Archive for January, 2007
January 22nd, 2007
I tuned into the UK singles chart for the first time in months yesterday. It was not, as you might justifiably think, an attempt to rekindle my youth, but more a revived interest in how new chart rules are affecting the UK’s top 40.
As many of you will already know, from 1 January, digital music downloads without a physical release were included in the Official UK Singles Chart for the first time. In the weeks following, this has led to singles such as Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ and Snow Patrol’s ‘Chasing Cars’ re-entering the charts months after they were originally released.
Yesterday there was a bigger ’surprise’ in store. Billie Piper’s hit ‘Honey To The Bee’ made a comeback on download sales alone entering at number 17, after DJ Chris Moyles urged his listeners to test new chart rules by buying the track.
I didn’t like the song the first time round, but the result proves how quickly music companies might lose control of the charts.
Their biggest weapon in the new chart battle is likely to be search, and labels like Warner Music have already been reported to be appointing heavyweight media agencies to step-up their digital presence.
The search industry is set to benefit heavily, as being able to find tracks quickly will be more important than ever.
As a random experiment, I typed ‘a moment like this’, the title of Leona Lewis’ number one hit, into Google, and was suprised to find that I had to scroll down to the ninth natural search result before I could see a link to a download of the song. There was one lonely sponsored link to her fan site, and nothing more. The music industry has a lot of waking up to do!
January 19th, 2007
It’s been a successful week here at Liberate Media, tarnished only by our email service provider testing our last nerve.
After a week of delayed emails, rubbish hold music, and a masterclass in bad customer service we decided to take positive action, and share the issue with a few journalist contacts.
ZD Net picked up the story earlier this afternoon, here.
Let’s hope this goes some way to improving customer service at 1&1.
Have a good weekend!
January 18th, 2007
Earlier this week blog search engine Technorati and press release distribution agency PR Newswire, announced a partnership to put a Technorati button into press releases distributed through the PR Newswire services.
This morning I’ve had time to check it out, and what I’ve noticed is the minimal number of bloggers discussing and linking to PR Newswire press releases. For example, a Coca-Cola announcement was top story on PR Newswire at the time of writing this post, but Technorati was only registering one blog linking to it. The same appears to be true of other big-brand stories that I clicked through to.
It’s no secret that press releases are not the best way for PRs to reach the blogging community, but I had expected big brands to still be able to get away with it. For example, had Apple decided to release its iPhone by press release, there would have been criticism, but I’m sure it would ultimately have been picked up by the bloggersphere.
However my quick ‘uncontrolled’ experiment reveals that this might not be the case.
We’ll certainly be experimenting with this service for our own clients, and it will be interesting to see what this tells us about the online impact of press releases.
Is mainstream news beginning to evolve?
January 16th, 2007
At Liberate Media we’ve tracked a few cases of mainstream media getting to grips with the changing face of news consumption, such as this and this, and it appears the trend is continuing in 2007.
To kick us off, Roy Greenslade today highlighted the WSJ’s story on UK newspapers utilising SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and buying search words for big news stories. Not a new trend I realise, but relevant all the same. Specifically he quotes The Telegraph buying the phrase “North Korea nuclear test” last October as an example, a simple search proves this to be correct.
In addition, the piece points out that journalists at The Times are being trained to search optimise their articles.
This seems like a common thread over at News International/Corporation, as The Sun’s fully interactive mobile edition has been welcomed, and Sky News last week ran citizen journalism reports as part of its Green Britain week, which was tracked with Google maps, as reported by Organ Grinder.
By Jove, I do believe they’re getting it!
Is this positivity and involvement from mainstream media? Could 2007 really see the nation’s traditional news outlets embrace new methods of communication? Are we on the verge of an accepting and experimental news fraternity? Well, one step at a time…
January 15th, 2007
The Liberate Media blog has survived its first three months, and as part of our 2007 review, Lloyd and I have been discussing whether to continue positioning it as a corporate blog where we each aim to share the same ‘voice’, or to reposition it as a ‘Directors’ Blog’ enabling our individual voices to be stronger.
I’m pleased that we’re thinking about these things, as the blogging phenomenon is so fast-paced that it’s important to be reviewing the positioning and messaging of a corporate blog on a regular basis.
I decided to share our thoughts after reading about the Telegraph’s crackdown on its bloggers, warning them not to blog about the paper and exercise caution about revealing journalistic “tricks of the trade”.
A leaked memo from the Telegraph’s web news editor, Shane Richmond, published in the Guardian, reads:
“Please avoid blogging about your relationship with your employer, whether the Telegraph Media Group as an entity, ‘the desk’ or ‘my boss’, even in jest. Such comments are frequently misconstrued and can easily backfire.”
While Lloyd and I are not planning to crackdown on eachother’s blogging in this way, the incident reveals how greater editorial freedom can be possible through individual voices, rather than a corporate ‘voice’.
This was obviously the issue at stake in the recent removal of Sam Sethi from the TechCrunch blog.
Watch this space to see what we decide to do…