Collaborations – the benefits

Collaborations can be a great idea and really work if done correctly. Some artists do collaborations for the pure chemistry of working together with a particular artist and contributing to a good song, like Run DMC and Areosmith with “Walk This Way” in 1986, while other artists do so for strategic reasons; namely to crossover into other audience groups and to maximise the reach of the song. Mary J Blige and George Michael achieved this in 1999 with the hit song AS. Both artists crossed over into each others audience group and made bigger their own respective market.

Collaborations can also be used to help break an artist into the mainstream which strategically makes sense because the artist would then be known to a much wider audience and consequently create a bigger market for further music sales. This strategy would prove very useful for an artist who is yet to receive critical acclaim from the mainstream market.

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