Secrets of a digital hunter-gatherer

Normally you hear how musicians are losing money because of music going online, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. Jamiroquai is kicking off its comeback tour with gigs all around the world at locations targeted using web data collected from social media.

Apparently sales of records by hat-fan Jay Kay have flatlined over recent years in quite a few countries, so the band is naturally keen to stimulate their fan base into more sales action. By monitoring Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, YouTube Insights, Last.fm, Alexa and Social Mention its digital minders have built up a huge amount of data for Jamiroquai‘s record label and booking agent.

“We know where people are, which pages they look at and for how long and their demographics,” says the chief digital minder. “Jay Kay has just played two festivals in South America, partly because the Facebook analytics demonstrated that there was an enormous fanbase over there.

“If you were looking at CD sales alone, the level of piracy in some countries would mean you wouldn’t know where half your fans were.”

It’s clear that it pays big dividends to be a digital hunter-gatherer. You know exactly where and who your target audience is – IF you’re prepared to spend the time doing the digital donkey work.

I’m amazed at how many people won’t commit time to this sort of groundwork, but they’ll happily spend large chunks of cash on outbound marketing with no clear idea of who’s actually at the receiving end. These days you get a far better return by putting in the time.