Here are some recent widget post from our Widgetmatic Blog:

• Widgetmatic Series Beefs Up Online Video Support and Options
  Video has always been a key component on widgets. With their growing popularity, online videos quickly and easily be integrated into both custom and prefab Widgetmatic widgets.
• Widgetmatic AIR Widgets for the Desktop
  While many people use Adobe Flash-based widgets on the Web, dashboard widgets have allowed users to access the same widget functionality on their own desktop.
• Clearspring API’s going Away – What to Do Next?
  You have about 100 days left till April 5^th, 2010 when your Clearspring widgets will stop working (unless you switch to their AddThis platform, Gigya or another widget sharing provider). 
• New Quantcast Web Analytics Tab for Widgets!
  Recently we have added a family of web analytics tabs which rely on both public (Alexa.com, Compete.com) and internal web analytics (Google Analytics, Omniture) information that can be incorporated into a Widgetmatic widget.

©2010 Metablocks Sound and Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

Music artist widgets generally solve the following problems for recording artists and labels:

• Fan Acquisition: Widgets allow bands to virally grow your fan base by enabling fans to share your music via the widget. Atlantic Record’s Eric Snowden talks about the same widget traffic driving phenomenon as well.
• Information Distribution: Widget make it easier to keep fans up to date on upcoming releases and events
• Fan Retention: It is a known fact that widgets increase the amount of time fans spend on artist sites by keeping fans “engaged”
• Digital Music Sales: Widgets are about demand creation and fulfillment when it comes to online digital track sales as artists link widgets directly to Apple’s iTune, Amazon or their own fulfillment ecommerce service.

Growing Digital Track Sales
Digital music track sales are hitting record highs! According to Billboard Magazine, in December 2008 US weekly digital track sales have set a new record of 47.7 million ). And this phenomena is not limited to North America, global digital music sales hit $2.9 billion in 2007, up from $2.1 billion in 2006! Although digital sales only account for 18% of the U.S. music market (15% of the world) today, Forrester Research expects this figure will grow to 41% in five years.

This digital music sales trend continues and is evident from the recent numbers from Nielsen/Soundscan.

Digital Marketing through Widgets
If sales are digital, marketing has to be digital! Record labels like Interscope and Warner are taking to the web to drive music sales. (Interscope Record’s artist Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance,” topped the charts in December 200 with 419,000 downloads).  Being big fans of social media in general, Interscope Records has pushed digital sales by encouraging artists to use widgets and have used their own social media apps (See Interscope Songcard on Facebook) to drive sales. Some credit Warner music with pioneering directly selling music through widgets as well.

Getting on the Widget Band Wagon:
Music arists and labels have a number of options when it comes to designing and developing widget that include:

• Custom “Single Use” Widgets: Probably the most common route for artist and labels is to simply build a custom Flash-based widget either internally or using a company like Metablocks. We build a lot of these. The problem with “single-use” widgets, however, is they have a limited life-span and they tend to be static. They usually focus on a single artist, album or event and over time are “discarded” by fans as they loose their relavence.
• Do-It-Yourself (DIY)  “Single Use” Widgets: A number of “free” widget toolkits exist that allow artists and labels to quickly assemble a simple widget. Unlike a custom solution, many of these offerings come with limited functionality, third-party branding and most are no long “free”. Worst of all, almost all depend on third-party infrastructure that may not scale or may be retired if the provider exits the market.
• Standards-Based Widget Platform: A widget content delivery platform is the only solution that gives music labels “total ownership” of your widget content management and deployment. This is the idea behind Metablock’s Widgetmatic platform (which is currently in beta). Widgetmatic shifts the focus from “flash development” to “content delivery”, and from a “single use” mindset to a “fan lifecycle” mentality. It enables labels to launch and manage multiple artists on the same platform, using the widget as “portal” to continually and dynamically deliver new and relavent rich-media content to an artist’s fan. This content is not limited to music or news but includes dynamic “mini-applications” such as twitter feeds, interactive maps, and dozens of others.

©2010 Metablocks Sound and Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

Eric discusses how Atlantic Records is using social media to try and better connect fans and artists, the presentation also talks about their use of Adobe technologies such as Flash, Flash Lite and AIR. Here are some of the good points Eric makes:

• Artist Websites: Atlantic records has focused on the artist website (ARTIST.COM) and building out other offerings around the core site to include desktop applications, widgets and games, mobile apps and on disc connect. This is true (in general) for the entire family of Warner Music companies who are standardizing on the Drupal platform.
• Widgets and Games: According to Eric Snowden, “Widgets and games are a big part of driving traffic”. Totally agree with Eric here! Primary purpose of the Widgetmatic platform is attract and drive traffic.
• Feeds and Reusable Components: Keeping content consistent and have tried to build reusable elements and reusable common feeds. This is key! It still boggles my mind when I see an artist website or worse “blog” that doesn’t support RSS and feeds.
• Flash Technology: Atlantic uses Flash and other Adobe technologies heavily in artists sites.
• Band-Generated Content: Atlantic records are big fans of band generated content such as blogs, mobile streams, and a big source of traffic and fan discussions (get as many as a thousand comments on a post).
• Mobile: Atlantic pushes the site’s mobile companion site as a “first class citizen”.
• Artist Communities: Have 3 people on the rock and 3 on the urban side that moderate artist communities. Eric also talks about their use of Ning and other technologies to build artist communities.

Eric also talks about moving from being a “music company” to being a “content company”. I also like the fact that his team tries and do something for every artist, every day – believe me, this can be a challenge for most labels. My suggestion to labels is they explore ways of automating content creation and saving time and money by synchronizing information between web properties (publish once approach) to keep content fresh and new.

©2010 Metablocks Sound and Pictures. All Rights Reserved.