Jazz Odyssey

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Wired reports on a film inspired by rabid fans of The Lord of the Rings:

"After the 2004 Academy Awards, the filmmaking team behind The Lord of the Rings headed out to celebrate. That’s no surprise — they had just won 11 Oscars. What was unusual was the party — it wasn’t the one put on by New Line, the studio that invested more than $300 million to produce the Lord of the Rings trilogy. No, director Peter Jackson, cast and crew headed to an event produced by fan site TheOneRing.net where they took the stage, hoisted their statues and mixed and mingled. Hollywood insiders probably gasped — the biggest Oscar sweep in history and these guys are partying with geeks! But Jackson and company recognized something essential about the success of The Lord of the Rings: It happened because of its rabid fans."

That Jackson & his crew made such a show of acknowledging the role of these enthusiasts in their success is admirable…the "artist" (in this case Jackson & his crew) chose to engage the enthusiasts directly while the "suits" and the press looked on either aghast or confused. It’s an all too-familiar scenario in the music industry–enthusiastic fan devotion occurs at some level with nearly every band. For some, it’s the foundation upon which bands build their career. For others, acknowledgement and reaction to very involved fans is an ongoing source of stress and conflict.

The Internet has become the primary medium for fans to make their opinions known, and artists/labels have learned much in the last few years about how to best digest and interpret this feedback. While in some cases enthusiats have contributed valuable feedback to both artist and label, in others the largely anonymous freedom of speech inherent in the Internet has been abused, and posting without regard for who is reading has had damaging effects. I’ve had several bands over the last few years request that the bulletin board on their website be removed as the band (and sometimes the band’s friends & family) were having a hard time dealing with the perceived demands on how they should create and present their music, or how they were treating (or should treat) their fans.

Labels have made attempts at harnessing the power of enthusiastic fan support with varying degrees of success over the years, but the roadside is also littered with failure. For the most part even if there are smart executives at the labels who recognize the potential that an involved fanbase brings, the re$ource$ to leverage and manage it are rarely available to make the investment, particularly when an artist is in between albums and the cost of maintaining those fan relationships can add even more red ink to the balance sheet. And the inevitable OIFS (Over-Involved Fanatic Syndrome) can easily lead to Excedrin headache #666 (or worse).

So it’s a slippery slope at best when approaching it from the label perspective. As much as I’d like to believe that there is an intelligent roadmap to engage enthusiasts that could be launched and effectively maintained with the proper resources, the fact of the matter is that all the financial, technical and human resources within the current major label structures can only questionably manage–and certainly can’t compete with–the true passion of an involved fan community. Sure, there are companies that moderate bulletin boards and there are "street teams" that can be built, but each community is different, with its own set of norms and rules of engagement, making the resource and management challenges significant.

As an industry, we should place more focus on the the upsell potential in these involved fan communities, and figure out a series of artist agreements and financial models that give the enthusiasts what they want–greater access to the artist and their work. After all, as the marketplace continues to fragment and the mega-hits become more elusive, the knowledge of what enthusiasts will and won’t buy and how they’ll buy it can become the foundation for a series of incremental revenue streams that will benefit artists, management and labels.

The quote from the Wired article uses the word "geek" in the pejorative in a effort to make a point. But I’m confident that many at Wired would agree that the historically negative connotation of the word "geek" has become questionable. If being an enthusiast with the desire and ability to communicate what I’d like to consume, and how I’d like to be marketed to makes me a geek, then I’ve got a lot of company…with a lot of collective purchasing power.