Online karaoke site Bix ended its beta with flair last night with the launch of a $50,000 “Second Chance” video and audio karaoke competition. The “Second Chance” refers to the many of us that did not win on American Idol — not a requirement for entry. This is exactly the kind of contest, with the kind of prize Bix needs to catapult itself into public awareness.
There appears to be no sponsor other than Bix so they won’t be testing it as a direct marketing channel yet, which is too bad. However, they are about to test the validity of two theories in the overall model (although it’s being tested with an enormous prize which could skew results):
1) Can they get entrants with talent?
2) Can they get viewers?
I expect the answer will be yes to both, but I’m quite curious what viewer participation will be like. The length of an American Idol broadcast serves as a natural filter for viewers. Without that, how will viewers interact with the site? If you are just coming to vote for your friend, will you bother to watch other entries? If you are coming to explore, how many entries will you get through before enough is enough? Will visitors be drawn to “most popular” filters thereby relegating some good, but undiscovered entries to the bottom of the list? I guess we’ll find out.
Since I last wrote about them, they’ve made improvements to the UI and added some community features, like a really simple upload to “My Space”. All of this increases the chances that this could really explode.
As I said in my previous post, as a marketer, I believe this is a marketing concept with real potential. Now, we’re about to have data instead of opinions. I’ll look forward to reporting on the results in a future post.
Comments
$20 headset (w/ included microphone) from Wal-Mart, compressed audio, and lagging lip to audio ratio… how can you tell if they are talented? With good lighting you can tell if they are attractive, but there is no possible way to tell if they have a good voice.
Lame.
Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal wrote a very positive piece on Bix today in his column, looks compelling to me.
It looks like a good publicity stunt, but as mentioned, unless people are willing to spend money for a good camera (or have access to one), a webcam just isn’t going to cut it, in terms of quality, for determining talent.
I do like the idea though, of moving a concept like “Idol” onto the web.
As with most great karaoke experiences and American Idol, part of the lure of this site will almost assuredly be the really really BAD submissions.
You don’t need a great studio to show your personality, or to put on an extremely lousy, extremely entertaining show!
I found two links about this
http://digg.com/tech_news/Onli.....00_Contest
http://web2list.com/forum.php?logoid=1300
I think the limiting factor will be the number of people users will sit through. I didn’t make it through a full song, and only glanced at 3 entries.
I disagree that seeing really bad submissions is much of a selling point. True, part of the American Idol success is seeing bad people, but that’s on TV. For years bad on TV was something out of the ordinary, a novelty. On the web, bad is pretty common and the joke wears thin long before a song ends.
Without TV legitimacy, I think the concept loses some lustre. Reality contests on the Internet are interesting, but I don’t think this one will take off.
You’ll see a good bump of early adopters trying to get in with the hopes that there are few entrants, but after it reaches a certain point, they’ll taper off despite the good prize and the low barrier to entry.
A select paragraphs from the Mossberg/Boehert article. Overall, a positive review of the site. They do point out the problems with webcams as Ryan did above:
“If you think you’re talented, or if you get a laugh just looking at those who think they are, you’ll enjoy Bix.com. It’s easy to get the hang of, and it has a lot of potential to expand. We think people of all ages with enjoy this user-friendly Web site.”
I think chigdon makes a good point and one I tried to make in the post. How will you sift through it all? Since traditional web barometers (most viewed, most recent) good enough? I know the company is thinking about this — anyone from Bix care to comment?
Bix makes great Martinis…
Sorry, wrong Bix…
I still think that the model has some value though.
For instance, a contest to surface an Internet based candidate for a government office. People could submit 1 to 2 minute videos of their positions, and viewers vote for their favorites. Then via a bracket system the candidates get narrowed down.
After a couple of eliminations, then debates are set up with candidates adressing eachother in a point-counter point model. You eventually end up with two front runners and then run a live debate between the two, with the winner getting $50,000 to run an Internet based campaign.
Sure, you might not unseat anyone, but as a publicity stunt I think it’d take off quite nicely.
I tried to watch but I had a hard time, didn’t care for the interface and usability. Although they are offering a large reward, I still think Google Idol (www.googleidol.com), Video Sift (www.videosift.com) or The Video Awards (www.thevideoawards.com) have a better design and is more usable.
It works great with all webcams at my house and i am even surprised it work with iSight.
Ill submit a vid.
Seriously (it’s not just about martinis)…
The problem with the American Idol comparison is that despite it’s long tail appearance AI is very tightly programmed. You see maybe a hundred out of tens of thousands of auditions. You see what the producers choose, not what you choose. Only a very small percentage of people in those massive lines to audition ever get to sing for Simon, Paula and the “other guy”.
The rushes of AI prior to editing would make for some terrible television.
Let us not forget that the user-editors of Digg sift daily through thousands of articles.
The question is not whether Bix will succeed in this venture, but when Fox will copy it. Imagine a “wild card” secenario where two contestants chosen by the online audience get inserted to increase the running length of the season and provide extra time to pump advertisments at the audience both online and off.
I’m sure a few of the million devoted Idol fans would love another chance to vote….
If only we could get them as enthused about their public officials.
“when Fox will copy it”…
if every entrepreneur worried about big corporations moving fast enough to chase their latest venture / service / feature, there would be no innovation happening… fortunately here in Silicon Valley, that’s far from the case.
while i certainly don’t think FOX or MySpace or Ross Levinson are dumb guys, it’s tough for them to move as fast as a startup. their advantage is massive audience & distribution (and a ready checkbook), but their disadvantage is bureaucracy and incumbency.
eBay wasn’t able to stop PayPal from being the default payment service. MySpace wasn’t able to stop YouTube from being the default video hosting / watching service. and neither Slashdot nor NYT nor Yahoo were able to stop Digg & Delicious from becoming the default news & bookmarking service of choice.
entrepreneurs shouldn’t be looking in the rear view mirror worried about dinosaurs catching up to them… they should be facing forward and watching how fast they take the next sharp turn while stepping on the gas as hard as they dare.
my .02,
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
Seems that the required log-in will kill the rating system. Since 100x Voyeur to Singer ratio, only the .001% of singer’s will vote on each other…
There seems to be some talent brewing over at Bix….check out this guy:
http://www.bix.com/entry/3475
Has anyone else noticed that most of the featured content seems to be “adult”–what’s really getting traction? Where are the majority of engaged users?
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