Sony Music has acquired a pair of fan engagement-focused apps called Songwhip and Fansifter.
The apps were demonstrated at Sony Music’s Immersive Tech Day in London on Tuesday (October 22). The event focused primarily on Sony’s work in the immersive entertainment and gaming worlds via its Sony Immersive Music Studios (Sony IMS) division.
The event featured a segment dedicated to SME’s broader approach to fan engagement, during which Sony Music Entertainment‘s Chief Product Officer Jacob Fowler confirmed that the company has acquired two apps: Songwhip and Fansifter.
SME’s acquisition of the two apps arrives at a time of heightened music-industry interest in the artist-fan relationship and the potential for monetizing the ‘superfan’ category in particular.
Sony Music Group has shown its muscle in acquisitions, splashing what MBW estimated in June to be $6 billion-plus on M&A over the past decade.
But it’s not just music rights-centric companies that Sony has invested in. It has also been making smaller experimental non-music rights company investments.
In May, Rob Stringer, Chairman of Sony Music Group, gave a presentation for Sony Corp investors. In a slide dedicated to “Building Fan Connections across all revenue streams,” the company hinted at its investment in Fansifter as part of its Fan Engagement strategy.
Other non-music rights-centric companies that Sony Music has invested in in recent years include Live and Experiential firms such as Spain’s Proactiv Entertainment, UK concert promoter Senbla, and UK-based open-air cinema experiences company The Luna Cinema (all via Sony Music Masterworks).
Songwhip is described as a content marketing tool for helping Sony Music artists “quickly generate websites and robust link-in-bio solutions that can centralize their content marketing online and invite fans to engage with their pages”.
The app collates internal and external marketing content, including tour dates, streaming links, and music videos, along with an artist bio to create a customizable microsite in a “matter of seconds,” according to Fowler.
“[Songwhip] is really a mini website ‘Link in Bio’ solution for the music industry,” Fowler added during the tech event.
“We tried to think about this as… the easiest way for our labels, on behalf of our artists, to be able to quickly spin up a mini website that would pull [marketing] material into one spot where fans could consume and engage, and then also where they were able to link that directly into their profiles on platforms where fans were at today.”
The other app, Fansifter, is described by SME as a “solution supporting [SME’s] artists and their teams in making it easy to use data and insights to understand and create strategies for reaching their entire audience — from casual fans to superfans.”
The tool uses proprietary algorithms to categorize fans into ‘superfans,’ ‘engaged’ fans, ‘casual’ fans or ‘new’ fans based on their engagement activity with artists and their content, from album pre-ssaves, to newsletter sign-ups or virtual merch purchases.
“Since we bought this platform, we’ve been building out our own proprietary algorithms that calculate and retrain twice a day to effectively say, For this artist, with their unique group of fans, what are the different segments,” said Sony Muisic’s Fowler on Tuesday.
Those different fan segments can then be used to target each category of fan with tailored content and campaigns.
Fowler explained: “Let’s say there’s an exclusive translucent blue vinyl coming out for the new signal, and we want to make sure our superfans and our engaged fans have access first. Those fans have told us that they want to make sure we reach them on SMS, as soon as this is available, [so] we can go ahead and filter… to ensure we’re able to target those fans.”
Commenting on the fan segmentation tool at the event, Negla Abdela, Managing Director of Sony’s Ministry of Sound, said: “It makes it very easy for us to understand the audience, especially when we are starting from scratch with a brand new artist, but then also seeing how those fans have found the artists, and then how they’ve moved through the funnel. Understanding the audience means we can be more strategic.”
Elsewhere at Sony’s Immersive Tech Day on Tuesday, the company highlighted its ongoing work and upcoming projects in the immersive entertainment and gaming worlds via its Sony Immersive Music Studios (Sony IMS) division.
The event featured presentations from Dennis Kooker (President Global Digital Business and US Sales, Sony Music Entertainment), and Brad Spahr (Senior Vice President/ General Manager, Sony Immersive Music Studios), as well as other senior Sony Music execs.
Sony revealed at the event that British singer-songwriter Myles Smith will be bringing an exclusive virtual performance to Epic Games‘ hit video game Fortnite on October 25, which he has developed in partnership with Sony Music and RCA UK.
The virtual event, produced by Sony Immersive Music Studios, will feature an avatar of Myles Smith performing three tracks within the game – including the smash hit Stargazing, as well as Wait For You and his latest release Whisper.
Elsewhere at Sony Music’s event on Tuesday, using RCA UK artist JADE as a case study, the company pointed to the growing virtual merch opportunity for artists on gaming platforms such as Roblox.
In support of her latest singles, Fantasy and Angel of My Dreams, JADE recently introduced four new free limited-edition collectible UGC items on the platform via ‘AVNU: Where Music Meets’ described as SME’s “music-centric destination” for Roblox created by Sony IMS that’s centered “around music-related gameplay, challenges, and virtual goods collecting”.
Commenting on the opportunity in the virtual merch space, SME’s Dennis Kooker said that, “[Sony] sees this right now as primarily marketing [and] still obviously R&D for us … but obviously with the vision that this becomes more commercialized over time.
“The opportunity [is] not just for artists to kind of tell their marketing story, but for artists to also be able to generate revenue and income out of these experiences”.
Sony also highlighted its custom music-themed island created in Fortnite called ‘Nitewave,’ which, developed by Sony IMS, is claimed to be “one of the leading-edge examples of music-themed third-party islands built using Epic Games’ Unreal Editor for Fortnite creator tools.
Sony Corporation of America unveiled its Los Angeles-based Sony Immersive Music Studios unit in January 2021. The subsidiary focuses on “developing immersive music experiences through the power of creativity and technology.”
MBW broke the news in 2020 that Sony Music was building a team ‘dedicated to reimagining music through immersive media’ – using Fortnite maker Epic Games‘ Unreal Engine.Music Business Worldwide