Bill Crandall
In February, comScore numbers showed that AOL Music remained the top online destination for music lovers, while also hitting an all time high in Unique Visitors (20.7 million) and an all time high in Page Views with 452 million (also a #1 rank in the category). They also ranked #1 in visits (68 million).
AOL Music’s success can be traced directly to Vice President/ Editor in Chief, Bill Crandall, and his agile team of music and editorial professionals. Crandall joined AOL Music in 2006, departing the Music Editor position at RollingStone.com.
Prior to his work at RollingStone.com, Bill was the Managing Editor of BAM Magazine in California. As a writer, he has contributed to a number of high-profile publications including Rolling Stone, Maxim and Urb, and as a television commentator he’s appeared on ABC, CNN, VH1, The CW, ESPN and E!
We recently caught up with Crandall and had the pleasure of tossing his way a few questions about the multi-dimensional, wildly successful AOL Music platform.
What are some the main factors that are driving your recent growth?
Passion, originality and specificity in our coverage. We understand that music fans are segmented in their tastes, and we created passion points for them, like Spinner.com for non-mainstream music fans, Popeater.com for pop fans, Country Corner for country fans and TheBoomBox.com for hip-hop fans. We do editorial features for music junkies (Spinner’s “Killer B-Sides” and “Best Opening Lyrics”), break first-source news stories instead of merely following the blog buzz (“Courtney Plans to Sell Kurt’s Stuff,” : http://www.spinner.com/2007/04/30/courtney-plans-to-sell-kurts-stuff/ “ Lisa Marie Duets With Elvis” http://www.spinner.com/2007/08/14/lisa-marie-duets-with-elvis/ ), and point our cameras at artists our competitors don’t (Amy Winehouse did her first U.S. performance in our New York studio). If we found it compelling, we covered it, and our audience rewarded us by consuming it on a record scale. In January, we did more than 100 million more pageviews than any competitor.
How integral have Sessions, The DL, 3X3 and The Interface been to AOL Music’s success?
Extremely, and for different reasons. Sessions, our in-studio performance show, continues to be the web standard. It features the biggest artists (from Fergie to Rihanna to a reunited Smashing Pumpkins) and serves a giant audience. The Interface (video performance podcast) and 3×3 (live performances) super-serve indie fans and have become viral successes. The DL, our comedy video show, is our wildcard: When the talent and the idea gel (like Ghostface Killah doing a rather colorful Christmas commercial for his own doll, or Debbie Harry teaching punk-rock preschool), it flies around the web.
What other features have really driven traffic?
On the PopScene, our weekly photo roundup of who’s doing what with whom and where in the world of music, has been a traffic machine. Spinner’s countdowns have also been massive: The Worst Lyrics Ever, The Most Killer (literally) Songs, 20 Rockin’ Gay Moments. Perhaps the only thing music fans like to do more than listen is to debate — especially if it’s an original topic or at least one with a new twist. We get so many comments on these features that we regularly compile them into our readers’ lists. In fact, their batch of Worst Lyrics were even better than ours. How dare we forget Van Halen’s “Only time will tell if we stand the test of time”!
What do you feel are some of the functionality and accessibility advantages that AOL Music enjoys over its main competitors, such as Yahoo!, MTV and MySpace?
AOL Music has led the redesign of all of AOL’s channels to serve the ever-evolving demands of consumers on the web. Our video, photo, and newly launched lyrics archives are easy to navigate and serve up related content fast. Our slickly designed (and produced) Top 11 Countdown is updated in real time by our audience: Their usage controls what videos appear in the show. Our audio experience allows you to go beyond our channel to pull up streams from the web at large. Our product and design teams have busted down the barriers between our editors and our audience, and between our site and the web.
What are Spinner.com’s main attributes and the philosophy behind the service it provides?
We started the new Spinner last year because there was no site for rabid, and open-minded, music fans. At Spinner the music comes first: discovery, criticism, contextualization (from best-of lists to what that song was on “Lost” last night) to candid conversations with artists. Instead of focusing on the pop culture of music, we dive into the actual music. And we don’t care who the artist is, if he/she is making compelling music — we’re not too cool for school. We do understand that by not highlighting the artists you see on supermarket check-out lines Spinner will lose people who aren’t really into music, and that’s OK with us. The benefit outweighs the loss, as our readership has become extremely loyal. Design-wise, we think it strikes the perfect middle ground between a blog and a multi-platform website — and it is both.
What is the synergy between the two destinations/platforms? (Traffic, ratings, most popular features)
AOL Music is the mothership — the place where all of our consumption experiences live: artist pages, video, audio, pictures, news wires, etc. When you are going hunting for assets, this is where you do it. Spinner is a contextually richer and more specific editorially-based experience (both in our original experiences and our readers’ input). If you want to find a particular Amy Winehouse video or click through her photos, go to AOL Music. If you want to see her rise, fall and road to redemption frame by frame diary-style, go to Spinner.
How may people make up the AOL music team? Perhaps breakdown the key members and some of their more important functions?
The core Music-only team is a dozen of us who work closely with talented people in product, design, technology, photo and too many other people to mention without this turning into a Grammy acceptance speech. Although we produce vastly different experiences and we do have our specialists (former Nashville radio personality Beville Darden is our country expert; former ESPN.com producer Tracey Ford is her hip-hop counterpart), we work as one team. Melissa Olund is our managing editor, and she and programming manager Kim Davis decide what content goes up when, where and in what form. Pete Schiecke oversees our robust radio programming as well as our third-partner relations with great partners like OurStage, iTunes and Napster. Gaylord Fields and Jessica Robertson — both of whom came over with me from Rolling Stone — are our features and news editors, and both possess a ridiculous amount of music and editorial knowledge.Mike Spinella is Spinner’s golden ears, and he and Brendan Grimaldi, a rare weapon in that he’s an industry professional who is passionate about pop music, handle our artist relations to ensure we get the contact to begin with. Reg Gonzales and Christina Lang do a little bit of everything, from web publishing to writing to managing all the audio/video assets. And, of course, none of this success would be possible without the support of our execs Mike Rich (SVP, Entertainment) andBill Wilson (EVP, Programming), who have supported our unorthodox initiatives from Day 1, and who encourage us every day to take risks.
** QB Content by Mike Bacon **
