Thursday, December 20, 2007

Today I Learned... Artist focus

At DeepRockDrive, we are working on creating a very cool interactive experience between the artists and the fans who are watching on the web. Among other things, we have a feature called "Shout outs" which lets fan type a message to the artist and it shows up in the studio on a big screen with their username, picture, location and the message they typed. It is an amazing opportunity to say something to the artists you love and we've known for some time that between songs they read them and respond, but one thing I've wondered is whether the shout outs register with them during the song.

The answer, apparently, is yes! Last night, the Wylde Bunch played a show at DRD. They were awesome - think Earth, Wind and Fire for the 21st century. Tight and funky! They also did a great job of interacting with the fans through the shout outs.

After the show, I was talking with a couple of the guys in the band and I asked them what they thought and they really loved it. They wanted to keep on playing! When I asked if the shout outs registered while they were in the middle of the song he said "Definitely! I saw them coming up and it was great. It felt like the audience was right there! (points at screen)"

I always figured that these would register for many artists during the song, perhaps not with the same focus as between songs, but it was great to get that data point.

Awesome!

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