Keynote Presentation On ‘How To Make A Viral’ Completes High-Powered Think Tank Line Up

Next MusicTank: It Started With A Click: How to Spawn A Viral Hit6.30pm March 3rd 2011Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster,Regent StreetW1B 2UW London•       Matt Smith From The Viral Factory To Keynote With Presentation On ‘How To Make A Viral’•      Beggars Group Head Of Digital Marketing, David Emery And Rob Gotlieb, Head Of Marketing, Europe, MUZU Join Panel •      Panel Finalised Matt Smith, Director of Strategy for viral marketing stalwarts, The Viral Factory, will be keynoting the forthcoming MusicTank think tank on the viral marketing boom hitting the music industry and how to harness the movement.Smith will kick off the think tank with a presentation posing questions and debunking stigmas on the controversial topic of ‘How to Make a Viral’.Joining Smith to complete the highly powered think tank panel will be Rob Gotlieb, Head of Marketing, Europe for MUZU as well as David Emery, Head of Digital Marketing, Beggars Group. With Darren Hemmings of [PIAS] sitting alongside Emery on the panel, the two of the largest independent label groups in Europe will be represented.This Thursday’s think tank is set to expound upon the contentious movement taking the industry by storm. With more and more songs reaching fans through social channels, the recordings business en masse is slowly wising up to the growing impact of group recommendations and its phenomenal affect on music marketing.The final speakers are:Keynote: Matt Smith Director of Strategy, The Viral FactoryPanel:David Emery Head of Digital Marketing, Beggars Group Darren Hemmings Digital Marketing Manager, [PIAS]Rob Gotlieb Head of Marketing, Europe, MUZUDan Nixon Film maker and Editor, 20jazzfunkgreats blogChairman: Keith Harris Keith Harris Music Ltd / MusicTank Chairman / Director of Performer Affairs, PPLMore info on speakers and companies:Filmmaker Dan Nixon created the ghostly viral video for Echo Lake’s Young Silence single, released last week, which was shot on a hacked Microsoft Kinect Xbox accessory. He also writes for the Brighton based fanzine and blog 20jazzfunkgreats.co.uk.Label and distribution giant [PIAS] is deep in the throes of plotting today’s release of the Diplo/Tiesto/Busta Rhymes track ‘C’mon’, currently sitting at 3.5m YouTube views, while Tyler The Creator's (XL) new video has had 1.4m views in the space of a week and a half.The Viral Factory are a digital marketing and media company working in all facets of viral video production from inception through to production, marketing and analytics. They have 10 years working in the field of viral marketing with the likes of Paramount, Google, Diesel, Skype and Samsung and have 10 years experience in viral marketing and over a billion views to their credit.Link to event - http://www.musictank.co.uk/events/it-started-with-a-click-how-to-spawn-a-viral-hit---Event Details Date: 3^rd March 2011Time: 18:30 to 21:00Venue: Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, Regent Street, W1B UW LondonCost: Standard – £35 / trade body members – £30 / members – £25Tickets must be purchased in advance from www.musictank.co.ukPresented by leading-edge companies, breakout groups will follow the first half of speakers, each to be led by one of these experts.  The results of these brainstorm round tables will be fed back to the room.It is hoped this may inspire fresh thinking and that those present may learn from other sectors that have successfully deployed the techniques to drive exposure and engage fans.  Q&A with the panel will follow a mid-evening break. Full Event Copy The third of MusicTank’s Year Zero events aims to demystify the little-understood area of the business that is the viral hit.Midday on a Thursday late in January, the rumblings of an exciting new Hip Hop Rave track began to reverberate around cyber music halls.  A week later, the rumbling turned to a roar and by the 1st week in February, 2¼ million people had viewed ‘C’Mon’, the Busta Rhymes/Tiesto/Diplo collaboration on YouTube.As DIY fever took hold in the early naughties, MySpace was heralded as the future of music online, being the first widely available, easy-to-use platform for artists to promote their music.  With its popularity and relevance now fast fading amidst a rapidly evolving social media landscape, where do artists now turn to get themselves heard?  YouTube is leading the fray, breaking a new breed of runaway hits and artists, from ‘F**ck You’ now sitting at 38 million views, to ‘The Vaccines’ billed as one of the hottest breaking acts of 2011.Building on MySpace’s foundation, media hosting sites with social networking capabilities have become ubiquitous; from SoundCloud to Muzu there is no shortage of online space to upload or listen to the latest breaking song; even Spotify has entered the fray incorporating social elements to their interface. YouTube though, is becoming synonymous with viral smashes, putting it at the forefront of viral marketing - a discipline garnering a reputation for pulling results and eyeballs usually associated with marketing campaigns many times the budget.Much of YouTube’s success to-date lies in its embeddability - on Facebook alone, 46.2 years of YouTube videos are watched every day and over 3 million people connect to the auto-sharing feature on YouTube’s site - allowing easy sharing of videos through the individual networks.  Despite a number of competitors nipping at its heels this site has enjoyed unprecedented loyalty and a surprisingly long lifespan in an industry of constant startups and failures.It is convenience that makes videos such a strong viral tool. Free and seemingly uninhibited by the need to license, YouTube’s encyclopaedic catalogue helps make it the first stop for many when seeking to listen to a favourite or recently leaked song.SoundCloud, a YouTube competitor, offers a music hosting site with social aspects and might lay claim to creating its own viral successes such as XXXY.  But a purely audio track can’t realistically offer the universal pull of a video, as was so eloquently demonstrated by MTV in the ‘80’s.But despite Vevo’s planned launch in the UK in April, video won’t necessarily always be the ultimate viral medium. As mobile becomes a more common means for listening to music it is likely a more convenient medium will become available, video remains large and unwieldy for many on limited bandwidth.Whatever the future holds, the fact is that today, now, viral multimedia can already help break an artist or track.   Yet how it’s done remains largely the stuff of mystery, with some very successful labels admitting to still feeling their way.When it comes to breaking new artists, this relatively low cost and often very successful means of marketing also has the cachet of being below the radar and so cooler than splashing an artist all over the London Underground.  So it’s unsurprising that so many majors use the medium to covertly build an artist’s credibility in the months and occasionally years before record release – Little Boots being a prime example.Social tastemakers and vloggers play an important role in the new landscape with a mere mention of a clip by a popular figure often leading to hundreds of thousands of views.  How have labels exploited this kind of word of mouth to maximum effect?  What tools have they used and how has social media led the rest of the marketing mix?This think tank will inform and inspire those looking to understand how to make music go viral over social media.  Lifting the lid and debunking dogma about how to create a viral hit, this illustrated session will combine panel-led debate with open round table discussion providing all with pointers, next step suggestions and an eye on how music will broken in the future.Allowing plenty of time for Q &A, we’ll be getting the lay of the land and asking what all this means for the future of music marketing.