Viacom Music Group expanded the reach of a musician-centric multi-screen platform with a broader launch of Artists.MTV to now include VH1 in addition to MTV, says Shannon Connolly, Senior VP of Digital Music Strategy at Viacom. Launched over the summer, the platform has led to a doubling in time spent on the sites, she tells Beet.TV in an interview.
“This is the way for artists to get featured on TV across our social and digital footprints,” she says. “We have almost 60 million fans who come to our sites each month.”
The new Artists.VH1 platform lets artists showcase their music across VH1’s on-air and digital properties, with the first on-air integration slated for the 2012 VH1 Divas on December 16 at 9 pm. Artists.MTV launched in August and since then nearly 10,000 musicians have signed up for pages and the site has generated more than 3.3 million visitors. Each fan spends about four minutes on the site.
Artists are using the pages to grow their fan base by building off the existing traffic to MTV.com and VH1.com, and interact directly with fans, Connolly says. Both signed and unsigned artists can use the service and add videos or songs for streaming, as well as make social media connections. Next up, Viacom Music Group plans to launch Artists.CMT, as well as companion mobile apps.
Connolly adds that her strategy group looks at the metrics from the artist pages each day and shares them with the music supervisors and programmers at the networks. “It’s also a way to be featured in digital franchises,” she says.
Daisy Whitney
