Hopefully everyone who follows Sonicbids knows that we support tons of bands each year at SXSW. For the past few years, I've been paying very close attention to the Interactive portion of the festival, where hundreds of new and interesting startups debut or promote their products to the technology and music communities.As the Product Manager for Sonicbids' core platform, I'm insanely excited to see the new trends and technology coming out of SXSW's interactive panels and events. Here's a short recap of some of the trends and key points I've seen, some of which you'll start to see on Sonicbids:
- Social discovery is the next big thing. Social discovery encompasses the idea of getting on-the-fly recommendations for new things based on your location, such as restaurants, clubs and even people. Social discovery is a fairly new innovation - only a few apps focus on people discovery (Glancee and Highlight), and there will always be concerns about privacy. Nonetheless, there's no doubt that social discovery will become critical for bands, venues, festivals and brands looking to get into music.
- Big data is invaluable for bands and brands. By now, it goes without saying that bands should be constantly paying attention to their fan engagement levels on social media, their website and even at shows. Brands also want to know this information to reach bands' fan bases - and are interested in working with emerging artists and providing cool opportunities and funding to do so. Knowing your reach goes a long way when booking shows and communicating with new folks, large and small.
- Facebook is not going anywhere, but some are finding it less "cool" than before. Of all the panels I attended, nearly all of them brought up Facebook (of course!). However, a surprising amount of questions arose about Facebook's growing lack of 'coolness' for bands - like the switch to Facebook Timeline for Pages, increased ads and the growing trend of "everyone's mom" on the site. There's no doubt that Facebook's importance to bands is high - it's a great place to reach a massive audience of your fans, and it provides a wide variety of data around the fans that are engaging with your band or brand.
What kinds of music technology are getting you excited? What kinds of new trends are you hoping to see on Sonicbids? Comment here - I'm always interested to hear what the Sonicbids community has to say.
