“Arguably”, says p2pnet regular and frequent poster Robert, “my favourite artist, Matthew Good (right) has decided to improve the connection with his fans”.
Matthew’s had a blog since the Matthew Good Band days and “for a lengthy period had users sign up, for free, and they were permitted to comment on articles Matt and other contributers wrote”, says Robert.
This, he says,” resulted in great interaction with fans”, but “unfortunately also added a lot of unnecessary stress”.
The situation peaked with the removal of comments for almost a year.
“Only recently and on select postings have comments been permitted” says Robertgoing on >>>
Unfortunately, often the post and comments are removed, as some people just show up to stir up trouble.
After much thinking and research, Matt has decided to change his website. He realizes the value of connecting with fans, but how does one manage to connect with fans, add features for social interaction, and keep the bullshit to a minimum?
Here’s how…
Matt has decided to restructure his site.
The blog will remain, with the return of guest contributers and a new paid membership area will added. Paid membership areas never sit well with people, however one should really think about the pros and cons of this concept. I hope this article helps people understand how an artist can use paid memberships to connect with fans, offer interaction between artists and fans and fans amongst themselves, all while reducing the headaches associated with allowing people to comment.
For the paid members, videos will appear, one or two per week. The videos will include writing process, and Q&A. Many bands do Q&A, but I haven’t heard of any sharing the writing process. It will appear like a story, one might describe roadblocks and another might cover the breakthrough of said roadblock. The cool part? Fans can comment and even give suggestions and fans feel a stronger connection through the artist simply sharing their experiences with fans.
In addition to videos there will be a forum. Forums are clearly not new to websites right?
Well this forum includes Soundcheck parties. I don’t mean go and listen to the band tune their guitars, I mean a lottery where paid members can enter and when there is a concert in their area, can listen to the soundcheck, then ask questions, have things signed, learn about what goes into a show, etc.
Soundcheck parties engage fans in the live experience, while also sharing the knowledge of what goes into a live show. What about the recording process? There will be lotteries for a few members to have the chance to experience a day in the recording process. Dubbed Listening Party, a few members will get the chance to sit in a real recording studio and watch how it all goes down, which can be very interesting and helpful for up and coming bands, as well as a dream come true for die-hard fans.
So we have videos detailing the writing process, Q&A, chances at Soundcheck Parties and Listening Parties, so what else is there?
A Social Media section where paid members can connect with one another, as they already have a common connection, Matthew Good. This page will enable members to post a little something about themselves, such as new to a city and looking to meet other fans or they have a band and wish to promote it to other fans, or their photography.
With the social media page, fans have a twitter-sized little description section followed by a URL field and this can include “Hey I saw this great story from The Guardian …” and post the link, or “I saw this amazing sunset …” and post the link to their flickr page. It is open to the members to see and given Matt is committed to interacting with his fans, he too will be viewing these posts and following links where he’s interested.
So we have an opportunity for fans to share things they like with other fans and even the artist themselves!
On the subject of fans connecting, Matt says:
“I can’t count how many people whom have met, because, you know, of that shared connection of being a fan. So, you have someone in Chicago who’s now friends with someone from Calgary. Who, you know, 10 years ago didn’t know one another and now they are super close friends because of it. When it comes to my job that’s almost the best thing about it really, is that connectivity, that people can have because of it.”
That last sentence is key! It is not just about connecting artists and fans, but fans with fans as well!
Now for the part most people have issues with, membership fees. Are these not just extra income for the artist and their label to recoup losses, due to ‘piracy’ or the economic downturn? No, they are not. Sites that can support all those features, as well as handle tens of thousands of connections each day, require hardware and help from people with the technical expertise. Most musicians do not want to become data centre experts, web development experts, networking experts, cloud-computing experimenters, as these all take away from their primary focus, art!
Matt and his team have done a lot of research on the subject, consulting experts as well has having highly experienced techie members on his team. They worked out $24.95/yr as the price required to provide these services. Unless you are Metallica or Madonna whom have more money than you can shake a stick at, you really can’t afford to fund all of this yourselves to provide a free service to your fans. Anyone with any technical knowledge of the Web and how it works knows this is not easy to implement, especially to scale well, and maintain.
On the subject of the membership fee, Matt explains:
“The revenue generated by membership is going to allow us the flexibility to do things, to implement things that we think are great, that otherwise, financially, we would be restricted .. that we can’t do. Or at present can’t do, like say we need to pump in an extra $5000 into site development that right now I’d have to basically pay for. It kind of just rolls back into the site, which is something that’s the basic reason for doing it … Kinda pays off in that respect.”
Members of course get to comment on other members’ posts, Matt’s posts, the posts of contributers, etc. Members also can offer suggestions for things to implement, which is the purpose of the forums.
The team intends to take these requests seriously and other members can easily provide yay or nay support through the forum. The idea is to include fans in these decisions, as that’s the purpose of the site, to connect the artist with the fans, so why shouldn’t the fans have a voice?
Policing the forums can be extremely difficult and requires moderators.
How does a fan feel when the artist is overwhelmed with the task of policing instead of focusing on their creative works or engaging with fans? Do fans want an invisible wall of moderators deciding which posts constitute harassment or blatant stupidity? Matt adds this additional reasoning for the paid membership “As ‘democratic’ as people like to make the Internet seem, the reality is, having been involved in it as long as I have been… civility goes straight out the frickin’ window. And unless you have some kind of stop-gab measure in place where people are going to actually be interested in being involved and not be jackasses .. you know .. for them to shell out money for the ability to do so obviously shows it is something that they take seriously. … once you open the frickin’ flood gates it just turns into a three-ring circus.”
Additionally, the members themselves have the opportunity to voice concerns regarding the particular behaviour of certain members, whom don’t mind paying $25 to act stupid.
Of course some skeptics might think that people who simply disagree with the artist will be labelled by other members as those requiring disconnection from the members area. This is a possibility, but the artist themselves have the ultimate decision. Naturally fans are supportive of their favoured artist and will rush to their defense even if it isn’t warranted. This could lead to some fans teaming up against someone who simply disagrees with certain posts. The hope is that common sense will be applied by most members and occasionally the artist will need to step in and set the record straight.
Nothing is perfect, but the fact that members are included in keeping the peace is another form of connecting with the fans, encouraging them to take responsibility that comes with implementing this type of artist-fan interaction. They are a part of it, not just observers!
The concepts presented by Matt have lots of potential. And given that Matt does engage in comments, it will be far better than other forums where the band members do not show up at all, leaving the moderating to hired-hands. The real benefit is actually being there to connect with the fans, which Matt does an exceptional job in the current, sometimes-comments-allowed, form.
“This new site will amplify this connection by orders of magnitude (powers of ten for the non-mathies)”, says Roberet, adding:
” Fans partake in the creation of the connection medium, not just the exchange between artists and fans.”
Artist-to-fans-to-artist.
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:40 am
If anyone else has trouble reading dark blue on black, you may be interested in this Readability widget.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:17 am
Ooops.
Fixed.
Cheers!
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:24 pm
@ Jon
Look after that lake man!
A cursory glance at the average Youtube comments section will show the moronic input which constitutes some peoples contribution to the world, “the big man with a mouse and keyboard” syndrome.
If you are fortunate enough to be so busy you need third parties to moderate blogs/forums on your behalf, if they are fans themsleves which is how we run our forum – particularly when we are on the road – we don’t see that as a problem. It is sort of half way between an old fashioned “fan club” and the more modern connection with the artist type thing. As long as you go on there as often as you can, why worry. Perhaps Matt was concerned about not being able to sit on the fence in all the debates on his blog, maybe for fear of alienating and losing some supporters. The days of “top down” control are over, if you connect with people you can’t seriously expect not to piss some people off – even if they like your music. Otherwise you’d end up a bland pop-puppet with no opinions.
We think Matt is sailing a bit too close to the wind in some of his comments. For example he does come a bit too close to the “I want to concentrate on my music man” argument – an attitude which is now as dead as the market for copies. The actual running costs of data centres/ web development etc are the same as paying to go into an expensive studio to record, the choice of the artist and down to them. It is all part of the creation and promotion process and not a seperate issue. He says he has “techies” on his “team” – well what are they doing? If he found fans willing to contribute these skills he might be able to get his costs down considerably.
It all sounds a bit too much like a record labels attitude, “policing” the forum, getting folks to pay to make their voices heard. It also assumes that removing dickheads from a blog/forum will be seen as the artist “always wanting their own way” which any real fan would know wasn’t true. Also if fans argue with each other, well that is up to them, it’s what people do in real life every day. Possibly the real reason he thinks it is a problem is that it draws attention away from whatever he is trying to promote at any given time. He announces a new song and everyone is bitching at George for asking if Matts socks suck or whatever.
If it is a “pop” acts blog/forum most people will only want to know about their socks. If it is a more “serious” artist they may want to ask about “what inspires you – how much have you suffered to create this art”. Fan blog/forums by their very nature will drag debate towards the “pop” band level, there is no way around that. Maybe this is why more serious artists like Matt find it “stressful”? Maybe Matt would ideally like a Symposium, where only those who pay $24.95 can be trusted and he can keep out the riff raff?
A simple set of guidelines, not making people pay to behave themselves is all that is required.
The obvious way around this is to split the blog/forum into “On Topic” & “Off Topic” – anyone who goes too far off topic knows they will be deleted from the outset. Making people register to join and getting their email address and IP address is enough, plus in this day and age someone just taking the time to fill in a few fields will be seen as a major effort by them anyway. At the end of the day it is your forum and if people indulge in racism, homophobia, spamming or attacks etc it is your choice to delete them, just the same way you would hang up on a prat on the telephone or slam the door in someones face.
The notion of fans connecting with other fans isn’t a revelation. It is the whole point.
One thing we discussed on our forum recently was how the whole “fan involvement” issue blurs the line between artist and fan in terms of “creative control”. This article also seems to touch on that. Just as the artists forum is ultimately his or hers, so too is the art. The contribution of time/money/ideas/ by a fan can only go so deep – otherwise they have in fact joined the band. Maybe that is how bands will survive in the future, a band with a 1000 members? The only touble is the “a camel is a horse designed by a commitee” scenario comes into play.
Devilish Presley.
Current status: Not wearing any socks.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:31 pm
@Crosbie:
(Or, you could just tell Jon he f’d up.)
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:48 pm
@Jacqui Vixen #3
Please take no offense but I am going to be a bit defensive. Clearly my article wasn’t clearly spelled out, or left too much open for misinterpretation.
I think you misinterpreted the point of the moderators and inferred a lot of things without reading up on his blog as much as I have. You are lucky to have fans moderating. Matt’s fans have proposed this and in his opinion, it has always gone down hill for him. It doesn’t work out for his needs. Matt is not concerned about sitting on the fence, he’s just had some bad experiences with fans doing work for free, “unreliable” was his description. He’s not a techie and he only has two techie friends that do the site development and for what Matt wants, he needs people with real skills and able to be there to fix things and debug things, and that doesn’t come cheap.
It’s not about saving money, it’s about having the site you want. If you have 15 000 registered users and achieving some 25 000 hits per day and if you wanted your site to have a full multimedia experience, beyond just a blog with comments, you too would need to shell out cash for hardware. He pays for the site out of his pocket and he can’t afford to pimp it out like he wants to and like he knows the fans would appreciate, so that’s why the membership exists. And it helps remove the many headaches he’s faced in the past while trying to keep the site free and only for registered users. You’d be surprised how much abuse he’s taken, while still insisting on not charging for membership! It wasn’t until Sept 2009 when he closed comments and real fans understood. It was too much! You can’t ignore hate comments and emails flooding your inbox.
I think your assumptions about policing are a bit out of line too. Sorry, but I’ve been on his site since 2006, a regular reader and commenter and I’ve seen a lot of nasty things people have said. You don’t say to someone with mental illness “Just take a few pills and it will all go away.” Matt has dealt with as many headaches as Jon has and a lot of personal attacks. Policing is not intended as a means force people to pay to get their voices heard or artist wanting their own way. No offense but your ignorance towards the situation is rather gross. I am kinda offended here so if I sound it, that’s why.
I clearly should have rewritten things such that it would be no open to this type of critique.
And for the record when you get more popular and the flood gates open, you’ll see the real idiots that have a hayday on your blog, commenting up a storm, changing their IP to keep posting nasty, personal insults about you and your family, monopolizing and even hacking your site to post as someone who’s supposed to me a moderator, then maybe you can understand where Matt is coming from. “just taking the time to fill in a few fields will be seen as a major effort by them anyway” Fat chance there! You’d be surprised how many idiots will do exactly that just because they like to push and push.
How can you write when you are busy deleting idiotic comments or even entire posts? And they don’t stop coming either! Do you think he wants to charge people or stifle free speech? Fuck, the guy is a goddamn activist for free speech and human rights! Geesh! Guidelines are as useful as speed limit signs.
I think you’re too much into the anti-Corporate mentality to see when someone is corporate and when something isn’t.
And as I tried to explain, it’s not all about control, top-down control, stifling free speech, ripping people off, forcing them to pay, etc… it is something simply trying to introduce a barrier to keep fucktards from adding excessive grief to your life!
I am glad you came to a2f2a.com, but you can’t just jump the gun with assumptions like that about a particular article. How about appearing cool-headed and asking first?
I would have gladly given you a background on the BS Matt has put up with and what it has cost him in terms of time, money, and excessive frustration.
It’s enough to make an artist want to be like, say, the Goo Goo Dolls who use a team of moderators that put a HUGE fucking wall in between fans and the artists. The only connection you get is through Q&A and that’s if you are lucky to have them answer your question in the 8-12 questions they answer per month. And that was $30 per year! No comments on their blogs, no interaction with fans, no “here’s my link”, you could not even say anything personal about them without the moderator shutting your thread down! That was in 2006-2007 until I felt it wasn’t worth it.
There’s a huge difference man, HUGE.
Again, sorry for the frustration, but damn, it’s like you just ripped on the guy without asking any questions first.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Also, Matt writes music during the day, but he also reads a great deal of news, 95% of which he doesn’t comment on his blog. He doesn’t come off like a cheese-ball either. Like Jon, Matt has a solid understanding of what he writes when he does commentary, it’s not all about the music.
It’s more like “If you pay, I can give you so much more like I want to but can’t afford to, and I can reduce the headaches that come with letting you roam free because there will be less douchebags showing up to simply rain on our parade because… they can.”
March 4th, 2010 at 10:25 am
@ Robert.
No worries mate, we won’t be offended by anyone replying in a civillised manner the way you just did.
Now you have explained Matt’s particular case we understand it better.
We did jump the gun and we apologise. If Matt has been targeted as much as you say, then that is quite awful and we in no way want to add to that. We don’t know the bloke and can only wish him luck in the future with his chosen way forward on his blog.
Because we are busy working and trying to run a band as well, we don’t really have the time to properly research every artist and their background and every related article as much as we would like to – this can lead us to make making dumb assumptions like you have just pointed out.
I guess the only answer is to not comment as much.
Cheers and again good luck to Matt and yourself.
Devilish Presley.
March 4th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Hey, if you want to meet the Emperor ya gotta grease some palms. If fans just want to discuss him with each other about 5 min of web searching came up with this fansite: http://www.nearfantastica.com/
I can’t be the judge of how “Good” it is, as I really don’t know anything about Matthew Good.
March 4th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
@Jacqui Vixen #7:
No worries, I don’t expect people to know the details, I just hope people ask first.
Not everyone knows about every other artist. We like to question ideas and their applicability.
When it comes to say, the RIAA, there’s no need to question, almost everyone here has the same background on that subject.
The only answer is not to avoid commenting, it’s to try to understand the possibilities presented in the article. The intent was to say “yeah, it costs money but there’s a lot of features that would not otherwise exist” and that was the crust of what I was saying. I know not all ideas presented are new, but to a sorta popular band, they are.
We’re not talking about Nickelback here, not that level of popularity. Imagine their site though! I’ve never been and don’t care to, as I don’t like their music or the singer getting away with drunk driving when most of us would lose our license.
March 5th, 2010 at 7:55 am
Isn’t Matthew Good signed to Universal Canada?
March 5th, 2010 at 11:11 am
According to RIAA Radar he may belong to Universal International.
Some releases were Atlantic and Polygram.
March 5th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
@Indianna #10:
Yes he belongs to Universal Canada, though his albums are only avail via iTunes outside Canada, except by stores that import them. His words, not mine.
Whether he is signed to Universal Canada, who obviously lets him do and say what he wants, is not relevant to the topic. Universal does not pay for the website, Matt does.
While he is touring the US, he will just break even, same as the last time he toured the US. He is admittedly broke, not Lars Ulrich broke, but actually without money. He doesn’t advocate suing people, he accepts stuff will find its way online.
One thing he did recently say, in the comments of a post, is that he sold twice as many tickets for the Vancouver (album) tour than copies of albums. That’s because people took his posted demos and put them on youtube. He knows he doesn’t make money off of album sales, but Universal probably gave him a warning or something.
He’s mute on his contract details, understandably.
That’s about all I an add, as I don’t know how being truly Indie really matters when it comes to connecting with fans. Signed artists should be doing the same. If you don’t have the cash to buy out your remaining contract, what are you to do?
March 5th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Additionally, he recently, with a podcast, encouraged fans to send good quality versions of old demos in and he posted them on new podcasts. Apparently he doesn’t have copies of his own material laying around.
March 5th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Amazon.com shows his 2007 release, ‘Hospital Music’ as
Universal International as well
http://www.amazon.com/Hospital-Music-Matthew-Good/dp/B000SM6F9U/ref=ntt_mus_ep_dpi_lnk
Somes artists use the labels as a distribution means only,
( from what I hear anyway ), so, some clarification would be
nice.
March 6th, 2010 at 9:47 am
@Dreddsnik #14:
Quite possible, he doesn’t talk about everything lable-music related. He doesn’t jump up and down over those things like filesharing or 3 strikes or royalty rates for radio stations. He doesn’t discuss the “industry” much, more about his music if it is music related or struggles of funding the site himself and tours himself (he puts money into them).
Mostly, he talks about US foreign policy (on the blog) and Olympics and world issues, and many fans appreciate that. It’s not just about music for him, he’s trying to educate people, just as Jon does, but on different topics.
I don’t really know what his relationship is like with Universal. I honestly don’t know how much they help or hurt him. He doesn’t discuss it. If we are ever able to get him to come here, he might shed a little light on it.
March 6th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Evenin’ all,
Like Robert, I’m a fan of Matt Good. I don’t know how rare that is here in the UK but he’s definately worth a listen.
As for the subscription thing, it depends on the artist. For me, Matt Good is worth it though I appreciate that’s not really the point some of you were getting at.
None of us want to throw the baby out with the bath water so if me paying $24.95 (I think that works out to about £15-£18 over here) means I get to hear more music from Matt Good then it’s all, er….’good’ so to speak.
Be well
March 7th, 2010 at 11:24 am
As a bit of a side note for comparitive purposes I suggest checking out the Pearl Jam’s Ten Club. They’ve had this club around for quite a long time. Probalby 10+ years at this point and they’ve provided their paying fan base with plenty of bonuses. Christmas singles, exclusive ticket rights, fan feedback etc. Again use it as a comparison to this effort. Matt’s not the first to do it and I think all artists could benefit by having a fan membership that they support.
March 8th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
@Robert It’s ok. I bought the Vancouver album and went upstairs to look after I saw this post. I was just wondering because you would think that they would have given him an advance. I’m surprised that they haven’t financed his website.