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Aspen Live Music Conference

I appreciate the love. I really do. Though I’m not entirely sure why it’s coming iggli’s way. Yesterday, I headed up to Aspen, Colorado with Nanette to attend the Aspen Live music conference. On the way, we stopped to pick up Alex White, CEO of The Next Big Sound, and we managed, with the help of Google maps, to take the scenic route from the last leg of the trip between Glenwood Springs to Aspen. But the weather was sunny and the sky and terrain were beautiful.

I knew things were going to be a bit strange when I walked into the conference room, and I was the first person there. This never happens. Never. I seriously wondered whether I had come to the right place. But within ten minutes or so, folks started to trickle in. [Noticeably absent for this session: Bob Lefsetz. We missed you!]

Jim Lewi, the conference organizer and chief rabble rouser, had another personal story to tell. I won’t tell it here. Suffice to say, Jim ALWAYS has something interesting happening. Always. (Jim, I do hope your package arrived.)

As things got underway, Jim laid out the theme for the afternoon’s discussion: Compression of Purchase Decision Time & How it Affects Our Marketing. A couple key ideas drove the conversation:

• consumers are waiting till the last minute to make purchasing decisions
• we’ve somehow managed to train the fan to wait till the last minute to purchase a concert ticket
• the live music experience can be wildly uneven, and some artists just don’t seem to have the capacity to move the entire crowd in the way that others do
• the ticketing fee add-0ns aren’t doing us any favors when it comes to encouraging fans to buy tickets early; they wait till the last minute to save money and keep their options open
• there are some things that “work” for marketing live music, maybe we ought to pay attention to these things and try to figure out what we can do to adopt these practices
• where’s the data?
• why is it that Amazon can speak so personally to its customers, but in the music industry we seem ignorant about so many things, including: who we’re talking to, what they did with us last time, what they want now, how to talk with them, etc.
• “I get so many things from so many promoters, it’s ridiculous and overwhelming.”
• how can we “prime the pump” and provide a good way to get a solid contingent of fans into early decision mode so they can talk about the event, and we can point to them talking about the event?
• is anyone really everaging the sharing that fans do via social media – Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. – by providing them with the content about the show/artist that they can share with their friends?
• fan driven “word-of-mouth” is the best marketing

During the course of these discussions, Jim kept hinting that maybe Tom Higley and iggli had some solutions that could be helpful to the industry. And Jamie Loeb of Nederlander Concerts was kind enough to talk about some of the benefits that iggli provides.

But the truth is, iggli is being oversold. Again, I really appreciate the love. But we still don’t provide the powerful, compelling solution that I envision: a service that every artist, promoter, venue, sports team, agent and ticket seller wants to use to help promote the event and sell more tickets – via fan-based word-of-mouth. We still have a long, long way to go. But in just a few weeks you’ll be able to see real progress. iggli has created the beginnings of a real-time, event based engine for social interaction. And that engine comes with its own API.

Personally, I think it is this social interaction – real-time fan-to-fan event-based conversations – that will provide the industry with the biggest bang for its marketing buck. What do you think? Let me know!

I had a great time today down in Austin, Texas. My panel on Digital Distruption, the first one of the day, included executives from Disney, Sports Illustrated, Electronic Arts and the Houston Rockets. The other three panels focused on ticketing, entrepreneurship and social media.

Red McCombs (a remarkable entrepreneur after whom the business school is named) shared a bunch of colorful stories culled from his long and successful experience as an entrepreneur. Larry Martin of the MBA talked about a couple of particularly interesting startups, including Groupon. Derek Palmer of Tickets.com, spoke about being agnostic about who sells the tickets.

Barry Khan of Qcue, a pioneer in dynamic pricing and Russ Stanley of the San Francisco Giants discussed their test of dynamic pricing with just 2,000 of the SF Giants’ seats. The test was so successful that the project will be expanded next year to include all 40,000 of the available seats.

On the entrepreneur panel, Randy Cohen of Ticket City; Bart Knaggs of Capital Sports & Entertainment; Greg Morrow of SportNet and Gary Hoover (Entrepreneur-in-Residence) shared stories and perspectives about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Passion, passion and more passion. A tolerance for risk. A willingness to sell, sell, sell.

Throughout the conference, the impact of technology and social media was beginning to be apparent. Michael Feferman, from C3 Presents, led the social media panel, which included Jim Lutz of Pro Player Connect (in Nashville) who talked about Pro Player and also about Nimbit – direct artist-to-fan sales; Adam Miner of SportNet; Tommy Landry of RotoExperts; and Nicole Blum of Hashi Productions.

I heard a lot about the need for a deep understanding of analytics. It’s great that we’re able to collect the data, but if we don’t understand what that data means, it isn’t really very helpful. And even if we have the data and know what it means, if we don’t have a plan to execute – the desire and the capacity to take the appropriate actions based on what we have gleaned from the data – that really doesn’t help us much either.

One of our favorite promoters, Nederlander Concerts, has been an extraordinary partner for iggli. The press release says it pretty well:

Since its inception, Nederlander Concerts has been setting trends in the entertainment and music industries. Nederlander Concerts reinforced that reputation this week by adding a pioneering, friend-to-friend invitation service to their on-line ticketing business. “We want to give concert-goers an easy way to connect and make plans with their friends when they want to go to a show,” said Jamie Loeb, Nederlander’s Vice President of Marketing. “We’re excited about the service and how it benefits our patrons and increases ticket sales.”

Jamie Loeb is the embodiment of a great Vice President of Marketing in the entertainment industry. She pays attention to what is happening in the world of concert promotion. But she also has an eye on developments in the tech space. And that helps explain iggli’s invite service on Nederlander Concert sites, including The Greek and The Grove.

Nederlander Concerts

iggli’s invite service comes to The Hollywood Bowl . . . thanks to bill silva entertainment!

BSE