Universal Music Taps Talenthouse to Help Music Acts Find Free Help (and Publicity) on Facebook
Facebook has 750 million users. Some of whom are willing to work for their favorite celebrities for free.
That’s the pitch behind Talenthouse, a start-up designed to leverage the social network’s ever-expanding user base to help celebrities and brands run “social crowdsourcing competitions.”
The idea is that artists like Lady Gaga can use the service to find bloggers who will document her tour, or someone to design T-shirts, etc. But the real point of the competitions is the competitions themselves, which are supposed to become mini-“American Idol”s: They’re meant to drive exposure for the celebrities — and advertisers that back them — on Facebook.
Two-year-old Talenthouse has been signing up a steady stream of celebrities to use its platform, and today it is bringing in another slug of them, via a deal with Universal Music Group. The world’s largest music label has agreed to provide more than 100 of its artists for Talenthouse campaigns in a revenue-sharing deal.
Universal can’t compel any artists to use Talenthouse, so this doesn’t mean the service will get access to the likes of Jay-Z or U2. But it at least gets the chance to pitch them on the idea. The fact that the start-up has already worked with Universal star Lady Gaga won’t hurt.