What's the Value of a Fan?

Artists and labels have a new way to strengthen ties with fans and make them buy more music - their mobile phone. Whether you think ringtone stores, iPhone Apps, or your own mobile web presence is the way to connect with your fans, the mobile phones' versatility gives bands a way to draw your fans closer. So use it!

Mobile phones are becoming a viable platform for the promotion and distribution of music. Songs, images, news, videos and other content can be distributed for free directly to fans, and your mobile web pages can contain 'buy' links to your favorite music store, ticket purchases, and merchandise sales. If my favorite band has a mobile fan club and I have a phone that can play music & videos and surf the web, I'm going to join. At that point, the band has a friendly, band-branded Trojan horse on my phone to import whatever content it wants me to have, as well as an easy way to convert renewed interest into sales.

And, the mobile fan club lets the band reach out to me. You don't have to wait around for me to run into you on MySpace. It's very cool to get texts from my favorite bands. Adding regular texts to my mobile music activities keeps me up to date with relevant info. But the band has to get me to sign up before I can get these texts. So sign me up!

The tools are only as good as your use of them. Building your mobile fan club has to be a strategy for you if you want to reach your fans with new music, merch, gigs. We''ll reward you with loyalty and more sales.