In October 2009, I interviewed Michael Entwisle [pictured below right] for a Rolling Stone story. He’s the founder of Genero.TV, a website that allows fans to create music videos for the chance to win prizes and produce bands’ official videos.
Michael, how did the business idea for Genero.TV come about?
The first time I thought of it was sitting at the Tropfest short film festival many years ago and I thought that something similar involving music videos might work. The idea started as an annual music video competition where winning videos for each song would be screened at an outdoor event where some of the featured artists would also play live. That was well before the growth in online video though and after a few years on the shelf the idea evolved into the online business that you see today.
Which elements of the ‘fan-sourcing music videos’ concept appealed to you?
It has a lot of appeal from a number of different angles really. For artists and labels they involve their fans in the creative process which is a great way to connect with them and to strengthen the artist/fan relationship. It also generates more music videos that can be shared online to help promote the artist and their music and one of them can be used as the official music video.
For video creators it’s a platform to share their music video talents and be rewarded for it. We’re really hoping to help advance their careers as well by giving them an opportunity to make official music videos for international artists that can then be seen on TV, online etc. and that’s obviously going to help build their profile internationally.
For fans it means there are going to be a lot more alternate music videos they can watch so they’re not limited to the one official video that might not have been for everyone. It gives them the power to choose which video they want to watch when listening to the song on their computer, phone, iPod etc.
Who did you target first, bands or labels?
It was really a mixture of the artist’s management and the labels depending on the specific artist really. We wanted to put together a diverse group of artists from around the world for the first competition round and it was really about who we could first get in touch with for each artist we wanted to feature. We had a fantastic response from both labels and artists/management so we’ll go with that approach for the next round too.
Can you explain the business model that the site operates on?
We’ll initially be looking to sponsorship as the main revenue stream. That could be in the form of prize contributions, sponsorship of song competitions and overall site sponsorship. We haven’t focused on that yet though so we could concentrate on making the first competition round as successful as possible. The business model will definitely evolve over time as well – there are a lot of plans and ideas we have that we’ll implement down the track.
Who funds the site?
It’s all funded by us internally at the moment.
Is Genero.TV profitable since its launch in early September 2009?
No, but we were happy to launch without focusing on profitability for now. We’re comfortable we have a viable business model and if we can make the site as successful as possible on all other fronts then we’ll be profitable before long.
Do you view the Genero concept as just a way for bands to save cash on video production, or was there a more profound reasoning behind the decision?
Definitely not. Saving money was really one of the last benefits we identified for an artist or label and hopefully the music industry agrees. From our perspective the main benefits for our featured artists are to allow fans into the creative process and to deepen the engagement with them. More engaged fans are going to be the ones who will pay more money for concert tickets, merchandise etc. and those elements are obviously really important revenue streams for artists and labels today.
We also think that the old model of producing one video for a song was outdated and really didn’t take advantage of the growth in online video being produced and watched. Getting a larger amount of quality videos made for a song means there is a lot more content that can be shared online to help promote the artist. One video alone has the power today to be shared between millions of people on the strength of the video alone and that’s what we’re trying to help the music industry tap into.
Do you think that fan-sourcing the creative content of music videos devalues the music video medium?
No not at all. There is always going to be official music videos being made and we see this as really being complementary to that. Labels often want to position an artist in a certain way and an officially produced music video is a great way of doing that. It’s also sometimes important for the artist to be featured in the video so people can get a feel for who they are visually and big budget music videos can’t really be replicated through this approach either so they’ll still be around as well.
What we’re doing really shouldn’t be seen as a disruptive model for the music video industry. We’re hoping it just becomes a complementary platform that suits some artists, songs and labels. By allowing people around the world to also showcase their music video talents we think it will acts as a catalyst for the music video industry in general to help improve the creativity and quality across the board.
What’s next for Genero.TV?
At the moment we’re really just focusing on making our core business work as well as it can so our artists, labels, video makers and fans love what they get through us. Over the next few months there are a number of things we’ll look to do to improve the current offering and that’s really the priority.
Down the track there are a number of other opportunities that we’ll look at to expand the business but we’ll wait and see which ones make the most sense once we’re happy enough with the current service.
Michael can be contacted via email and Twitter. Read filmmaker Paul Rankin’s counterpoint to the notion of fan-sourced music videos.
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