Warner Music Nashville (WMN) today announced the launch of its new website,WarnerMusicNashville.com, which aggregates each of its artists’ disparate social media activities into single pages of constantly evolving media, serving as a one-stop-shop for fans eager to interact directly with their favorite acts. WMN worked with its social curation and real-time engagement solution provider Arktan to create the mixed-media website. Also as part of the launch, WMN worked with StageIt, enabling WMN artists to deliver unique online live concert performances, via WarnerMusicNashville.com, while providing real-time social engagement with their fans. Together, WMN and StageIt have created a monthly series, “Live from Music Square”—named for the street address of WMN—which launches February 12th at 7PM CST, providing fans with an intimate backstage pass to some of their favorite WMN artists including Brett Eldredge, Charlie Worsham, and more.
“I’m honored to be the first artist featured on ‘Live from Music Square,’” said Brett Eldredge. “While on tour, I travel far and wide but still miss out on hitting all of the cities where my fans are. ‘Live from Music Square’ gives me a chance to perform and socialize with fans around the world. They can sit in the comfort of their own home, eating Fruit Loops and drinking a cold one and watch me jam like I'm right there with them.”
“There's nothing better than performing,” said WMN recording artist Charlie Worsham. “The new ‘Live from Music Square’ series allows me to play for folks from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, all at the same time. And for me, it allows me to connect with fans directly and do the thing that I love most.”
“With the new and improved WarnerMusicNashville.com—which was created in part with our amazing friends over at Arktan—we’re fostering conversation by pulling each of these channels together in a succinct, easy-to-digest package,” said Jeremy Holley, Vice President, Consumer & Interactive Marketing, WMN. “Additionally, by working with StageIt, we’re able to provide fans with fully interactive live performances, further propelling the viral nature of our artists’ content. Now, when fans visit the site, they can read breaking news about Blake Shelton, watch Charlie Worsham’s live concert stream, and discover their new favorite artist Jana Kramer, all on the same site, and within a few minutes.”
A minimalist responsive design puts the focus of the site on WMN’s artists’ news, while the “mixed-layout” approach allows the content to be optimally viewed on a wider array of devices, platforms and browsers. The social media “buzz meter” calculates an artists’ current reach and relevance in the social Web by monitoring comments, mentions and replies across numerous social networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. The SocialStreams product gives the artist profile pages a pulse and have transformed them into destination hubs where the artists’ global fan base can interact with all of the real-time content, further powering social music experiences.
StageIt—named one of the 10 Most Interesting Startups of 2012 by Billboard.biz—is a web-based platform that enables artists to easily create paid live shows directly from their laptops. Founded by CEO and music industry veteran Evan Lowenstein, StageIt removes the barriers involved with touring in multiple cities by allowing fans to watch from wherever they are. The online performances streamed on StageIt are not archived, so it remains a truly unique experience for the virtual attendees. Artists choose when to perform and how much they want to charge. Fans can also support their favorite artists via a virtual Tip Jar during shows.
