In the new cultural landscape, where creators are in the driver seat, The Orchard’s mission is giving artists and labels a clear path to pave their own creativity and independence. Independence is valued by artists as they strive to be in control of their own art, the projects that move the needle on pop culture and media consumption.
When it comes to building technical products with the purpose of enabling creatives, The Orchard first strives to understand the challenges artists and labels face when releasing new music and determining marketing strategies. What actually is it that would superserve creatives in the first place? Why is it important? What do the creators value? What are their challenges? What would enhance their process?
Put the creative first. Focus on the problem to solve, rather than limitations that might prohibit it.
The Orchard’s product and tech teams realized after hearing from labels, artists, and marketing teams that they wanted to know more about their data to expand their audience, but weren’t interested in sifting through massive datasets. Historically, we’ve seen products that are focused just on streaming, playlisting, and/or social metrics. We haven’t seen many that target fan engagement, or do a good job of blending the social and consumption aspects together to tell the cohesive data narrative. We know there are differences between types of fans – highly engaged consumers and micro and macro influencers. We also know our distributed artists and labels want to know about each of these fans, and how they drive the consumption numbers they already have access to. That’s why we created OrchardGo.
The OrchardGo app puts the user first, from start to finish. By putting ourselves in the shoes of our artists, labels, and their teams, we have been able to pinpoint what they needed to feel empowered.
We considered points like social media presence, engagement, and how that leads to consumption. Most artists love to engage with their fans, and it’s important for artists to meet their fans where they are – digitally, that is. In that vein, we thought about elements that would help the artists and labels gain a better understanding of their audience and how their music was being utilized. Authentication through the app became an important component – we didn’t want to make users leave the app to engage with their fans. If they wanted to segment followers by location, follower count, or fan type they could. We know that “micro-influencers” hold a special key to audience accessibility and engagement, and we wanted the artist to be able to locate those integral people fairly quickly.
Part of The Orchard’s mission speaks to super-serving the artist and empowering them to create openly and freely. Whatever we build next, it will always be for the betterment of our artists and labels. If you don’t build something that creators will use, then you’ve missed your audience.
If you’re distributed by The Orchard, download OrchardGo in the iOS and Android store today.
