Beastie Boys & Empowered Fans

In my recent post called The Hunted Become the Hunters I discussed the growing empowerment of music fans and consumers in general. Another offshoot of this evolution is the blurring of lines between people who produce creative content and those who consume it.

Case in point: Here's what Beastie Boy Adam Yauch told Wired magazine in an article last month ...

One night, I was prowling around on our web site's message board and found a phonecam video clip that someone had taken at one of our shows. It was really grainy and shaky, but I loved how it was shot from eye level and showed a personal take on what was happening onstage. I thought it would be cool to apply that approach to a full-length concert film, so that it actually feels like you're watching a concert and not some big, overblown MTV video.

To make their new concert movie, the Beastie Boys distributed Hi8 videocams to 50 fans at a show in New York City -- and asked them to record everything they saw. Yauch then combined his favorite bits from the 100-plus hours of footage into a feature film.

In this new era, artists aren't the only ones who do the creating while fans passively sit by and wait to be fed the latest music. Now everyone has an opportunity to express themselves. Use this to your advantage. Ask your fans to produce videos, artwork, T-shirt designs, even alternate versions of your recorded music.

Get fans involved and allow them to be co-creators in your success story.

-Bob