Swarmtribes

Swarmtribes is a new type of community-engagement platform, which was designed around communication principles used by social groups in nature such as ants, bees, geese and dolphins.

It's an interactive approach, which aims to connect musicians with their dedicated fans, by enabling them to manage, grow, develop and montetise their own fan bases.

Why Swarmtribes?

For many musicians, getting the first 10 or 20 dedicated fans is easy enough – but when it comes to multiplying this number things become more difficult. If and when their fan base does increase, they're faced with the challenges of managing it.

Musicians need a communication system to interact with their fans, which is adaptable and instantly reactive. They need to engage with their fans, using a means of communication that can be scaled up. This is where Swarmtribes can help.

How Swarmtribes works

Swarmtribes enables musicians to communicate directly with their 'Alpha fans' – a core group of about 25 dedicated fans. It works by allowing Alpha fans to create and manage their own "swarm" of dedicated fans. These fans are then encouraged to recruit and reward their own swarm of fans, and so on.

As the number of swarms expands, the speed at which messages are spread throughout the community becomes faster – and more effective.

Their success depends on the ability and commitment of the musician/band to grow and manage a viable and passionate fan base, which they can use to sell their music, recruit other fans and promote their concerts and gigs.

How Swarmtribes helps musicians

Selected bands will be given:

• Free consultancy from music industry experts on how to use swarms to develop their fan bases and increase revenue;
• Free training on how to use swarms to invite and engage their fans;
• A free license to use all of the Swarmteams facilities including free SMS/text messages, instant messaging, email, web and RSS;
• Visibility with senior executives within the sponsoring music labels.

Swarmtribes and social networking

NESTA Connect will work in collaboration with Swarmtribes to examine five social networking hypotheses in the interaction between musicians and their fans.

• The impact of distributed leadership/messaging across a fan community compared with a centrally controlled approach
• The effect of integrated communications (SMS, IM, email and Web) versus single channel communications.
• The relative effectiveness of small groups (swarms) and big groups (swarm communities) on messaging, forwarding and recommendations.
• The impact of reaching a community through its most connected members versus directly engaging the whole community.
• The role reputation and rewards play in creating sustainable self-organising communities.

Get involved with Swarmtribes

Selected UK bands and musicians will be able to use Swarmtribes for up to 12 months at no cost, from January 2008.

Kharma 45, from Derry, Northern Ireland, is the first band to pilot the Swarmtribes technology

To apply for the programme, please visit www.swarmtribes.com.