Music platform FLO is offering a new way to consume music that links fan communities with artists through its participatory service "Cheering." The feature surpassed 1 million cheering plays within a month of launch, with PLAVE, Taemin and BIGBANG ranking first through third among artists receiving the most fan support in September.
Dreamus Company said that in results tallied for FLO's Cheering launch event, PLAVE placed first, Taemin second and BIGBANG third among roughly 130 participating acts during the month of September. Cheering, introduced last month, is a participatory feature that lets fans create and share cheering playlists and play music together to support an artist. Cumulative participants have topped 250,000 since launch.
Fan support also carries over into offline advertising. FLO selects the top three acts in the cheering rankings for subway advertising. PLAVE, which took first place, will appear on a large digital billboard at Hongik University Station, a high-traffic location. Taemin will meet fans through digital media along main passageways at Express Bus Terminal Station and Gangnam Station, while BIGBANG will be honored with wrap advertising at Gangnam Station. The ads run for about a month starting on the 12th of this month.
The expansion in service participation also showed up in platform usage figures. According to FLO, new subscribers in September rose 19% from the prior period after Cheering was introduced, and the feature's revisit rate reached 25.7%. On social networking services, fans welcomed the rapid buildup of enthusiasm and called on others to join the cheering effort with an eye toward music chart performance and subway advertising.
The launch event runs through December. FLO plans to recalculate the rankings each month based on cheering data and roll out advertising for the top three acts at subway stations the following month.
Sung Jin-ah, head of Dreamus Company's traffic unit, said: "FLO's role is to connect the hours of support that fans build up while listening to music together into advertising they can see for themselves in daily life." The executive added, "We will establish ourselves as a platform that gives both fans and artists a sense of accomplishment and grows alongside the artists."
Cheering works by having a fan create a cheering playlist for an artist, purchase a cheering pass and share a link, after which other fans play the list to take part in the support. Play counts for cheering playlists are reflected not only in the FLO chart but also in the Circle Chart and Billboard chart tallies. Fans can also check the top 20 artists and top 100 songs in the "Cheering Lounge."