The Recording Academy Steps Up Digital Engagement

Grammy Live on an iPad

For the third consecutive year, The Recording Academy supplemented its Grammy week coverage with a website and app called Grammy Live. The feed offered three days of exclusive live coverage leading up to Music’s Biggest Night, and broke a social TV record with over 13 million social media comments. The show itself lived up to its nickname with 41.2 million viewers.

Three years ago when the Grammy Awards attempted to harness the ever-elusive digital fan engagement, the result was an ingenious, real-time multi-camera invitation behind the velvet rope to VIP events previously impossible to expose. Ticking sidebars of Twitter streams allowed fans the ability to interact with each other, plus offered trivia and polls surrounding events before and after the Awards.

The streams began on Fri., (Feb. 10), and ran through Sun., (Feb. 12) with hosts Alison Haislip, Drew Hinze, and John Norris’ exclusive broadcasts, blogs, tweets and news reports at the Social Media Rock Stars Summit; MusiCares Person of the Year Tribute honoring Paul McCartney; Special Merit Awards Ceremony & Nominees Reception; the Pre-GRAMMY Gala (the Clive Davis Party); the Pre-telecast ceremony; Director’s Cut; the Grammy Red Carpet; and the official Grammy after-party.

“We connect with music in very personal ways, and through shared, social experiences, fans are more eager than ever to support and follow their favorite artists in new and exciting ways,” said Evan Greene, Chief Marketing Officer for The Recording Academy.

The newly-launched mobile app, like the webpage, offered videos, news and Grammy trivia with tweets from many award contenders.

To deliver a cohesive experience the Recording Academy partnered with both open-source and proprietary technologies including Drupal, Lullabot, Ooyala, and Rackspace. Last year, YouTube live-streamed the feed, this year CBS Interactive and AEG Digital Media used the Tremolo Player in association with interactive apps with trivia and polls. Mass Relevance filtered and moderated the social content. Akamai distributed the HD network for live and on demand video. LiveU provided HD cameras with mobile backpacks transmitting wirelessly to roam free without “hard-wired” cameras.

Harnessing the attention of younger consumers and digital consumers could lead to a shift in marketing methods. The Times suggests, “If the trends hold, the long-term implications for the media industry are huge, possibly causing billions of dollars in annual advertising spending to shift away from old-fashioned TV.”

In a blog on Ooyala’s website, the company who’s logo appears below the video coverage, Greg Franzese shared, “Tablets, social video and interactive, personalized advertising is TV now. The transition from old to new distribution models is no longer a matter of if — it is a matter of when. The secret of online video is that it’s not a secret anymore. This is the new TV. And it’s already here.”