Mixcloud: ‘Brands still aren’t using music in a content marketing fashion’
Content Marketing Association Summit 2013: Brands are still not harnessing the content marketing opportunities offered by music and instead are opting to create “bland” pieces of marketing, according to Nikhil Shah, the co-founder of online streaming service Mixcloud.
By Sarah Vizard
Speaking at the Content Marketing Association 2013 Summit in London today (27 November), Shah said the most effective way for a brand to build a positive association with music is to deliver great music content – such as Durex creating playlists for people to have sex to or Nike curating music for people to listen to when they go for a run.
He added: “With streaming there are so many formats available. This is no longer a world where people just have their own collections on their iPod…this is a world where brands can curate the experience for listeners through these platforms.
“Yet in our world a lot of brands are still not using this opportunity in a proper content marketing fashion, instead they’re creating playlists that are pretty bland and don’t express their core brand values.”
Shah said if marketers believe music is important to their brands they must invest in amplification and promotion.
He pointed to case studies such as Red Bull’s Thre3Style DJ contest, which achieved a social reach of 15 million people, and Malibu’s “Play” campaign, which generated a social reach of 14.5 million, the latter campaign through Mixcloud alone.
Shah said using DJs or even asking artists to create their own bespoke tracks, rather than just creating a playlist, is a “creative expression of your brand”.
He added: “Does a playlist where you are simply curating and pulling together music from elsewhere really express your brand values? If you created a channel on YouTube would you just curate, or would you create and produce your own original content?”
Marketers can also look to streaming services such as Mixcloud, or rivals like Spotify, as well as data providers such as Music Metric or Echo Nest to understand the types of artists and scenes most suitable for their audiences based on past listening behaviour and other algorithms, Shah advised.
