天才 Uses Live Video to Pull in Music-Loving Fans and Brands

Lines of people have been appearing in the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn. Proving that websites can be social and that there are still great free shows around for people who know where to look, these crowds have been queuing up to see their musical idols interviewed live and in person. And they’re not the only ones clamoring to get a look: Brands have been lining up, too.

这些节目是由天才, 这家音乐网站成立于2009年，当时名为“说唱天才”, then broadened its appeal by shortening its name a few years later. 天才 bills itself as “the world’s biggest collection of song lyrics and musical knowledge.” While 天才 creates several online shows, the one fans are lining up for is called 天才的水平. 这样做的目的是让音乐界的偶像们受到关注. So far, it’s presented interviews with Terius “The-Dream” Nash and DJ Premier.

背后的大脑 天才的水平 Brendan Frederick, 该公司的首席内容官, 和罗伯·马克曼, 它的艺术家关系经理. Markman has a long history as a music journalist and has interviewed many high-profile acts. “天才”已经凭借一部名为《验证, where an artist breaks down the lyrics to one of his or her songs, 解释这一切的真正含义. 该网站随后发布了解构, where a producer explains how a particular hit song was made, and IRL, which focuses on a hot young artist going through the evolution of his or her career. 在这三个国家, 天才 brings fans a deeper level of 信息 about songs on the Hot 100 chart, 每个人都在谈论的那些.

抒情策略

与 天才的水平, the company decided to pivot and focus on the veterans who created the current music industry. The idea was to present real icons with a quarter-century of experience behind them and a lifetime of wild stories to tell. 马上, Frederick and Markman decided if they were going to do this project, 他们需要做大. That means working with a live studio audience and really creating an event out of the whole evening. This was the 第一个 live/online hybrid event 天才 had done, so there was a lot of nervousness around getting it right.

天才很适合主持现场演出, 碰巧的是, since its Gowanus office has an event space capable of holding 400 people. The company has held concerts, parties, and lectures there, but never a live show. The stage is in the middle of the audience, which creates an intimate experience for 客人s.

Given that 天才 is a lyric-oriented website, Frederick and Markman felt the 第一个 天才的水平 客人应该是一个著名的词曲作者吗. That led to them booking Nash, one of the best-known songwriters of the past 20 years. 如果你不熟悉他的名字, 他与蕾哈娜合作过, 碧昂丝, 贾斯汀比伯, “小甜甜”布兰妮, 和杰斯. Besides being a songwriter, he’s a recording artist in his own right. 与纳什, the producers knew they could dive into the creative process of a hugely talented artist and generate a lot of excitement around their event.

为他们的第二集, 天才会选一个嘻哈出身的人, 因为这是品牌DNA的一部分, 并选择了制作人DJ Premier, 又名克里斯·马丁, perhaps better known as half of the iconic ’90s duo Gang Starr. Since then, he’s worked with talent like Biggie, Jay-Z, and Nas. 像纳什, he had plenty of stories to tell—about his own creative process and working with important rap talent.

大众吸引力

In crafting the interviews, 天才 looks to its community of passionate music fans. It asks them to submit questions ahead of time, integrating them into the interview. The interviewer even credits the fans who posed the questions. 在准备第一集的时候, 天才 held a contest on Twitter in which the person who suggested the best question could come to the event and ask his or her question in person.

“有个人来了, he was a huge fan of The-Dream and was super excited to be there,弗雷德里克回忆道. “He asked his question and The-Dream was like, ‘Did you ask me this on Twitter? 你给我发了差不多100次了，对吧?’ And the kid was like, ‘Yeah, I was a little overexcited.’ So The-Dream already had seen the question and knew it and this kid had been so excited he tweeted at him like 100 times.

“We love those moments of just connecting someone who’s a super fan with the actual artist to find out something, that question that they’ve been dying to know this whole time. Even for our community members who couldn’t be at the actual event, just for them to see their question asked and see their name in the video was, 我认为, 对他们来说，同样令人兴奋.”

下一个页面