i mean i guess you wouldn’t know since you don’t follow bts but it doesn’t really make sense to me that columbia would leave it until nearly the end of their contract to get bts to promote harry? majority of armys still don’t like him and why wouldn’t they get all the members in on it? it’s unfortunate but the three youngest really are fans. also if it was cross promo wouldn’t the other members of bts not be allowed to mention liking the other members of 1ds music, such as niall and zayn?
Hi,
In this case, I don’t think it’s label-directed so much as demographic-directed.
Google (and Irving Azoff/ Live Nation datamining projects) can tell these artists how many shared fans they have, what their shared playlists look like, whether they have fans buying tickets to concerts for both, how their consumption of products measure (how much fans spend on merch, how much they’re willing to spend for tickets / album bundles/ vinyls etc.). I’m sure Hybe has similar datamining capabilities, since they run their own fansite.
From their team’s actions, I would conclude that BTS does not have strong crossover appeal to Niall, Zayn, Louis etc., but would love a slice of the huge popularity of Ariana, Cardi B, Coldplay and so on.
The industry has much more information on you than you realize. Digital data gathering is a powerful tool to marketing; fans will never catch up to corporations. You can choose to think all of these interactions are genuine, if that makes you happy. (No offense meant, by the way; datamining isn’t paranoia but is a fact.)
That said, we know that not only is Harry willing to participate in datamining the public, Harry Styles helped pioneer it.
Why does your $200 Billie Eilish ticket suddenly cost $400?
• Why does your $200 Billie Eilish ticket suddenly cost $400?
BY BONNIE STIERNBERG / JUNE 8, 2021 12:12 PM (Insidehook)
As things slowly but surely start to return to normal and artists announce their first tours since before the pandemic, many fans who are eager to take in some live music after over a year without it are scrambling to make sure they’re able to nab tickets. And perhaps because we’re all a little out of practice when it comes to buying said tickets via Ticketmaster, many have recently taken to social media to express confusion over the online ticket vendor’s “dynamic pricing.”
But while the practice of shifting prices for concerts and events based on market demand (similar to Uber’s surge pricing) might feel like a new, post-pandemic practice, it’s actually been happening on Ticketmaster for several years now.
Back in 2018, Taylor Swift fans were disappointed to learn that the only way they could secure tickets to her tour was to agree to whatever often-outrageous prices the dynamic pricing system spit out at them. (“If you went on Ticketmaster in January and pulled up a third-row seat for Taylor Swift‘s June 2nd show at Chicago’s Soldier Field, it would have cost you $995,” Rolling Stone wrote at the time. “But if you looked up the same seat three months later, the price would have been $595. That’s because Swift has adopted ‘dynamic pricing,’ where concert tickets — like airline seats — shift prices constantly in adjusting to market demand. It’s a move intended to squeeze out the secondary-ticket market — but it’s also left many fans confused as they’re asked to pay hundreds of dollars more than face value.”)
In early 2020, My Chemical Romance fans were also hit hard by dynamic pricing for the emo band’s reunion tour, with pit tickets that were originally priced at $200 being hiked up to as much as $1,000 a pop.
Why, then, if this is something that has been happening for years, are we just now starting to notice it? We’ve got the pandemic to blame for that; artists have the option to opt out of dynamic pricing for their concerts, and while many did in earlier years, there’s more need and desire to make as much money as humanly possible off of a tour now after over a year of lost income. The live music industry is looking to bounce back from financial disaster, and hiking up ticket prices is one way they stand a chance of recovering. Of course, only time will tell how long fans are willing to put up with it.
(End)
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As the article states, artists can choose to opt in or opt out of dynamic pricing.
The difference between dynamic pricing described here and Irving Azoff’s DEMAND project is that DEMAND will datamine fans for information unrelated to ticket purchase (from its partnership with Google). You like Nike? DEMAND will know, because it will track your last Google searches. You use an iPhone or a Galaxy phone? DEMAND knows. You searched for Adele, too? Harry and Adele can co-promote each other, because DEMAND will tell them. Harry’s tour was the prototype for this particularly creepy, invasive form of dynamic pricing.
On February 5th, 2020, the entertainment industry was presented with the revolutionary tool Demand. The panel was moderated by Eric Gardner, sharing the stage with participants Parag Vaish and Nick Turner, co-founders of Demand, as well as Jeffrey Azoff, Manager and Agent. The Demand website was launched as the panel began, so managers, agents, and other parties could request access to the platform right at that moment. On the date of its announcement, the platform already had roughly 19,000 artists in its database. The panelists revealed that the Demand project was born out of networking at the Pollstar 2019 conference.
Through a detailed breakdown of the platform’s functionality, Pollstar attendees had the privilege to see the platform in action first hand, with data from Harry Styles’ tour announcement – one of the first artists to test the platform. The panelists discussed how Demand can affect choices in ticket pricing, tour dates, locations, and brand partnerships. They also showed how Harry Styles’ tour announcement behaved in comparison with similar artists in the same market, and how managers could use this comparison feature to their advantage.[6]
Irving Azoff argues that DYNAMIC PRICING is GOOD FOR CONSUMERS.
Data mining is tracking strangers’ data on the internet— their clicks, their Google searches, their private content, their phone type, their ticket purchases and other purchases. It can include anything in your search history or your phone/ computer’s information.
Almost every social media app mines your data every time you use it. They study your habits to sell things back to you.
Harry’s manager, Jeff Azoff, is in charge of a data mining project called Demand.
It has four aspects. Read about Demand here, here, here, and here.
