Badges.<\/p>\n
Dedicated readers will remember my meeting with Shawn Fanning at Quincy Jones’s house, wherein he spoke about making music a game, enabling fans to unlock status achievements like in video games and use their acquisition to become members of the club, to brag to fans.<\/p>\n
What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a resort company utilizes this concept before a music company?<\/p>\n
I’ll make this simple.\u00c2\u00a0 Live Nation should have an app.\u00c2\u00a0 AEG too.\u00c2\u00a0 The big indie concert promoters, JAM and IMP, also.<\/p>\n
You download it and you find out which of your friends are going to the gig.\u00c2\u00a0 And once you get to the gig, it shows you which friends are there, and where they’re located in the venue.<\/p>\n
It gets even better.\u00c2\u00a0 Your app is your ticket.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, you use your smartphone to get in.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you want to resell that ticket, you do it through the promoter’s Website, like they do in sports.<\/p>\n
And when you go to the show, when you earn your achievement, you unlock your badge and it’s instantly pushed to Facebook so all your friends can see.\u00c2\u00a0 And a status update is pushed to Twitter.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, you can turn these features off, but who’d want to?<\/p>\n
Go to five concerts and you unlock a special ConcertGoer badge.\u00c2\u00a0 Go to five concerts of the same act and you unlock a SuperFan button.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, there can be competition online as to who is the biggest fan of GaGa, Phish, DMB, EVERYBODY!\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s gone to the most shows!<\/p>\n
And each band can have its own badge.\u00c2\u00a0 Possibly created by Shepard Fairey or another hip designer.\u00c2\u00a0 So you can accumulate a plethora of them to display on your Facebook page.\u00c2\u00a0 But the only way you can unlock the badge is by buying something.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you don’t have to buy anything, but you want to, to celebrate and demonstrate your fandom!<\/p>\n
This technology is not futuristic.\u00c2\u00a0 This technology is here today.\u00c2\u00a0 But only innovative companies are using it.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be the music industry was the most innovative on the planet, cutting edge, where all the breakthroughs took place.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s a greedy enterprise trying to lock people into consuming the way they always did, ensuring big dollars to the usual suspects.\u00c2\u00a0 But the public hates the usual suspects.<\/p>\n
And many people want to hate Vail Resorts.<\/p>\n
But how can you hate them when they come up with EpicMix?\u00c2\u00a0 Making your skiing experience even richer at no additional cost! Yes, it costs nothing to get a Peaks card and play.<\/p>\n
Watch this video, think of the possibilities.<\/p>\n
And know that Vail Resorts has refocused its marketing efforts online.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s where the action is today.\u00c2\u00a0 Following Rob Katz, the company’s CEO, on Twitter, I knew they were up to something, he said today was launch day.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn’t expect his product to be this good!<\/p>\n
And I’m disappointed there’s no BlackBerry app.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, it’s so hard to write software for the BlackBerry that most companies don’t. And without software, your platform dies.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like having a venue with no shows.\u00c2\u00a0 He who has traction wins, and so far it’s only iPhone and Android.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, the app is not required, you can surf to the site via your browser.\u00c2\u00a0 Thank god Verizon provides 3G speed completely over Vail Mountain!<\/p>\n
Really, watch this video from beginning to end, even if you think skiing sucks and you hate me, this is the future: <\/p>\n
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