Exploratory Genre Analysis: Metal
Initial Observations
How to Build Audiences
While metal music communities are smaller (generally in the tens of thousands of members with a few thousand messages a month) - they are very engaged in conversation and their passion for the music is obvious. Promoting contextually targeted merch deals/giveaways here could help us capture high quality audiences to build look-a-like audiences off of.
How to Get More Streams
On Reddit many communities’ most popular posts are YouTube video shares of new music. Organically sharing or promoting contextually targeted releases to these communities could be low hanging fruit to boost streams.
Playlist curation on Twitter and certain Reddit communities are very popular. Curating and promoting specific playlists could help drive streams for eOne artists.
How to Sell More Merch
The low-quality of metal t-shirts is a frequent theme in metal communities with several people citing the will to spend a little bit more for a higher quality product. Marketing higher quality merch could help set band merchandise apart from the t-shirt pirates.
There is a robust Reddit community called r/BattleJackets which talks about themed leather riding jackets.
The Lay of the Land
TO DO: Add Instagram data, refine YouTube information
Observations: Reddit conversation seems to be the most relevant and of the highest quality, while YouTube and Twitter have a higher conversation velocity and more potential reach.
Chart description:
Y-Axis: Percentage of posts with at least one reply - this constitutes non-spam posts that represent actual fan conversation.
X-Axis: Heavily filtered mentions of eOne’s top 5 metal bands by mentions (Avatar, Enterprise Earth, Crowbar, Toxic Holocaust and Within the Ruins)
Bubble size: Size of community/potential reach as measured by subreddit community size, YouTube channel subscribers and Twitter followers.
Example Reddit Deep-Dive
Where can we go next?
Deep-dive on subreddits, YouTube channels, and Twitter users/topics/hashtags
What are top conversation topics?
How can we leverage different types of communities?
What does merch discussion look like in different communities?