[PIAS] Entertainment Group, Europe’s leading music and entertainment services provider, has announced that its Digital Marketing department has been shortlisted in the 2010 BT Digital Music Awards’ “Artist Campaign of the Year” category for their work with Dan le Sac VS Scroobius Pip.

The duo, signed to Sunday Best, are the only independent artists among the six finalists.

“Having [PIAS] Digital Marketing recognised in these awards sends a strong message to artists out there, in that we represent them first and foremost and work hard to focus on quality over quantity” said Darren Hemmings, Head of Digital Marketing. “This was not about big budgets; it was about delivering a long-standing artist/fan relationship that will continue to grow beyond the album campaign.”

Through the campaign the band’s unique visits to their website grew by 243%. Facebook fans grew by 218%, with interactions per day up 500%. Their live reach, which Hemmings asserts to be “the most accurate reflection of success on the basis it cannot be pirated or accessed in a manner that isn’t traceable” has almost tripled from a reach of 6,500 in 2008 to 17,000 on this autumn’s “Logic of Chance” tour.

“We have been honoured enough to be given a career by our fans, it seems wonderfully fitting that we should be shortlisted for the BT Digital Awards based on how our audience engages with us. This is even more exciting by being quite clearly the smallest band on the list! Working with [PIAS] has made given us the tools & time we need to focus on our fans.” – Dan le Sac

The BT Digital Music Awards are on September 30th at The Roundhouse.

A relatively new development in web search engines – particularly since the launch of Facebook’s Open Graph platform – has been the means to search “the social web”, ie Facebook, Twitter and other such social platforms where users share and recommend content.

For us this has proven an excellent means to gauge buzz around the artists we represent, understanding just how much people are talking about them and sharing their content. One example was the launch of Kano’s new track “Get Wild” last Friday. The track debuted at 6.55pm (ie last track of the show, reserved for Westwood’s hottest track of the week), and immediately went on sale via Kano’s website using Topspin. Knowing that this track would also be shared illegally amongst the online community, we were keen to see what people were saying about the track and how much were people were getting excited about it, as the reality is that sales figures simply do not tell the whole story about an artist’s popularity anymore. Using Kurrently, we were able to monitor in almost real-time the responses to the track online – with the feed updating live, without a need to refresh. As the screengrab below demonstrates, it is clear this track is being shared and talked about in positive terms:

Tellingly we can also see who is illegally sharing the track (thanks for that @DreadLoxxx – I obscured the URL!), which speaks volumes once again about privacy on the web and what information is in fact viewable by anyone. For now though I will leave that discussion to other people.

As a simple and immediate means to gauge response to your artists release, real-time social web searching can be a great tool – be sure to try it out.

Got a query or comment – leave it below!

Its no secret that here in the PIAS Digital Marketing team we are big fans of Soundcloud. It drives our players on all the PIAS Group websites, and has played a key role in our campaigns for New Young Pony Club, Dan le Sac VS Scroobius Pip and We Are Scientists among others. As a promo tool you can use it privately share audio. As a consumer-facing tool it can be used to provide shareable players for fans to embed on Facebook, blogs or wherever they like. With the Dropbox function you are well set to run remix contests too, offering up the stems via a player, then inviting fans to upload their remixes to you once done. Hell, you can even create a Soundcloud Group, so that all remixes uploaded are shared among fans to listen to and vote on.

One thing I have found though is that people don’t realise just how much is possible with Soundcloud. Over at their blog though, Dave Haynes and other Soundcloud team members have posted a number of excellent practical guides, and so I thought I would summarise them and link to them here so you can take a read and hopefully improve your own use of this excellent platform.

#1: “What you always wanted to know about Privately Sharing your music (and weren’t afraid to ask)”
Surprisingly few people seem to be aware that Soundcloud can be a very powerful tool for privately sharing audio (such as promos of your latest release) to key recipients. This then is a simple guide to privately sharing audio, explaining how users will receive audio, how they listen etc.

#2: “How to send digital promos via email using the ‘secret link’”
An excellent summary of how you can use the private settings on tracks and sets to utilise Soundcloud as a promo tool for DJs, journalists or other interested parties. This goes beyond the first article above, outlining how you can privately embed a player and even combine it with a password-protected page and a Google form to collect feedback from your recipients.

#3: “How to Integrate a Secret Widget into a Promo Page”
This outlines one frequently missed capability of Soundcloud; namely the means to mark a set as Private and yet still create a widget for embedding. If, for example, you have a blog looking to run an exclusive on your new release, this will provide and excellent means for them to embed a good-looking player that nobody else has access to – and for you it means you can see exactly how many plays tracks received, where from, over what period etc etc.

#4: “5+1 Easy Steps To Set Up Your Remix Competition With SoundCloud”
As many artists will attest, remix contests can be an excellent way to interact with your fans and generate interest and publicity around a release. The above guide is the definitive guide on using Soundcloud to deliver this – something we are doing to great effect at present with Dan le Sac VS Scroobius Pip.

#5: “Hacking the SoundCloud player (part 1)”
This gem of an article from Dave Haynes outlines the hidden secrets of the Soundcloud player, such as using parameter switches to change the wording of the “Buy” button, for example. For us this has been a goldmine of info, allowing us to subvert that Buy button link into other uses, as well as giving us the knowledge to post more impressive 2×1 artwork players. These are the tricks that can separate you from others – learn them well!

I hope those prove useful. Got any other Soundcloud tips you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below!

Over the last two weeks a curious phenomenon has appeared across the Facebook fan pages we adminstrate alongside our clients; all have seen significant spikes in fan acquisition, but more interestingly almost all have seen the city of San Antonio, Texas rise into the top 3 cities.

Here are insight snippets from three of our clients – all three of whom are British, with a majority fanbase here in the UK:

In addition, here are the graphs of new fan accruals over the same period. Note how all spike significantly:

It should be pointed out that we’re not alone in noticing this phenomenon. A quick Twitter search shows various people noticing it – and, worryingly, some also taking it as gospel and making news out of the fact that, for example, the Tate here in London now has more fans in San Antonio than in London.

So what gives? One line of thinking is that these are two separate issues. The spike in activity may simply correlate with Facebook’s Open Graph implementation ensuring more content is being “liked” on the whole. However when it comes to the San Antonio anomaly, the only plausible argument we have seen is that the city is a huge datacentre hub for the USA, and that something is up with Facebook’s geolocating code. After all, if a user does not stipulate their location, Facebook draws it automatically using geolocation (most likely via IP).

Could that be the reason? Or is something altogether more bizarre happening? All thoughts gratefully received!

Hi all,

Welcome to the new dedicated site for the [PIAS] Digital Marketing department. Over time we will be posting up not just news on our campaigns – currently including We Are Scientists, Dan le Sac VS Scroobius Pip, New Young Pony Club, Young Guns, CocoRosie and Ocelot to name just a few – but also insight and opinion on the rapidly evolving world of music and digital.