I’ve always found the music industry to be an interesting area to assess.  Mainly because they always seem to use the same channels of marketing and have always been criticised for there lack of innovation when it comes to marketing methods.  Let’s see how they actually fare…..

Sony BMG

From what I can see, there doesn’t seem to be any main newsletter function, definitely no obvious sign up area.  What they seem to have gone for is an RSS feed route instead. 

They’ve segmented the feed as well, so you can choose which information you want to receive:

Label News

Forthcoming Gigs

I quite like the idea actually, though I would’ve preferred it if they had given me the option to choose which artists I wanted to find out about.  I can see people tuning out of the stories as they receive countless stories about Avril Lavigne and Alicia Keys when all they really care about is what’s going on with Kings of Leon and Editors.

If they had have implemented an email marketing campaign though, just think of the possibilities.  You choose which artists you want to find out about and receive some all information about them.  Better than that though, say Sony BMG sign up a similar artist to your preferences, they can introduce them to you; opening up the potential of all those subscribers.

Positives

• Choice of news categories to subscribe to
• Use of RSS feed
• Nice layout with easy to subscribe function to RSS

Negatives

• Haven’t utilised email subscribe function on site
• Unwanted information will also be included in sign up to RSS due to lack of filtering options

EMI

It was a mission within itself finding the right website.  When I did finally get the right one, the newsletter sign up was very easy to find.  Right, Sign up time…

They asked all the right questions that could allow them to have a well segmented and personalised email campaign.  Post Code, Birthday ( I’ve made up one to see if I receive any personalised emails in the next few weeks to celebrate my birthday) and favourite artists.  All good, well done EMI!

Positives

• Easy to find subscription area
• Good use of personal data capturing in sign up process
• Gave choice of artists I want to know about so no unwanted emails

Negatives

There is nothing particularly wrong with the sign up process.  Nice and simple sign up that asked all the standard questions.  Nothing outstanding, but nothing bad either.

Universal

Like EMI, they have instantly got a link to the sign up form and was very easy to find.  All questions very similar, except that Universal have opted to include text message marketing in their form, we’ll see how that goes…

Choosing which artists I like is really awkward.  Instead of radio buttons, we have a list and some instructions to hold CTRL whilst you select your artists.  Something like that could lose them sign ups or at the very least mean they don’t get quite as much information as they could do as people just give up and not select all their favoured artists.  This is just a small gripe though.

I found myself quite surprised at how many artists I like on this label actually so have quite a comprehensive list of people that I’m expecting emails from.  The final section of the signup is probably the icing on the cake though.  A tick box stating the following :

“Please keep me updated with info on any new artists from Universal Music, that are similar to the ones I have selected above”

This is something that I thought would’ve been great for the Sony BMG page.  Luckily, it looks like Universal are going that extra mile and have put some consideration into the sign up process.  Hooray!

Positives

• Easy to find subscription area
• Good use of personal data capturing in sign up process
• Gave choice of artists I want to know about so no unwanted emails
• Opened up potential to new music exposure with opt in tick box

Negatives

• Inconvenient artist selection process
• The whole side of the site for the sign up process seemed very dated.

And fighting for the Independents: Ninja Tunes

Once again, very easy to find mailing list link but ninja tunes fall massively short on the data collection front by only asking for email address and which parts of the label you want to hear about.

Positives

• Easy to find subscription area
• Choice of label areas to sign up to

Negatives

• Poor level of personal data capturing

Checking the Inbox

Oh dear, they have really fallen short here.  I go to check my inbox to see the confirmation email and find that two of the labels haven’t even sent me a confirmation email.  The one label that did (Universal), decided that I have to click through 15 emails confirming that I want to receive the news from those artists, one by one.  Now I understand that this is quite helpful as you may have accidentally added an artist you didn’t want but this is a laborious task of confirmation that if I wasn’t doing this, I wouldn’t have bothered clicking through all this.

And the winner is:

Well Round 1 goes to Universal.  Despite some annoying flaws, they have taken the early lead with the effort put into the whole process.  They are also the only company that have adopted the double opt-in process.  This isn’t over though as round two has now commenced; bring on the emails!