Video: Topspin Media’s Ian Rogers on Why Letting iTunes Own Customers Is a Bad Idea
Posted by: : Category: UncategorizedIn this Wired.com video segment, Topspin Media’s Ian Rogers explains that while it’s a good idea for bands to sell their wares through iTunes, it’s pure folly to send customers away from a band’s website to buy the songs elsewhere.
The website for the popular band MGMT, for example, includes “buy” links on iTunes, Amazon, and other digital music stores. By sending customers away to these stores rather than selling the music themselves, the band (and its label, Sony Music) is giving Apple valuable customer data. And data, maintains Rogers, is the foundation of how content creators can build their businesses.
“iTunes emails that consumer every single Tuesday, and you have no idea who the hell they are,” says Rogers. “You’ve got them right on your site, and you’re going to send them away for someone else to collect the data and own that customer?
“That’s craziness.”
There’s a lesson here for all content creators: that while you’d have to be crazy not to distribute your content through as many avenues as possible, it’s equally crazy to lose the opportunity to capture e-mail addresses and “own the customer” by directing visitors to one’s own website away to a third-party store.
See Also:
- Labels Emphasize Artist-Specific Social Networks, Websites
- Video Interview: Ian Rogers, Topspin Media
- TopSpin Lets Bands Ape Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails
- Nine Inch Nails Tracks Downloads of ‘The Slip’ via Google Earth
- Why File Sharing Will Save Hollywood, Music
- Inside BigChampagne’s Music Panopticon
- Social Media Networks Are Music’s Curse and Salvation
Source: Eliot Van Buskirk
