[Dixielandjazz] Twitter campaign #jazzlives after one year--Howard Mandel

[Norman Vickers]

To:  DJML & Musicians and Jazzfans list

From: Norman

 

Here's note from Howard Mandel's Blog-Jazz Beyond Jazz-an online blog from
Arts Journal.  I'm not going to sign up for this-more e-mail now than I can
comfortably handle-but jazz enthusiasts need to know about this.  Maybe some
of you will sample it and report back.  Howard is President of Jazz
Journalists Association and listmate on the Musicians List.

 

Fnv.

 

 


Twitter campaign #jazzlives after one year


#Jazzlives -- the Twitter campaign aimed at demonstrating that there is a
big and enthusiastic audience for live jazz -- is one year old. What has it
wrought?

First: What is #jazzlives and how does it work? To participate in the
campaign, audience members at live jazz performances "tweet" - write a post
on their Twitter account-- about who they heard and where they heard them,
including "#jazzlives" in the total 140 characters. You can view all
#jazzlives posts as a "stream" on various websites and blogs, including this
one. You can also view #jazzlives "tweets" by going to Twitter.com and
searching on #jazzlives. You don't need a Twitter account to do this. But if
you want your own #jazzlives stream, please leave a note in the "comments"
box at the end of this post, and you'll be sent details.

Check out the #jazzlives stream from time to time over a week, a month, a
year! -- you'll see live jazz performance is indeed alive and well, and
people are listening everywhere. A glance at the #jazzlives stream while I'm
writing shows posts from Cape Breton, Ballantyne, New London Connecticut,
Reston Virginia, Harlem and Brooklyn. The U.S. is usually overwhelmingly
represented, but tweets have come from all continents and many, many
countries. Bands of every stylistic persuasion have been mentioned, always
with appreciation, thus benefitting from a most desirable form of promotion:
Personal endorsement, virtual word of mouth.

 

A new media experiment, #jazzlives was devised by JA Kawell of Ozmotic Media
<http://oz.ozmoticmedia.com/>  and launched on my blog on August 26, 2009.
It was inspired (more accurately, provoked) by Terry Teachout's
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574320303103850572.h
tml#articleTabs%3Darticle>  report on National Endowment of the Arts data
that purported the jazz audience is aging and diminishing.

We didn't and don't believe it: the NEA figures surely reflect a segment of
the jazz audience, likely that which frequents the better established jazz
performance settings where most audience surveys are taken. But live jazz
performance also happens in neighborhood parks and, yes, bars, at private
parties and free festivals. We wanted to generate a metric reflecting fans
and listeners in those places, too, so we asked audience members to "stand
up and be counted" by tweeting whenever they heard live jazz. We encourage
bands to tell their audiences, "If you like what you heard, tweet about us
and say where we are and include #jazzlives!"

We soon learned there is no automatic way to count tweets with a particular
hashtag, nor are they archived for long on Twitter. Initially I counted
tweets by hand: In the first eight weeks of #jazzlives there were some 2500,
though a significant percentage weren't really personal reports from
audience members and so didn't help us get a reliable audience estimate.
Then I stopped counting. New #jazzlives tweets, though, have continued to be
posted almost every day, with the number usually peaking on weekends (when,
of course, the most live performances happen before the largest audiences).

We knew from the start that this would be a skewed sample, made up only of
people tech-minded enough to use Twitter. But our hope was that precisely
because those posting might to be younger and (maybe) given to jazz
performed by emerging artists in non-formal venues, #jazzlives might
counterbalance findings of the NEA survey. Our guesses about younger
listeners to new players in odd places have proved accurate, but there's
been no shortage of tweets about established musicians in concert halls,
either.

Another challenge for the campaign has been that there's no central control
over a Twitter hashtag stream. Anybody can use #jazzlives to post whatever
they want, and there's no way to edit or remove inappropriate posts from the
stream. Tweets are as frequent or occasional, relevant or pointless,
enlightening or dumb as participants make them. And though we ask
participants not to use #jazzlives for advance concert promotion and to post
only about live performances that they saw themselves, certain publicists
and die-hard self-promoters have used the hashtag to push upcoming gigs,
records, radio show playlists or spread news of musicians' deaths. Some
well-meaning people just don't get that #jazzlives is about LIVE jazz
performance, not a generic assertion of the survival of the genre or the
immortality of it's greats. There's nothing to do to reduce the number of
such inappropriate posts, though we ourselves tweet from time to time,
restating the mission and suggested "rules" of #jazzlives.

That said, in our view #jazzlives has worked -- as a fast, free and very
democratic means of demonstrating where live jazz is being played and who is
listening; of helping the jazz audience see itself and realize that we're
not as few or as limited in taste as some would have us think. And the value
of #jazzlives could be just beginning. In a year, #jazzlives has won a
following - devotees of live jazz, who habitually tweet about favorite bands
at favorite places. Now in the last stretch of August, with the climax of
jazz fest season upon us and crowds of thousands of jazz fans gathering to
hear the music in Chicago, Detroit, Tanglewood, Philadelphia, Los Angeles
and Aspen, among other cities, is a great time to reinforce the campaign. 

If you're a jazz fan (any age, any persuasion) use #jazzlives when you hear
live jazz, and tell your friends to do the same. If you are a musician, tell
your listeners from the stage, after a set: "You like what you heard? Use
Twitter to say you heard us here, and add the hashtag #jazzlives." If you
are an on-stage emcee, at a festival main stage or tiny after-hours room,
tell the crowd, "Let the world know we're here: Twitter #jazzlives with our
location and the name of the act you just heard -- let's get more tweets
than any other place!" Don't worry about making a complicated explanation --
like magic, some folks will type their 140 letters and spaces and send word
out on their phones.

They might try to be witty or go for blunt, they might add other links,
photos, or shoutouts, add something personal about the musicians they dig,
or the places they go. More info can be crammed into 140 characters than
you'd imagine, and each character can work to prove #jazzlives.

 

 Below is a tutorial, #jazzlives on Twitter for Beginners -- 

Here's what to do if you want to take part in the #jazzlives campaign but
aren't yet a Twitter user. 

 

*	 Go to Twitter.com and click the "sign up" button and follow
instructions to create an account. It's fast and easy. (Don't worry about
uploading a picture or otherwise personalizing your account unless you want
to.)
*	If you want to be able to tweet to #jazzlives via text messages sent
from your cell phone while you are at a performance do this: after  you have
created your account, click "settings" and then "mobile"  and add your cell
phone number. You will then be able to send a text message to the number
shown on the page and it will appear in your account, and in the #jazzlives
stream, just like any other tweet.
*	If you have a cell phone that uses "apps" you can install Twitter or
another app like Seismic and tweet right from your phone. (Different
Twitter-related apps work on different phones, so check your own app store
for a complete list.) 
*	If you' ou'd rather use your computer to tweet your performance
report,  just log in to your Twitter account and type your "tweet" in the
empty box on your Home page marked "What's Happening."  Say who you heard
and where and include #jazzlives anywhere in the message. If you have room
left, give a mini-review.  If you go over 140 characters, a red number will
appear above the message, telling you how many characters you must cut.
Think of it as writing a haiku. Click "Tweet" to post your message.
*	Whether you tweet by phone or on your computer, after a minute or
so, you should see your "tweet" appear in the #jazzlives stream as described
in the article. That's it!

To explore more advanced Twitter use or get suggestions for using it to
promote your work, turn to www.JJANews.org for information about online
seminars sponsored by the Jazz Journalists Association, later this year.

howardmandel.com <http://www.howardmandel.com/>  
Subscribe by Email
<http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=1102712&loc=en_US>
| Subscribe by <http://feeds.feedburner.com/JazzBeyondJazz>  RSS | Follow on
<http://twitter.com/jazzbeyondjazz>  Twitter 
All JBJ posts  <http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/archives.html> |
<javascript:void(0)> ShareThis 

August 26, 2010 12:57 PM | Permalink
<http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2010/08/twitter_campaign_jazzlive
s_aft.html>  | Comments
<http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2010/08/twitter_campaign_jazzlive
s_aft.html#comments>  (1)