Lovly.no is the Norwegian music industry's new website that collects mentions and buzz about Norwegian artists on the social network. On Lovly.no – your online music scout, you can, among other things, see which Norwegian artists are blogged and tweeted about the most, and which you can buy or listen to with a single click.
/ 04/06/2010 / codex– Lovly.no helps you follow Norwegian music, and we have made it very easy for you to both listen to and buy the music you find there, says Jan Richard Kjelstrup, communications manager at TONO.
– Lovly.no has become a service that I myself have missed for a long time, both privately and in a work context, says Jarle Savio, A&R Manager, EMI Music Norway AS, and continues: – I can follow my favorite artists and share them with my friends and colleagues, and not least I can follow what the audience and bloggers write about Norwegian music.
Savio, together with Kjelstrup, has led the work to establish the website. The website is supported by FONO, GramArt, IFPI, the Norwegian Musicians' Union, the Norwegian Artists' Association and TONO.
– Today, there is an astonishing amount of knowledge shared between individuals and groups via social media. This influences everything from purchasing decisions to what we believe in. Music is no exception, says Aimar Niedzwiedzki, creative director for Lovly.no and music industry consultant on this campaign.
– We believe it is absolutely necessary to shed light on everything that is written and played in music, as this not only says something about what is trendsetting, but in the long run may take over some of the function of the traditional sales lists. By the people, for the people, liked by the people.
For Inge Jørgensen and Alexander Støver, the developers at Manual Design, working on this project has been particularly interesting because they are musicians themselves. They have used a number of sources to track what is happening on the social web: the blogosphere, Last.fm, Twitter, MySpace, Musicnodes.
– The biggest challenge has simply been to create an interesting list, that is, to figure out how to interpret and emphasize the data we receive without compromising neutrality, says Jørgensen and continues: – The Internet is a living medium, so we have spent a lot of time following and analyzing how people talk about artists. Another challenge is that Norway is a small country, so there is a limited amount of talk about Norwegian music – something we will hopefully help with!
– At the same time, we are very interested in social media and technology. I am excited to see how it will develop after launch, especially when we allow people to contribute their own blogs. We have many ideas we would like to implement to make the site better for both fans and bands, concludes Jørgensen.
Norway has a unique role in the development of the music industry. Norwegian consumers are early adopters of new technology and it spreads quickly to the mass market.
– More music is consumed and listened to in Norway than in most other markets in the world, and the variety is startlingly large. It is therefore only natural that the Norwegian music industry is among the first to launch a service that provides a picture of consumption that has until now taken place under the radar of both consumers, traditional media and the industry, says Bjørn Rogstad, MD, EMI Music Norway AS, who first had the idea of doing “something” together with all the good digital music services.