Sheeran, whose distinctive acoustic sound mixes sound loops with beat-boxing and hip-hop rhythm, made his Glastonbury debut this year playing a total of 8 gigs over the weekend, including a headline set on the BBC Introducing stage, and one or two impromptu, guerrilla-style, performances for which he is becoming well known. Over the last two years, it is a combination of his hard work on the live music circuit and his engagement with social networking sites like Twitter and YouTube, that have built him a large underground following in the UK.

The reward for this hard work came at the beginning of the year when Sheeran signed a record contract with Atlantic Records, through which he releases his debut album, entitled + on 19th September. The first single from it, The A Team, went to number 3 in the charts the weekend before Glastonbury, and has been watched over 3.5m times on YouTube. It sold 58,000 copies in the first week, making it the highest selling, and charting, single of 2011 so far. Pretty impressive.

It was as a result of posting a music video for the song You Need Me, I Don’t Need You to YouTube, via the youth broadcasting website SB.TV in 2010, that Sheeran got his first big break in the form of an invitation to tour with mainstream UK rapper Example. And clearly YouTube continues to work well as a marketing tool for Sheeran, a fact reflected by the steep upward trend in the Musicmetric graph of his YouTube activity, below.

Sheeran also has a large following on Twitter – over 114,000 followers – and his success on this social media channel is helped by his personal engagement with his followers, to whom he can often be seen replying and chatting. The Musicimetric graph, below, shows activity on his Twitter and Facebook networks, the most recent peaks corresponding to the announcement that The A Team charted at number 3 last week.

Sheeran is by no means the first artist to use social media networking websites for DIY marketing campaigns, or even to engage more directly with fans. But he is one of a new breed of up and coming artists that understands the potential and importance of building a following this way – “social media has been a great help” he told the BBC, recently.

It is this following that has taken him into the Top 10 of the Glastonbury Band Tracker, where he is the only artist yet to release a major label album. Certainly, if the buzz continues to grow, which looks very likely, it won’t be long before Ed Sheeran becomes a mainstream act and he is headlining bigger festival stages around the world.

Toby Burton

One way to discourage music piracy is to use creative marketing strategies to heighten the experience and the enjoyment of acquiring music legally. The Kaiser Chiefs, whose new album The Future Is Medieval was released digitally earlier this month, have done just that.

The band has released the album on an innovative digital platform that allows fans to pick their favourite ten songs from twenty previews available on the band’s website and compile their own track-list. They can also design their own artwork. All for £7.50. And furthermore, there is the option for fans to sell their album from a unique web page and receiving £1 commission for every one sold, and (potentially) earn their £7.50 back, and some. Not surprisingly Kaiser Chiefs singer, Ricky Wilson’s own album selection has proved the most popular, so his profits are being donated to the band’s chosen charity, the Alzheimer’s society.

Because of its uniqueness, this strategy The Future Is Medieval has become an industry talking point and gained much wider media coverage than it might have had it simply been a standard release. The strategy has divided opinion on news sites and across social networking channels, though: Some see the strategy as a distraction from the music itself; Some have questioned the band’s song-quality control; Some, the fact that the album has the potential to be sold twice to hardcore fans who want all 20 songs.

Whatever the opinion, this marketing strategy combined with the release of the band’s video for the first single, news in early June that the band rejected a lyric they asked David Bowie to contribute to a song on the album, and their series of small warm-up gigs for appearances at and Glastonbury, V Festival and the Isle Of Wight Festival, have all combined to create a well planned and well timed marketing campaign to announce to the world that the Kaiser Chiefs are back after a two year hiatus.

Let’s have a look at the effect of all this internet activity on the Musicmetric app.

As you can see from the Twitter Activity graph (above), after nearly six months of gaining an average of approximately 35 Twitter followers a day, there is sudden spike in the number of followers they get on a daily basis. The first is inspired by the video release of the band’s first single from the new album, Little Shocks, on 31st May. The second spike is the day following the release of the album on 4th June.

It’s not clear what came first: the marketing concept or the 20 songs – I do wonder – but Kaiser Chief’s do seem to genuinely want to help to find to revitalise the record industry. Their lead singer, Ricky Wilson, describes the band’s inspiration for the release: “No one invests much in buying a record anymore, so we had to find a way for people to have an emotional attachment to it. You can ignore what’s happening with the music industry or you can do something about it. Something has to change”

Something has to change, indeed, and it’s ideas such as this, made technically possible by interactive production company Special Moves, that will hopefully inspire others to experiment with creative release strategies to help regenerate music sales.

Toby Burton

In the days following the Apple announcement spikes appeared in the bands web mentions, MySpace Friends and Twitter Followers…

Beatles Web Mentions

Beatles Social Network Stats - MySpace and Twitter

There was also a spike in the band’s MySpace Plays (below), which seems normal in the wake of so many new friends and publicity. However there is actually a more interesting relationship to be found here. While MySpace plays surged, MySpace views actually stayed fairly similar and then actually declined. It seems that fewer people continued to visit the page; however these people listened to more of the newly added tracks with each visit.

Beatles MySpace Stats - Views and Plays

So Apple have not only kick-started the band’s digital music sales but also given their online profile a push in the right direction as well.

Allow me to elaborate, if I may…

When Facebook announced their new social plug-ins I was mildly interested, I could now “Like” a band instead of “Become a Fan” not that much of a difference I thought.

I was wrong…

It’s actually had a rather dramatic affect; I give you exibit A…

I'm not a fan of the band but I like their music - click to enlarge

Surprisingly this trend is replicated across a fairly large number of artists. In some cases the increase has been fairly small in others the jump is more pronounced.

The speed and scale of the jump suggests that these artists have been getting a lot of visitors to their Facebook pages but have been unable to convert these visitors to fans linked to their profile. Now with the arrival of the ‘Like’ function artists are able to engage with this previously passive section of their audience.

It does appear that the initial “liking” frenzy is subsiding so it will be interesting to see whether the effect will be a long lasting one or whether people will begin to view even “liking” a band as too much of a commitment. We do expect that the new increased inter-linkedness of Facebook, and abundance of ‘Like’ buttons will have a positive effect on fan engagement.

Edit: Thanks Brendan for the message below. Some of the large effect is due to people logging into Facebook and being prompted to automatically link their profile to the profiles of the “Favourite Artists” listed in their Info section. It will be interesting to see the longer term effect is, so we’ll post an update in a week to see.