Universal Music Group (UMG) is responsible for managing many well-known artists, such as Mindless Behavior, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Dr. Dre, Justin Bieber, along with their official websites. UMG’s labels include Interscope Geffen A&M, The Island Def Jam Music Group, and many others.

UMG’s challenge was that the content of their artists along with their fans’ posts, comments, and blogs, were all fragmented among various social media and fan sites. The company and the business managers of the artists were feeling no longer in control of the brands of the artists.

UMG needed a way to centralize where the content, music, and artists' merchandise were promoted. A big part of the success of artists like Lady Gaga had been that they kept close to their fans, and UMG wanted to find a way to keep that happening with all their artists in spite of the huge size of the fan base of some of the artists.

UMG came to Arktan and asked, if Arktan could find all relevant content, if they provided the who, what, and where about the content that interested them. Could Arktan search across a huge base of sites like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, blogs, and fan websites? Could Arktan then pull out the artists' content, and everything being said by people about the artists that UMG would designate as important, like Super Fans? And lastly, could Arktan aggregate all the content onto the artists' official websites, and do it all in real-time?   

Arktan SocialStreams product fit UMG’s needs perfectly. SocialStreams aggregates and curates content right onto the official websites of the artists. With the ability to add comments and replies to posts, the social influence of the artists' sites has grown dramatically. In addition, some artists like Lady Gaga have a special page for their biggest fans giving them a "being backstage with the artist" kind of experience.

Lee Hammond from Interscope said this: “We are bringing in the real-time Social Media activity of our artists from all over the web in one central place using Arktan. Artists are now engaging with their fans on their official websites. Resulting in our artists seeing significant increase in new use registrations, time spent on the site and return visits.”

Content is further enhanced with inline rich media. Photos and videos from sites like Twitpic, YouTube, Twitvid, and Yfrog, are integrated into each post in real-time on the artists' websites. Even online stores of the artists, including Mindless Behavior's, have been enhanced with social interaction around the merchandise.

SocialStreams has now been incorporated into the core of UMG’s web strategies. Lee Hammond from Interscope said that “We are also launching new user experiences all the time using the innovation Arktan products bring on an ongoing basis.”

Arktan SocialStreams is powering innovative social experiences on the websites of several major UMG artists, including Mindless Behavior, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Lil Wayne, and many more.