Groove Armada and Bacardi: Bliveshare.com

The Groove Armada and Bacardi partnership announced last year was significant and heralded a new era of commercial partnerships with content creators, not just for the music industry. So is their first digital output, a music distribution platform called Bliveshare, going to set the world on fire?

Well, I see a number of challenges:

• It’s “another music sharing platform”
• Last.fm…
• Heavily reliant on sharing i.e. recruiting friends
• Sharing mechanic is simplified but not neccessarily easy to action (you have a bespoke URL you email/blog/add to your facebook profile)
• Online sharing & recommendations is about interacting with people of shared interests, not just sharing with people you already know
• You have to keep on giving to keep getting
• It doesn’t grab interest immediately as you have to wait for other people to take action (either my friends hate me or they are fed up with me sending them invites to stuff)

But it’s got some things going for it:

• Groove Armada
• Groove Armada’s fans
• If it works and attracts the kind of interest needed to make it a success then the potential is huge

I really want this partnership to succeed and good use of Social Media will be critical in my view. I couldn’t find many online reviews of the service – what do other people think of it?