If you thought Idol was big on TV, mobile Idol ie Network Karaoke!

This is so amazing

(UPDATE 8.3.2006: We have now two other postings that are very closely related. Alan Moore wrote about the Myth of Branded Content with his take of it. And I did a follow-up about the Relevance of Common Man Karaoke. Please read those blogs as well)

We all know the Pop Idol, American Idol, China Idol etc phenomenon all around the world. A huge extravaganza combining TV visibility and mobile phone voting as its interactivity. And you think they have milked this format for all its worth.

Think again.

If ever you squirmed at some non-professional singer doing some horrible rendition of a musical classic, clearly beyond his or her abilities, and thought this is as bad as it gets.

Think again.

We have found the most real of reality TV, even more popular pop idol than Pop Idol. You'd think if this concept has the word Karaoke in it, it has to come from Japan or Korea, but no. The service they call Mobile Karaoke. The "common man" Idol contest, on mobile phones, was introduced in Finland this January.

Elisa Corporation (my former employer by the way) - the guys who launched GSM into the world (and SMS) - back when their mobile arm was called Radiolinja - was a sponsor of the Finnish Idol show on TV. They got together with the advertising agency TaivasEgo and developed a concept to do a parallel, truly amateour version of the Pop Idol contest. This "Jokamiehen Idols" (literally "the common man's Idols") contest was based on mobile phones.

You called a special number to join in the mobile karaoke. You sang your song into the recording. You then listened to it, that you were satisfied with it. Then you entered your song. And others would listen to the songs and vote.

Conceptually this is brilliant. And what of the usage? Finland has a population of only 5 million people. 1,682 brave Finns sang songs into Mobile Karaoke to join into this common man's Idols contest. 150,000 separate individuals called in to listen to these songs, to vote on them !  And the whole activity generated 1.95 MILLION separate listening/voting sessions in Finland. More than the total traffic generated by the voting activities of the "real" Finnish Idols show on TV. And obviously congratulations to Mea Karppinen, the lady who won this contest.

On a personal note. I can think of few things more horrible, than listening to random non-professional singers doing their Karaoke via the phone. To my ears, the sounds of skinning a live cat is probably less painful. But that is not the point. First, we know reality TV is a hit with the masses. Everywhere. Then we know that users want to participate (web), to create content (blog) and to share those (podcasting) etc. Is this not the obvious marriage of mobile phone services and TV content, in yet another variant.

Expect this to be a big hit everywhere. From now on, why would any Pop Idols format be run without the citizen karaoke variant on mobiles. It is my absolute fave service of March 2006

1.95 Million votes out of a country of 5 Million people in one month. This will be enormous everywhere this year.

Comments

[James Quintana Pearce]

Hmm...I'd like to hear karaoke in Finnish...
As an FYI, South Korea had mobile karaoke back in 2004 (although it wasn't "online") (http://www.moconews.net/?p=417), and it's also in the US (http://www.moconews.net/?p=3382) and India, where Channel V did a Talent Hunt (http://www.moconews.net/?p=3750).
I think the really interesting about this story is the tie-up with Pop Idol...I think those sort of reality shows are going to find other innovative ways to get audience participation going...

[alan moore]

Hi James, you mean you have never been to a finnish karaoke bar. haha :-)

A most exoctic experience.

Thanks for the hat tip on the other similar initiatives.

I think you are right - there is a whole load of ways to attract and engage communities into having some fun at the very least.

[Mark]

The company I work for also did it in Canada in 2004 as a contest called Rock the Mic in association with a TV show here: www.instantstar.ctv.ca

[alan moore]

Hi Mark I shall go and have a look at the site.

BTW do yoou have any user stats? I know Tomi would be fascinated as would I

Cheers

Alan

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi James and Mark

Thank you for the comments. About Karaoke and how wrong I've been about it. I talked about the Japanese and Korean Karaoke services on mobile phones back in 2001 - in 2003 the Koreans had upgraded their Karaoke to include the "virtual dance tutor" - ie your dance teacher as a stick figure, that you could set to your fave songs, and slow them down so you learn the steps slowly, etc.

For all the discussion about Karaoke, I had also regularly dismissed its ability to cross over into the mainstream as a mobile service outside of Japan and Korea. How wrong I was. The moment i heard about this - the first "networked" or community Karaoke if you will - via Finnish Idol/Common Man's Idol, I finally understood what the appeal was, and then the usage stats are quite to be expected.

Here is my take on it. We've seen hundreds of attempts to do karaoke on the mobile before - with the same mistake we are now seeing in TV content to the mobile. By copying the existing version and trying to squeeze it to the mobile. The Common Man's Idol is not karaoke like before. It is a new evolution variant of Karaoke, a kind of "super karaoke" if you will.

Normally we would not log onto our phones or the web, seeking a networked group of karaoke singers to torture our ears.

It needed the "context" ie the ongoing Finnish Idol TV show, to suddenly energize all idol-wannabes to go and try out for the mobile phone variant, and only because of the sudden contest around it, the random people were curious to go and listen and vote.

This is exactly what Alan and I have been talking about whenever we talk to the content industries - don't try to copy your existing service onto the mobile phone. Understand what makes it the Seventh Mass Media, quite different from any of the previous six, including the web, and only THEN, build something that was not possible before.

Never before this Finnish Idol contest, could you look at TV, and point to a TV show, and say, let me get into that show. Even if you called "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" - you had to enter the pre-screening contest to hope to get onto the show. Now for the first time this concept allowed you (almost) to join in the actual action of the TV show. True citizen-participation. ANYONE with the guts to sing, could do so, and over a thousand did.

Also I promise you, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg on this. What they need to do at the next iterations, is to use this common man's Idols version as the "feeder" contest, to allow the winner of the Common Man's Idol to be an automatic entrant into the next year's Pop Idols contest, as a kind of "peoples' choice" candidate.

And there are a million permutations of the community, viral and interactive elements in how to share and spread the idea further. But for that you need to book Alan and me for a workshop, ha-ha...

I really think this is a breakthrough idea. Vastly more significant than little other technology invasions to reality TV formats that we've seen recently.

Ok, its late and I'm rambling, so I'll stop now. Thank you James and Mark for commenting.

Tomi Ahonen :-)