January 15, 2009 Case Study: How We Got Over 14,000 Downloads In 48 Hours
A few weeks ago I interviewed Moe Arora about a how to for artists to build a social media strategy. A few weeks later Moe Arora came up with this awesome idea to do a case study surrounding “breakng” a song online purely using social media outlets.
This was such a good read and an awesome social media music experiement I want to make sure all artists gets a chance to read it! Moe has some great articles for artists furthering their career on his blog MakingtheMogul.com definitely go and check it out!
How did we get over 14,000 downloads in 48 hours?
Last Friday, I spoke with Mack Maine and he told me his upcoming mixtape with Don Cannon, “This Is Just A Mixtape” is finally going to be released and he wanted to get some buzz going around it.
Maine and I go back a few years, so when he asked me to help get the word out, I didn’t need to think twice.
I was on the road all day so I didn’t have a chance to listen to the songs until about 9:45pm on Friday night. I was debating on whether to wait until the next morning to take any action but I was anxious to hear them so I decided to listen and prepare a plan right away.
One of the songs prominently features Lil Wayne soI posted a message on Twitter stating that I have a Lil Wayne exclusive and asked which top hip-hop blog/site I should send it to first before sending it to the rest.
I decided to put Wayne’s name first to grab more interest but also because several Twitter applications cut off the message after a certain number of characters; so this way we can capture the most interest immediately, but I was careful never to say it’s Lil Wayne featuring Mack Maine.
Several Twitter folk suggested different major hip-hop websites, but the after thinking it over quickly, I thought“why not just post it on Twitter and have it spread organically?”
There’s always so much talk about how effective social network marketing is, but we don’t really have too many solid examples to go by; not in urban music anyhow. So why not create it ourselves?
That prompted the following tweet:
As I began to upload the song, I asked my Twitter network to kindly retweet my upcoming message featuring the song & download link so that we can showcase the real power of social media as well as the influence of online tastemakers.(A retweet is when you re-post someone’s message on Twitter verbatim and include their username to give source credit).
The result?
That was the initial reaction from Twitter, however it doesn’t stop here.
Tastemakers emailed the song to their mailing lists, bloggers posted it, torrent users seeded it and DJs already began playing it in the club that same night.
You can see some of the websites where it’s been posted by clickinghere.
Search results may vary since there are always typos and naming differences.
I posted the song on SoundCloud as opposed toanother online file distribution site, so all zShare, Sharebee, MegaUpload and other links you find online were all created from other websites, bloggers and users.
Interestingly, most people completely overlooked the online streaming option and went straight for the download button (likely to race being the first person to post the song on their site).
This is interesting because the main focal point of a SoundCloud page is the online streaming player, while the download button is not as highly visible.
My Twitter message with the download link was posted at 10:35pm on Friday, November 28th.
Within 24 hoursthe song had been uploaded to several top hip-hop websites & blogs as well as a plethora of smaller, upcoming websites with thousands of downloads and hundreds of comments.
It’s a little difficult to track ALL the download links and it took a while to find the ones I did and then eliminate the repeats. Once I did that though, I calculated the total number of downloads after 48 hours of my Twitter post.
So, as of 10:35pm on Sunday, November 30th, the total number of downloads from the links I was able to track?
14,281
Over 14,000 downloads in 48 hours!
Skeptical?
I don’t blame you, although I do invite you to check it out for yourself.
Do aGoogle searchfor the song and track all the download links from the websites listed. Eliminate the repeats and then add them up. The number will be higher now that more time has passed.
This just goes to show the true power of not only social networking but also of a great network.
I just posted one message and one link; now there are dozens of download links, hundreds of messages and thousands of downloads.
This result is thanks to everybody who participated in this experiment. Together, we created a great example of the power of social media.
In case you missed the song, you can check it out here.
Not bad for an impromptu idea on a Friday night, huh?
Cyber PR Urban is Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR’s new urban division that handles Hip Hop and R&B as well as urban and urban crossover artists. We connect urban artists to Blogs, Podcasters, Internet Radio Stations, Vlogs, Social Networking sites, and Webzines. Cyber PR Urban’s Urban Plug newsletter is a free bi-monthly e-zine for musicians & entrepreneurs who want marketing, promotion and PR tips for navigating the new music business. Sign Up here: www.cyberprurban.com. Check out past articles at: www.cyberprurban.com/blog
Christina Duren started her music career as an intern at Island Def Jam where she spent a year in the Radio and Promotions/Publicity department. At IDJ she worked with Mariah Carey, Rihanna and Ne-Yo. From there she took her first real job at Shore Fire Media working campaigns for The Roots, and Heineken Red Star Soul Tour. Christina now acts as PR Director for Cyber PR and co-founder of Cyber PR Urban.
Reader Comments (7)
that's great.
How many people have bought the full album?
Have you tried this experiment with an independent artist without a celebrity name? Having L'il Wayne makes it a no-brainer for blogs to repost, but have you tried this with an unknown artist? If so, how did it go?
curious!
michelle
I have been doing something similar for the past several months.
I publish an online magazine for Blues musicians, Cross Harp Chronicles. This has made me privvy to all kinds of fast breaking news in this genre.
Utilizing Ping.fm and Hellotxt.com, I regularly shoot my news stories out to evey social networking site with whom we are registered. Although there is some overlapping, this enables us to break news to over thirty different networking on which we have a growing number of followers.
Ping.fm allows us to update our blogs at the same time, as well as microblogs, updates, etc.
Utlizing HelloTxt, we can also supplement our news stories with video, song clips, photos, etc.
Utlizing Future Tweets, we have put a page of regularly updated news stories on Twitter, which we rotate several; times a day.
We would certainly like to hear how others are using these social networking sites and their apps.
Dave King
Cross Harp Chronicles/
Just Roots PR
Here are clips from my debut piano cd
'Without Words'
http://perhapspiano.com
Oh, you mean the Lil Wayne that sold a million in the first week? The guy with a billion mixtape songs and mixtapes? THAT guy?
No way can this feat be duplicated with a lesser known collaboration. You're talking about the most buzzed about artist in hip-hop.
I agree with above posts, you try doing that with my 'unknown' act and see what response you get !! huh, if this magical power of social networking was so good, why there would be no webspace left because every single unknown entity would have broke their act already lol
Yeah been there done that (signed up and worked the necessary network sites) tweeted, blogged, you name it..in my opinion it's not what you know/what you do, it's all about 'who' you know and how much advertising budget youve got.
Still, it makes for an interesting topic and plenty of food for thought, but unfortunately unless youre already 'on the map' (established) then I'm afraid it aint gonna happen for us un-knowns, and it's easier said than done when it comes to breaking your own act in the current climate regardless of what resources are available to us nobodies.
I originally agreed with the above posts, until I found moe aurora's website and read his responses. He says he used that song mainly because it had lil wayns name so he could test a marketing possibility and not just a route for independent artist. i originally had the same opinion as the people above but now that i know what he was doing, i agree with his thinking.
These are his replies
http://makingthemogul.com/2009/01/response-to-the-power-of-twitter/
http://makingthemogul.com/2009/12/music-20-is-full-of-sheep/
Great post and very informative,i would like anyone reading this to take a listen to this track.
http://soundcloud.com/mr-diamond/crazy-for-your-love