ARK Music Factory and its shipwrecked production...

It was the worst song I'd ever heard.

For me, it didn't stem from the auto-tuned voice, or the young teenager singing like she was having the best day of her life...

...it was the lyrics. The completely mundane, entirely too obvious lyrics like, "Today is Friday...Tomorrow is Saturday/And Sunday comes afterwards" made me hang my head in shame of the monster we'd created through YouTube and by allowing any user-generated content to be published, regardless of its quality. 

Then I realized...it's not YouTube's fault that Rebecca Black’s music video, “Friday” went viral and hit 19,440,159 views in a week due to a few initial viewers calling it “the worst song ever”. It's ARK Music Factory's. The record label company based out of Hollywood has the goal of discovering young talent, and helping these rising stars to a celebrity level of stardom. Parents pay to have kids create a 'professional' music video, and with the popularity of "Glee" (11.146 million viewers, March 16, 2011), it would be difficult to stop your child from achieving their dream of singing on television. With ARK's RVP focused on providing an experience with a music community, professional team, and career advancement, it is an attractive bundle to consumers seeking this type of entertainment. This completely personalized experience, unique to that one 'star', makes it appealing to today's consumer. The selection value of the RVP is also quite high, as any number of complex (or simplistic) topics can be covered in the video, making the breadth and depth of product offerings much more expansive than they could be otherwise.

Retailing an experience like this would heavily rely on status enhancement, as demonstrated in the interview between Rebecca Black and KISS 92.5 Radio (Toronto) where she states that she heard about ARK from a friend who had recently made a video. Word-of-mouth would be important in a case like this, and it is likely that ARK segments their market based on this psychographic information – targeting teenagers who would like to be admired by their peers, with middle- to upper-class socio-economic standing so they can afford it.

ARK also thoroughly brands each video by incorporating one of the producers, Clarence Jey, in almost every one of their video – and starting the video with “ARK Music Factory”.

However, word-of-mouth is a double-edged sword – although Rebecca Black’s music video went completely viral and hit the Top 100 downloads on iTunes, it made it there for all the wrong reasons. Black is an overnight celebrity, despite the negative comments. With ARK’s terrible productions, will it still achieve a flood of customers as a result of its recent ‘success’? Black is now highly in demand and receiving offers everywhere due to her popularity – but has this irreparably damaged ARK’s reputation? The trade-off between creating a popular song to be ridiculed or a high quality song to never be seen, seems to be the decision ARK had to make – we’ll see how things turn out for their business.

Sources:

http://arkmusicfactory.com/

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/03/16/tuesday-final-ratings-v-glee-adjusted-up-raising-hope-detroit-1-8-7-traffic-light-adjusted-down/86025