You know things are changing when the words coming out of Taylor Swift's mouth at the CMT Music Award were "This is for my MySpace people and everybody who voted."
The CMT 2007 Music Awards is the only country awards show that is voted on by fans. It recently took place at Belmont University's Curb Event Center in Nashville. According to CMT, there were 1.8 million votes cast leading up to the telecast, with almost another million voting during the show at CMT.com and via mobile phones.
After winning "breakthrough artist of the year," Swift said in an interview that "I try to spend at least a half an hour a day on MySpace trying to track down the people who are helping me out and saying 'thank you' personally. I'm a junior in high school, this is how we campaign. I basically told anyone I could about the award."
For the overall industry, an increasing number of country artist have MySpace pages, with a growing number having their own Web sites as well.
Sugarland, made up of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush, posted a series of humorous solicitations for votes on YouTube which seemed to work great as they knocked out usual winners Brooks and Dunn for the best duo.
There are a lot of things to see here in how social networking is changing so many aspects of marketing. Even in the country music space it literally changed the outcome of the awards by those taking advantage of this powerful medium.
Taylor Swift Singing 'Tim McGraw' Which She Won the breakout award for:
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