Influencer marketing in music often takes place around artists that are putting out their earliest releases (to help raise their profile) or for acts needing a bit of a social media rocket under a comeback single or album.
There is now the “hype house” side trend, involving influencers working in the same environment as artists (as seen in this issue’s lead feature with Universal Music Sweden). Now UMG sister label Capitol is adding an A&R spin to its own house-based influencer marketing plan.
Seven participants – Alec Chambers, Caroline Carr, Attis, Diego Fragnaud, Tyler Brash, Olivia Boeyink and Klondike Blonde – will live in the same mansion in upstate New York for six weeks and much of their activity will be live-streamed around the clock.
There is a recording studio on the grounds and each week they will be set a different musical challenge, the first one being to write a song about a particular city or country picked at random. (Side note: the Bay City Rollers got their name by sticking a pin in a map of the US at random. If that’s not symbolic, we don’t know what is.)
It is effectively a songwriting bootcamp – and Capitol is partnering with Song House Live on it. In the press release announcing the project, the label said, “Much as tech accelerators provide front-end support for fledgling inventors, CMG and Song House Live are providing unrivalled assistance to emerging artists from the initial creative concept onward – before a song becomes a viral hit.”
Music from the sessions will be released on a rolling basis and will be gathered together at the end in the Song House Live Season 1 compilation.
“Together with the Song House Live team, we’re able to meet fans where they consume music faster than ever by accelerating the traditional artist development process through this innovative concept,” is how Michelle Jubelirer, president and COO of Capitol Music Group, put it.
It is also a multi-platform undertaking with an official site hosting content as well as tie-in TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and SoundCloud presences. So there is a lot of content being produced here and every eventuality is being covered off.
The footage may be used for what the producers are calling a “future episodic docuseries” – meaning that, if it all goes well, footage could be repackaged and repurposed (possibly on a TV channel) to give the winners an extra marketing push.
This is fundamentally a melding of Big Brother, X Factor, The Voice and Songland – and it will surely be as exhilarating and as horrifying as that sounds.
