Hoff Alert: Consumers Play the Hitparade

Last August I posted about a bunch of guys who are trying convince enough people to purchase a Hoff single on iTunes to bring our Knight Rider to the Top of the UK hitparade.  Today The Hoff Alert is launched in which over 40,000 emails are sent to those who have registered with the site to go out and buy David Hasselhoff's "Jump in My Car" from 7 Digital or iTunes.  If 25,000 of them actually live up to their pledge of buying the song, this should land The Hoff in the UK top ten.

While the artistic merits of the song are debatable (I think it's so camp it's good) I'm especially interested in the outcome of this experiement.  To my knowledge, it's the first time that fans band together to "play the hitparade", bringing back an artist many of us know, yet without the heavy promotional support by the record companies.

If you feel like joining in the fun, Hoff along (make sure to buy it in the UK though, otherwise it won't count).  Alternatively, keep watching the space, as if they pull it of, this could be a quite interesting demonstration of consumer power.

The Hoff on Number 1?

Some time ago I posted about Gnarls Barkley conquering the world from a MySpace page.  These days David Hasselhoff is having a go at it ... or better, his fans.  On www.gethasselhofftonumber1.com they are trying to convince enough people to purchase a Hoff single on iTunes to bring our Knight Rider to the Top of the UK hitparade.  I'm curious to see where it goes.  Meanwhile, make sure to check out this video by "The Hoff".

A Case Study in Word-of-Mouth

Can you conquer the world from a MySpace page?  Looking at what the virtual music band Gnarls Barkley has been pulling off over the past six weeks, you would definitely think so.  Brainchild of Gorrillaz producer Brian Burton (aka. Danger Mouse), on April 2nd, this new band landed the first song in history to lead the British hitparade based on download sales only.

All buzz has purely happened online using as main hubs the official MySpace profile for Gnarls Barkley now complemented with a Gnarls Barkley website (sometimes down for traffic overload).  Until April 3rd, the day after it hit #1 in the UK, their hit single “Crazy” wasn’t even available on CD.

Whether you like their music or not is a matter of taste, yet as far as case studies in word-of-mouth marketing go, this jazzy band is certainly prime material.

Illegal Downloaders in UK Spend Upto 4.5 Times More on Legal Downloads

In stead of prosecuting illegal downloaders, music companies in fact should be celebrating them as their dearest customers.  That, at least, is the conclusion of a British research by market watcher The Leading Question.

According to their findings, active P2P users spend almost 4.5 times more on buying legal music than their non-P2P counterparts (£5.52 vs. £1.27 per month).  Only 4% of users being interested in "having more than 1000 songs to take a long".  Together with some similar researches in the US, it would appear that the myth of artist-robbing, CD-ripping and malicious P2P pirates is finally crumbling (at last).

There is one snag though.  P2P users do buy their music online (via Napster, iTunes, ...) and don't bother with CD's any more.  This of course, still doesn't fit the record label business model.

Interesting times.

for the article: go to The Register