In the 13 years since Blake Shelton released his debut single, Austin, a lot has changed in the music industry. At 5 million copies, Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park was the top album that year. Last year, Justin Timberlake's 'The 20/20 Experience' sold less than half that many records as the top selling album. The continuing shift from the physical to the digital in music has dramatically altered the landscape as well as the tools needed for any act to remain, or become, viable. Through his visibility in television and on social media, there may be no performer better positioned than Blake Shelton to thrive in music's brave new world.
Shelton's new album 'Bringing Back the Sunshine' comes out next week and will be followed by the final leg of the Ten Times Crazier tour. Shelton's last album sold nearly 200,000 units in it's first week and debuted at number one on the country chart and number three on the general list. In addition to the 10 million or so people that tune into the Voice each week, Shelton has also actively leveraged his 15 million social media fans to build awareness of the album and the tour. While Shelton's social media reach doesn't compete with the likes of Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars, his saavy use of the medium, especially Twitter, separates him from his peers. For Ten Times Crazier, he used Twitter to sell tickets directly to his fans. While Ticketmaster is the primary ticketing partner for Shelton's tour, any artist can carve out 8-10% of tickets to sell on their own, usually to their fan clubs. For Ten Times, Team Blake partnered with a company called Crowdsurge to run the direct-to-fan pre-sale. Crowdsurge was founded in 2008 and now works with over 300 artists, including some very big names like Shelton as well as Paul McCartney and John Legend. Last year, the company sold tickets to over 5,000 events and is on pace to almost double that this year. Over the course of Shelton's pre-sale, not only did he sell out the entire allotment, he also raised over $30,000 for the charity of his choice. On Twitter alone, he generated almost 150,000,000 impressions for the pre-sale campaign.
Social commerce is a term that has been bandied about for almost 10 years, often without a clear definition. With Twitter's announcement earlier this month that it has begun testing in-post buy buttons, however, social commerce seems to be acquiring some real-world definition. The announcement also made clear that music and tickets is likely to be one of the major proving grounds. That comes as no great surprise for two big reasons: One, Twitter's commerce initiative is run by former Ticketmaster CEO, Nathan Hubbard; and two, tickets are a highly perishable asset worth nothing if they go unsold. Every year, about 40% of tickets do just that, which makes it a multi-billion dollar problem. Over the last several years, Dynamic pricing has become a fixture of the ticekt landscape by allowing teams, venues and artists to adjust their prices in real-time based on demand. While the advent of dynamic pricing is a big part of cutting into the 40% of unsold tickets, it's not enough on it's own. Twitter and it's shareholders are hoping that their real-time updates, often delivered to fans on their phone, is the missing link to make ticketing more efficient.
While Shelton doesn't need to worry about discounting tickets, his use of Twitter illustrates the another compelling social commerce opportunity: making the purchasing process more personable and social. Whether it's talking up the tour themselves or having charity be part of the pitch, who better to sell tickets than the artist themselves. As a result of the successful pre-sale and strong demand for the onsale, all but a few tickets sold out on the primary market. In fact, according to TiqIQ, Blake Shelton tickets on the secondary market are significantly above the original face price, at an average price of $235. That makes his tickets amongst the most expensive of 2014 on the secondary market. As a point of comparison, Maroon 5 tickets for their 2015 tour have an average price of $231 while Usher tickets for his November tour have an average price of $195. Maroon 5 is headlined, of course, by Blake's co-coach on the Voice, Adam Levine. Usher was the winning coach for season 6, which ended in May of this year.
Earlier this month, the Voice kicked off it's seventh season and the premiere drew almost 13 million viewers. This season, Blake will be going for his fourth title seven seasons, the most of any coach. Even if he doesn't win, though, he'll probably add a couple million more followers to Twitter, all of whom will likely be interested to hear whether they'll be another leg of Ten Times Crazier anytime in 2015 to play all those new songs on the 'Bringing Back the Sunshine' album.
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