A Red Velvet love story

It starts with a Fan. A Fan that is going to love what you’ve created. A Fan that wants to find you. The only problem is she doesn’t yet know that she’s looking for you, specifically. Right now, she just knows she’s looking for something new.

As she begins her search, she makes her first decision. “Where am I going to start looking?” Immediately, she has a dizzying array of discovery conduits to choose from. What’s a discovery conduit? A discovery conduit is any service, event or voice that serves the purpose of introducing a person to something new. In the world of music, the discovery conduits come in the form of social networks, blogs, the media, streaming services, online retailers, brick and mortar retailers… The list goes on and on.

While these conduits all play a vital role in the discovery process, the benefits they provide are not without their challenges. Like a noisy club, there’s a lot going on in these environments. In order for our Fan to find you, she has to sort through literally millions of other pieces of art; all fighting for just a fraction of a second of her attention. It’s within these conduits that you will have to fight hardest to let our Fan know that you’re looking for her too. Once you actually manage to find each other, the most difficult part is over but the relationship is brand new. It’s still fragile.

Things are going well and our Fan wants to take things to the next level (she’s always in control of the situation). She wants to tell you that she’s ready to make a commitment. She wants to buy your art.

Unfortunately, this is where things can break down. You and your fan are engaged in a dialogue. She’s expressed a liking for you and wants to keep talking. It’s in this part of the conversation that you’re forced to stop and say “Hey, I really like you too but I need to send you away. I’ll tell you exactly where to find me but you need to go look for me somewhere else.” This is where the discovery conduit will send your Fan off to a place of the discovery conduit’s choosing. In most cases, these conduits will send your fan off to a 3rd party retailer like iTunes, Amazon MP3 or eMusic.

While it’s great that these retailers are there to help the relationship along, it’s risky business sending our Fan off into the care of someone else. You see, the online retailer doesn’t care who connects to whom. Nor do they care about the quality of a connection. What makes them feel good is how many connections they can make. Sure, they’ll make an initial effort to guide our Fan back to your table, but they take little care in maintaining the fragile connection that’s been made. Once again she is basically left to fend for herself. Once again the other voices rise up and cry “Pick me! Choose me! Love me!”. If she gets distracted along the way, if one of these other voices wins out, you may have lost her forever.

Even if she stays focused and does find you again, you may never know that the connection was made. You see, the retailer is so focused on making as many connections as possible that they can’t even afford the time to tell you that our Fan has found what she was looking for. The only evidence that she has fallen in love with your art will be the sound of a few nickels falling into the can that you hold out as you stand in the line of the long tail.

If a purchase is one of the ways she can express her commitment, why should we be willing to let these retailers devalue that expression and treat it as if it’s something that belongs to them? How much better would it be if the conduit didn't send her away and instead you could say “Hey, let’s get out of here. I know somewhere quiet where we can talk.”? How much better would it be if you could tell her “I appreciate your attention. I value you. I want to get to know you.”

This is what Red Velvet is about. It’s is a website platform that enables you to engage your Fan in your own environment. Communication and Commerce. To create a space where you can carry on a private conversation and take her on a tour of your world. Content and Correspondence. It’s a place where she can really get to know you and she can express herself openly. Courtship and Commitment.

We created Red Velvet because it’s your business, not theirs. Because it's not just a transaction, it's a relationship. We created Red Velvet for you and your music. We created Red Velvet for her.




To learn more about Red Velvet, go to RedVelvet.com, give us a call at 1-866-788-0516 or email us at redvelvet@rook.ca

You can also see Red Velvet in action at IONWorship.org