to intrude their news feed anyway). It’s taking the “refer-a-friend” card to a whole new sphere…an online sphere. The goal is to create posts which, promote interactions that expand beyond the company page and into fan’s personal networks. A company can easily focus too much on pleasing the market they’ve already conquered in hopes of building customer loyalty however, ignoring the bigger picture can hinder a their ability to gain opportunity for growth in the future.

Taking this concept and applying it to music seems very sensible. But where to begin? Personally, I think a great way to get the ball rolling would be to seek out a university that has always shown your artists great support and is home to a number of fans. Contact the most devoted fans from that campus and give them an incentive to encourage page “likes” or to create posts that relate back to the artist. The beauty of college networks is that if someone “likes” a page it shows up in their collegiate network AND their hometown network. BONUS.

I’ve noticed in my fan chatter research that often times Brett Dennen fans convert their non-fan friends to his music and seriously enjoy gloating about it. This “refer-a-friend” method might work great for artists like Brett who already have fans that are willing to share his music for absolutely nothing in return. In a previous fan chatter report, I suggested a campaign called, “Friends make friends listen to Brett Dennen,” this seems more appropriate now that I've read this article. Overall, I think this a really simple marketing tactice that can be easily implemented by administrators but create BIG time results.




KGC

Tech Review: Intasgram

 based on Mashable.com's article "10 Tips for Bands, by Bands"

The 1970s called...they want their photo filters back!

No but seriously, the iPhone app, Instagram, has made quite a name for itself in the music industry since its launch at the end of 2010 with popular users such as The National, Shiny Toy Guns, and Deftones…just to name a few. Who knew that a photo filter powered by our dad’s side burns and our mom’s wide-leg jeans could produce such a powerful marketing tool? A great aspect of Instagram is that it creates a stream of all the photos posted through the application from Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. Unfortunately, users must have an Instagram account and therefore an iPhone to access the feed, shutting out many fans interested in viewing these wild photo collections.

Mashable.com reported on the different ways Instagram has enhanced artist’s online brand from gaining new fans due through viral photos to taking advantage of API and pulling band/fan made content into one central location. Our very own Walk the Moon was even interviewed for this write up saying that posting what might seem “mundane” to the band often times becomes extraordinary to the fans...hence why Instagram has become so successful within the music community. 

So streaming your band’s photos in an ultra-hip way….that’s cool, but it seems to me there is more potential in Instagram-ing for bands than just filtered photos of their every day lives. Enter short-term, ambient, media advertising.

This is what I’m thinking: take the Instagram concept, customize it (I’m talking X-to-the-Z-Xzibit style), and use it to promote a record release or headlining tour. 
 

Record Release: 

Create a photo frame and/or filter inspired by the album art and apply it to all of the artist’s photos that are released online. Then make it available as an app for smartphone users to use on their phone cameras post under a designated hashtag. Next, create a microsite where all of the photos are streamed, fan and band, by using API to pull them from theRec hashtag. At this mircosite will also be information on the release as well as a page where non-smartphone users can upload their photos, apply the frame/filter, and post it to the social network of their choice.


Tour Promotion: 
Take the method from above (microsite, smartphone apps, hashtag) but make the frame/filter branded with the tour name. The band can post photos from the road while fans can post photos from the shows. Everything would again be posted to the microsite where anyone could browse through it.

Although this is a short-term effort resting heavily on buzz-worthy content, it could in fact create long-term results by allowing fans to feel part of something bigger than themselves (which is essentially what we’re seeking when listening to music, right?)….and this does not come with a price tag. 


iphone: $300
Instagram App: $0
Cool Lifestyle to take photos of: prices vary
Content that make fans love your band more: Priceless

KGC