Who owns your data? It’s an important question that’s often overlooked when building a website or registering for the latest social media service, but the answer can impact your ability to access your content or communicate with your fans.
Data portability allows you to take your site content and reuse it across a number of different applications. Essentially, it’s the ability to control media and other forms of content in your possession. Data portability makes it easy to download information you may require in the future.
In a competitive market, data portability is important for creating and maintaining your online niche. If data portability is addressed prior to creating your website, your data can easily be ported between different platforms.
Limitations of Social Media
Different services have proprietary data templates, formats and other aspects that lock users within specific boundaries. If you host your site on Facebook, MySpace or another service, any content you’ve created is confined to that specific service. Facebook has drawn harsh criticism from marketers recently after restricting access to fans.
If you’re active on any social network – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. – you’ve likely amassed a wealth of content. These services’ terms and conditions can change at any time, so you should always have access to your content in case an issue arises. Just imagine spending months publishing blog posts, tour dates, lyrics and audio clips on a platform only to have it fixed within certain restrictions.
Expanding Your Digital Horizons
Data is what drives your long-term relationship with fans. Instead of relying on one service or another as a platform for your fan interactions, use their interest in your music to your advantage. By collecting contact information – email addresses, for example – you can stay in touch with fans regardless of your platform.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the average fan email address has a value of $3.78 over the owner’s lifetime. If these services close operations or limit your access, you can adapt to these changes quickly. It’s impossible to take Twitter followers or Facebook fans along with you, but this data can go anywhere.
Below is a list of popular email marketing services that can help you collect email addresses and communicate with your fans:
WordPress Surpasses Other Services
Unlike Facebook and other major services, WordPress allows users to have complete ownership of their data, which means they can migrate it at any time with no hassle. On WordPress, users can customize their site in one of two ways: themes and plugins. Themes dictate the look and feel of the sites, while plugins provide the necessary structure and functionality of your website.
Given the dynamic nature of the business, musicians tend to change their designs quite frequently. In preparation for a new single or album, it becomes necessary to showcase new music in a distinctive way. By ensuring that their data is portable, the transition is a breeze.
How AudioTheme Can Help With Data Portability
A major problem is that many themes for musicians are promoted as all-in-one solutions, with the functionality bundled within the theme itself. When musicians try to switch themes, their data and functionality is easily “lost”. By ensuring data portability, it’s possible to switch themes without losing content or SEO value.
This is why ourWordPress music themes have built-in support for the AudioTheme framework, which abstracts the functionality out of the theme and into a plugin, making both the functionality and the data portable.
Get in touch if you have questions about how AudioTheme or WordPress can help ensure you own your data.