Oink is dead. Long live oink & the enormous leaduser potential

For those who missed it: exactly three weeks ago the music torrent site Oink was shut down.

I have to say that I was quite disappointed about the short sighted coverage of the on-and offline media of the event. In most reports there was no critical consideration or analysis of this news event. They just copy-paste the terminology (piracy, stealing, criminal etc. etc.) from the press releases of the IFPI. No in-depth analysis at all.

Lucky enough there appeared to be two writings that gave some analysis. The blog Webreakstuff about it: “People aren’t screwed up, the music industry is. Labels need to understand that without fighting “illegal downloads” and “pirates” in price, commodity and choice, they’ll end up nowhere.”
I agree with this, ‘the music industry’ (if any) must see the opportunities instead of the threats of communities like oink.

The music business doesn’t have a choice, as it is a unstoppable trend. The mudd up! blog about this: “Pandora’s Box has been opened [..] Oink’s alleged 180,000 users won’t forget how useful it was. The next Oink will be sturdier & more multiple. The overall movement is towards more ways to share music & ideas with like-minded individuals on the internet.”. So: Oink is dead. Long live oink.

The mudd up blog also came up with the so-true statement that “oink was a site run by audiophiles and music obsessives!”. And this is were the enormous potential of music communities like oink is beginning to shine. The oink music community has had 180.000 registered users (amongst them a lot of artists signed by small labels or not signed at all) in the end: all passionate music lovers. Ofcourse not every member was active to a large extent (you can apply the 90/9/1 rule with confidence here), but oink can be considered as a lead user group. Lead users notice needs and trends that will be general in a marketplace, but notice them far earlier than the mass. The music industry really should collaborate with such a lead user group.

Why collaborate? Well, the music business is a business with a small success factor. A very small amount of acts a label signs will become profitable and it is very hard for professionals (!) to predict how a music act will perform. So why not use the music knowledge of 180.000 users (that are 360.000 ears) to help listening, exploring and predicting? So A&R is the first process of a typical music company, where a music community can add a lot of value.

The second process is marketing. Music marketing is pretty costly and with uncertain effect. So why not use the opinion leadership of the lead users (slash early adopters) of music communities? When a passionate music lover discovers cool music (there is so much music to explore in the long tail out there), he or she will definitely tell the people around him/her about this. And as we all know: word-of-mouth marketing is essential and invaluable. Besides this also in the distribution process the community is adding value: they are distributing all the music to each other (with a speed no webservice can compete).

I can’t wait to see what happens when the first company in the music business embrace the above. Conversating Collaborating with such a wise crowd (your most passionate users!) is a privilege a lot of industries/companies would be incredibly jealous of.

Might be a pretty long wait though, as big parts of the music business still seems to be in the information age (a.k.a. protect your content with your life). And sadly for them nowadays we are well into the connection age. We should all be happy with it.

Note: We are glad to help any music company that want to untap the crowdsourcing potential. Check also a site like Sellaband (pretty much different from torrent sites) how well a music community works and see the potential. Besides the instrumental value (see above) the brand statement of opening up to lead users can not be underestimated.  And ‘the music industry’  can use some  image improvement..