Man, what would Deadheads back in the day have done with this? Streaming music service Pandora has set up a messaging service that lets artists communicate directly with their faithful–in very personal ways. Now listening to Lenny Kravitz could involve getting a personal message from the performer, adding to your experience in a way that brings to mind “pop-up” videos, where little factoids enhance (or distract from) the pure pleasure of the jam. But it goes beyond that.
Pandora has already started giving analytics tools to artists, so they can see where there fans are, find out about their listening habits, etc. That means next time Kravitz rolls through Buffalo on a tour, he can play as his encore the song most Buffalo fans stream. The tools take knowing your audience to a new level. Now through an “Artist Audio Message” Kravitz might share his set list beforehand or some other tantalizing tidbit that true fans really want. The idea is to take what some artists already do on Twitter–talk to fans–and make it more personal and immediately relevant. Kravitz, for instance, might tell you late one lonely night that he’d like to fly away too.
