Through all its travails, the Macintosh has managed to retain a loyal, almost cult-like following in the music community. A new marketing push by Intel, however, is taking aim at the Mac’s music market, hoping to lure musicians and other digital artists to the PC camp.
Intel’s strategy is based on showcasing its products in a variety of high-profile forums. Last month’s announcement that Intel would replace Apple as sponsor for this summer’s New York Music Festival, for example, could prove to be a test case for the company’s success breaking into the Mac-dominated arts community.
“This is all part of our content strategy,” said Wendy Hafner, Intel’s director of music marketing. “When people see what our technology is capable of, there will be greater excitement about the PC. Then the artists will get excited.”
At previous New York Music Festivals, producer Andrew Rasiej placed two Macs at each participating club. One was a kiosk to allow people to surf the Web and check out live bands online at other clubs. But glitches abounded at last year’s festival, and Rasiej claims that tech support from Apple was almost non-existent.
“Because Intel’s platform is supported thoroughly by the software industry, we, as virtual festival producers, have far more choices and opportunities,” Rasiej said, adding that a key reason for Intel’s growing success in traditionally Mac-dominated markets is that it brings a more supportive attitude to the music scene.
“Intel is more like an assistant than a leader,” Rasiej noted. “They seem more interested in facilitating content development than owning the rights. If Apple’s machines and products were used, they wanted, as a byproduct, control, to some degree, of the archives for their own promotions. But then you’re not asking for a one-time right. You’re negotiating for an ongoing right, and artists are very concerned with maintaining control of the rights to their work.”
For its part, Apple says it is unimpressed with Intel’s push into traditionally Mac markets. “The lack of standards on the Wintel platform and the cost of supporting Wintel products is a big problem for them,” said Mark Gavini, Apple’s music tools evangelist. “They have so many interfaces and sound cards – some that support MIDI, some that don’t – plus software configuration is more difficult. It’s just recently that Windows 95 became ‘plug in and play’ and not ‘plug in and pray.'”
Gavini estimated that the Mac OS still represents about 60 percent of the music production marketplace, representing between 500,000 and 1 million Mac users.
Intel hopes to change that. Its commitment is spreading from large-scale festival support to smaller venues like Web sites and even unsigned bands. The company has joined forces with Spin< magazine and Visa to co-sponsor Geocities’ first “Best Unsigned Bands In America Contest,” and, with CNET, hosts a Web site dedicated to music and film, offering real-time audio and video, animation, and 3-D music videos.
Intel is trying to systematically build momentum in other artistic arenas as well, from film to TV to publishing. Last year, the chip giant formed a partnership with Cisco Systems and Microsoft to open a lab where developers can tweak their programs – a one-stop shop for multimedia designers. The idea, says Intel spokesman Adam Grossberg, is to produce rich multimedia that can work across the Internet.
Intel also opened a high-tech media lab on the studio lot of Creative Artists Agency where stars are given guided tours of the Web by Intel officers and agents. “Creatives in general are Mac users,” said CAA spokeswoman Andrea Marozas, “but Intel wants to reach the core of Hollywood to show them that PCs are viable avenues.”
Nevertheless, Intel still has a long way to go before it can usurp Mac as the art-industry standard. “I’m quite sure musicians, producers, multimedia developers, and a lot of other people in and around the music business will continue to use Mac,” said Nicholas Butterworth, president of SonicNet<, a leading publisher of music-based content on the Web. “I’ve never met a sound designer or audio engineer who uses Wintel as their primary platform.”
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
