Mapping Transmedia Marketing in the Music Industry: A Methodology

Abstract

Over the last decade, the music industry has adapted its promotional strategy to take advantage of the fluid, contemporary, platform-based transmedia landscape. For researchers of contemporary culture, the multiplicity of promotional activities creates substantial methodological challenges. In this article, we present and discuss such methodological approaches using two studies of contemporary promotional music campaigns as illustrative cases. Inspired by digital and innovative methods and guided by the Association of Internet Researchers’ (AoIR’s) ethical guidelines, we developed two data collection strategies—reversed engineering and live capturing—and applied two analytical approaches—visual mapping and time-based layering. The first case study traced already staged music marketing campaigns across multiple online media platforms, and the second followed an online promotional campaign in real time for six months. Based on these case studies, we first argue for the importance of grounded manual capturing and coding in data collection, especially when working around data access limitations imposed by platforms. Second, we propose reversed engineering and live capturing as methods of capturing fragmented data, in contemporary promotional campaigns. Third, we suggest the visual mapping and time-based layering of data, enabling researchers to oscillate between qualitative and quantitative data. Finally, we argue that researchers must pool their experiences and resources regarding how to transcend platform limitations and question a lack of transparency while respecting ethical norms and guidelines. With these arguments, we assert the researcher’s necessary role in understanding and explaining the complex and hybrid contemporary promotional landscape and provide tools and strategies for further research.

Commodifying participation through choreographed engagement: the Taylor Swift case

“…To analyse the rich data, we followed an inductive approach, inspired by grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). As we sought to understand the context and the complex events and actions within this global marketing campaign in real-time, we conducted live capturing in parallel with data coding and analysis through time-based data layering (further developed in Ryan Bengtsson and Edlom, 2021). By time-based data layering we organized our qualitative manually captured data of activities along a timeline over-layered by quantitative data (Figure 1).…”

“…Utilizing the guidance and tools from digital ethnography, we developed a data collection strategy called live capturing . It combines digital data collection tools with manual capturing to collect fragmented quantitative and qualitative data in real-time (further developed in Ryan Bengtsson and Edlom, 2021 and described below in more detail). We decided to collect data on one artist to enable going into depth with activities within a transmedia campaign.…”

Quare(-in) the Mainstream: Deconstructing New Media in Lil Nas X’s MONTERO

“…48 As MONTERO's platform-based transmedia campaign had already taken place, the broad number of promotional activities used by Lil Nas X presented methodological difficulties. 49 As this project documented a transmedia campaign that had already occurred, it was impossible to collect all possible data, because live promotional content such as Instagram stories were no longer available. 50 Issues were also encountered when social media posts were deleted, meaning the video essay had to be re-recorded with alternative data.…”

SOSTAC framework analysis for enhancing digital marketing in Yogyakarta's Art Music Today

“…Out of 91 papers found from 2019 to 2023, 11 articles were carefully selected by the researchers. This approach differs from previous studies (Altynov, 2022;Azzellini et al, 2022;Bengtsson & Edlom, 2021;Bossey, 2019;Cha et al, 2020;De Beukelaer & Eisenberg, 2020;Edlom, 2022;Efurhievwe & Okpeki, 2023;Krismayer et al, 2019;Strand & Robertson, 2020;Venkatesan et al, 2020) as it specifically analyzes the use of music digital marketing in Yogyakarta's Art Music Today. Unlike earlier research covering diverse topics, this study focuses on a localized context, utilizing a qualitative descriptive method with the SOSTAC analysis framework.…”