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Still Not Getting It
16 Aug 2004 by Matthew Linderman
The NY Times reports that Warner recently became the first major record label to ask MP3 blogs to play its music (the push is for Secret Machines). When Music For Robots did post a SM track, a few of the comments stood out for their over-the-topness. Backfire ensues.
“I never heard these guys before, but theyre awesome,” read a posting last Thursday under the name Ron. “I went to their website and you can listen to a lot of ther other stuff, very cool and very good!” Another post, sprinkled with casual profanity, asserted that big corporations could still release good music, and cited the Beatles as an example.
A check of site records by [Music For Robot’s Mark] Willett revealed that all four of the suspect comments had been posted from the same Internet Protocol address, indicating that they came from the same computer or from a computer within the same company. That address was also the source of two e-mail messages that [Vice president for new media at Warner Brothers Robin] Bechtel sent to a reporter, as well as the original messages sent to the bloggers.
2 comments so far (Post a Comment)
16 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...
and they probably never will get it.
17 Aug 2004 | Drew said...
This is probably fairly common and entirely predictable marketing.
a friend of mine is working on a low-budget horror film and one of his many jobs there has been to take on a variety of personas on several different related messageboards to generate buzz about the movie.
The INTERESTING thing is that they didn't just ask him to talk it up. They also wanted him to slam it and critique it.
Basically, say/write anything to generate discussion of this movie so that people will be interested to see it whether to enjoy it, slam it or just to prove whatever pre-conceived notions they had formed about it.
I can't even imagine what large-budget movie marketing companies are doing.
Basically, take everything you read on messageboards with a grain of salt.
