What can the music industry learn from Farmville?
Media futurist Gerd Leonhard did his thing on-stage at MidemNet this afternoon, talking about some of the new business models being used outside the music world. One of the most fascinating was Farmville.
Zynga’s social game is absolutely huge on Facebook, as you’ll know if your friends and family are clogging up your news feed with lost pigs, horses and chickens. It’s got more than 73 million users on Facebook, and is generating millions of revenues from selling virtual items.
Leonhard held it up as an example to the music industry, particularly its free-to-play model. “What can we learn from Farmville? It all starts with free. Farmville gets people hooked, then sells them virtual tractors. People will buy anything once they’re hooked.”
He suggested that the music industry should be looking more deeply into interactivity and virtual items, as well as social media. “Go inside the social networks with music!” he said.
“How come Facebook doesn’t have music? 8.7 billion minutes are spent a day on Facebook, so why can’t we make a deal – hopefully not individually, but collectively.”
That’s something of a simplification, though. There IS music on Facebook, through apps like iLike, and some virtual items. But Leonhard is absolutely right to say that the explosion in social games has by and large passed music by. In 2010, that will hopefully change.”
Tags: farmville, gerd leonhard, MIDEM, midemnet, zynga
January 24th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Music is not a game. It is the self-expression of an individual seeking an audience. This is not capitalistic sleight of hand; I personally don’t see what musicians can gain by thinking ‘Oh, let me hook people into listening to my music so I can figure out how to sell them something.’ And I think we misstep badly by presuming the early stages of social media can teach us broad lessons about anything at all, never mind how to make a living as a musician. Everything will yet change in directions that no one–especially self-declared futurists–can anticipate.
January 24th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
I second Jeremy’s opinion.
January 24th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
“It is the self-expression of an individual seeking an audience.”
Absolutely. People make music to make music.
With so many people making music, it is hard to find a paying audience, but you can at least share your music online and play for family and friends. You get a sense of self-expression, creativity, and community, though little, if any, money.
If there is a similarity with Farmville, it’s not that you give people free so that they will buy. It’s instead you give people ways to become involved so they are active, not passive. In the case of music, that may mean giving people more tools for creativity so that they become music makers themselves rather than passive listeners. The artist-to-fan model is really the major label system just done on a smaller scale. But if everyone becomes a music creator/producer/promoter, you have more people making music and perhaps fewer people buying it, which is fine on a macro scale because it results in a more creativity society. But probably not for individual artists trying to make a living at this.
January 24th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate getting an artist’s perspective on this.
To clarify, the reason I think Farmville and other social games are so fascinating is that I don’t think they’re scamming people into buying stuff. People love playing the games, and buying virtual items is a natural extension of that (and, in any case, they’re not forced to do it).
Mike Masnick gave that great presentation last year about connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy. I wonder if games like Farmville can be considered in the context of that?
I didn’t manage to write any of this while scribbling up Gerd’s presentation, obviously ;o)
January 24th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
“Mike Masnick gave that great presentation last year about connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy.”
I’ve been a frequent commentator on the music threads on Techdirt because I don’t think Mike’s approach really helps musicians very much. Trying to come up with a “reason to buy” is pretty much the basis of all sales and marketing. So if we are going to discuss it, we need to get into some involved discussions about the nuances of buying motivations and psychology. We’re in a recession and people don’t have much disposable income, so if they can get your music for free, they may choose not to pay for anything else.
My response to the discussion basically has been that most musicians have gotten into music to make music. Telling them to sell stuff other than their recorded music or their performances takes them into types of businesses they may not want to enter or may have no skill at doing.
If you are looking for a revenue stream to make up for lost CD sales, then you might as well look at everything you could be doing to earn money. In many cases a musician might have or find a day job totally unrelated to music which pays more than what would be earned selling t-shirts, etc. It’s entirely possible that a musician with a non-music day job that pays well and that he likes will spend more creative time making music than someone who is trying to make it solely on music but puts in 40 hours a week on all the business aspects of music sales/promotion/etc.
So I have been talking up the joys of being a weekend warrior musician who plays for himself, his family, and his friends by pointing out that such an approach might be a life more fulfilling than being on the road all the time, making very little money, and trying to sell merchandise out of your trunk.
January 24th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
I might add the the biggest single problem for musicians trying to come up with “reasons to buy” is that they all are. Even if you can find an online game to engage fans, every musician will use it if it appears to work.
Technology is giving more musicians and people aspiring to make music the tools to do so. So you’ve got millions of people wanting to be a part of that musical sphere. You can spending lots of time trying to break through the clutter (and then spend even more time trying to hang on to your fans), or you can live with the fact that lots of people want to make music and most of them can’t make a living at this. That doesn’t mean, however, that they shouldn’t make music. They definitely should.
YouTube, MySpace, and the like have allowed people to make music, put it online, and find an audience. In many cases it is a small audience, but there is still fulfillment in having done so. Most people who take photos don’t expect to make a living at photography. Most people who ski don’t expect to make a living at skiing. Most people who play music shouldn’t expect to make a living at it either.
January 25th, 2010 at 7:25 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gerd Leonhard, Jonathan Deamer, Adrian Fusiarski, Stuart Dredge, jorge and others. jorge said: @: Music Ally | Blog: What can the music industry learn from Farmville? "People will buy anything once they’re hooked." http://bit.ly/5za3Nk [...]
January 28th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I think this is nice lateral thinking – what we can certainly learn from Farmville is that we need to be at the forefront of social media in a non-intrusive way (people use things like farmville to escape all the intrusive advertising.
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:23 pm
2 points:
1 – Farmville & café, etc. does not use “real” money. It is a game, by a Zynga – not run by “real” farmers, trying to make “real” money…
2 – the broadcast tv industry has already taught us that:
a. “perceived free” mass social works! via ads, sponsorship & ownership.
b. “pay” cable / direct tv / IPTV came into popularity due to broadcast viewing clarity and niche and expanded programming.
I think Mr. Leonard is fabulous, I simply do not understand his associative reasoning: artist efforts=pay & Farmville. Real time effort & fake money? I want to understand his reasoning, but I simply cannot.
Sometimes I truly believe that people say things that sound audibly fantastic, but dissected are indigestible evangelizing & crowd-organizing mechanisms.
Please do not hate me Mr. Leonard, I am glad that you are advocating new media and its information and entertainment “value”. I do too!
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Nice idealism going on here. Farmville is an extreme example, but if I want to make a living from music, I need to find ways to market it better outside of the traditional models. And if people being able to listen to clips of my music free but being obliged to pay for added extras (like the rest of the song)works, then I’ll go for it.
“Music is all about expressing yourself” Um, yes, but to express myself I need somewhere to live, something to wear and food. And if the farmville model works, then I’ll go for it.
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:58 pm
I can see where Gerd was going with this but its social gaming and artistic processes are two very different things.
The point being made is very clear in that the music industry (labels in particular) should be looking at other ways to protect their dwindling financial empire buy openly experimenting with new ways to engage with fans through social media.
However the comparison with Farmville, in my opinion, actually discredits the craft, amount of time and dedication musicians put into their songs.
Still, in this day and age you just never know – a new “Sims meets Second Life meets RockBand on Tour” virtual game might just be what they’re looking for!
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Sehr interessanter Artikel den du da geschrieben hast. Endlich hab ich das gefunden was ich gesucht habe. Ich wuerde auch gerne den RSS Feed von deinem Blog abonieren aber leider finde ich diesen nicht. Wo muss ich denn danach suchen?
February 4th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
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February 15th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
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