Vodafone goes to Glastonbury

Talking of companies with grubby tax records and Glastonbury, has Vodafone been trying to pretend it was able to get its customers into the festival?

Back in February, this message appeared on the Glatowatch forum:

Hi there,

I'm Natalie S and I do PR for Vodafone, and we wanted to share this link with you: [link to Vodafone video]

It shows Jenson Button & Lewis Hamilton setting up camp at their favourite music festival early... very early.

If you want to get your hands on tickets for some of Britain's hottest festivals this summer before they go on general sale, visit [link to Vodafone website]

Now, it's a bit spammy - Natalie S hadn't posted before, and hasn't posted since; and Vodafone don't have any tickets for Glastonbury so it's a bit off-topic for a Glastonbury board. But, to be fair, there was no suggestion there that there would be Glastonbury tickets for Vodafone customers.

The linked video was this one, which shows Jensen Button and Lewis Hamilton setting up a tent in a field having arrived early for a festival. Like how Vodafone customers get their tickets early. Aaaaah.

Again, the video is scrupulous in not claiming that there are any Glastonbury tickets available. Because they don't.

But hang on... what's this down in the tags on the Official Vodafone YouTube channel?

Let's look a bit closer...

Yes, Vodafone have added the word "Glastonbury" to the tags, which means while their video has been scrupulous in not pretending to have tickets they don't, somehow they're still hoping to drag people to their site using the Glastonbury name.

It's not illegal, but it's certainly murky behaviour. And those events who Vodafone are sponsoring might feel a bit miffed that the company thinks their brands aren't interesting enough to merit a tag on the video. It's a bit like discovering your husband has written someone else's wife's name in his wallet.

Midem 2011: Building a music platform with money that could be spent on tax

So, MIDEMNET is underway, the pre-MIDEM digital wing of the music industry's excuse to spend part of January in France, and amongst the interesting factlets sneaking out is that Vodafone's music service looks like it's doing a bit better than Nokia's soon-to-be-hit-with-a-car-jack OviMusic. MusicAlly reports:

More than 100,000 people in the UK have signed up to Vodafone’s paid music subscription service, according to Lee Epting, the operator’s content services director.

It's amazing what you can do if you don't pay your £6billion tax bill and get it knocked down to a smidge over £1bn, isn't it?

(I know Vodafone claim the £6bn figure is wrong, but until such time as they decide to tell us exactly how much they weaseled out of, it's the best figure we have to work with.)

It's an interesting headline figure, and sounds like a fairly strong start to the service - although it gives no indication of churn rate or how many of those sign ups include people taking advantage of the 'first month free' offer with the intention of jumping ship as soon as they can. Nor do we know how much of money that could otherwise have been spent by the state building hospitals has been lavished on attracting those 100,000 subscribers.

Vodafone have been sensible in building a store that you don't need to be a Vodafone customer to use, and selling files that are unlocked and can be shifted around from phone to computer to iPod.

They're also been cunning in setting their usual store prices unrealistically high, which makes the subscription service seem like more of a bargain. This isn't, by the way, an all-you-can-eat model like Nokia's, but something more akin to eMusic's "you give us a fixed sum a month, and you can download a fixed number of tracks a month". So, it seems, you've got a better chance of locking people into a service where they get something tangible - if you can call a digital music file tangible - than something where you have wide access but nothing is yours.

Let's not forget that this is a very limited success, though: Vodafone has over 18 million customers in the UK [Source: Vodafone half year results to 30/09/10]. Only managing to get 100,000 of those to sign up isn't that amazing a conversion rate.

Beatles also not in this chart

Interesting toy developed to help push Vodafone's business: the Real-time UK Top 40. It's simple - you tweet what you're listening to with a #realtimetop40 hashtag, they knock up a chart.

Depressingly, it turns out a lot of people are listening to Patrick Swayze's She's Like The Wind right now. Even if you were still in mourning, you just wouldn't, would you?