Hal Leonard’s Performing Arts division has launched a new digital community called Backwing, aimed at music and performing arts communities and including a direct sales site.
Backwing will provide visitors with information curated by and for aspiring and established actors, artists, authors, gurus, musicians, songwriters, producers, luminaries, entertainers, and fans. Every article on the site also serves as an open forum for those interested in a discussion of any given topic.
“For nearly seven decades, Hal Leonard has provided consumers with the highest quality information available,” said group publisher, John Cerullo. “We know who our readers are and what knowledge they crave. Backwing offers us a dynamic new means of reaching them, responding to their feedback, and cultivating conversations around our content in real time.”
The project is comprised of three main components. The first two – exclusive content pertaining to or drawn from Hal Leonard products and a resource database populated with performing arts-related materials will feature, in tandem with a comment section, multimedia created by and for Hal Leonard authors and industry associates.
“Since we reside at an intersection frequented by all manner of clientele, from nonprofits, educational organisations, and professional coalitions to gear, equipment, software, and instrument manufacturers, our contacts quite literally run the gamut of the performing arts world,” Cerullo explained. “We now aim to bring these brands together at Backwing for the exclusive benefit of visitors to the site.”
The third component is a second site with direct-to-consumer sales portal featuring daily deals, giveaways, contests, and a slew of weekly/monthly special offers (many of which are also available to third-party vendors), can be found at soon-to-be-launched backwingstore.com – an entirely separate domain.
“Since Backwing was designed with the end user foremost in mind, we’ve decided against tangling content and commerce. As such, multimedia content and resources are hosted at the deliberately non-commercial domain backwing.com while consumer products and services are restricted to the Backwing store.
To promote the project Hal Leonard is giving away prizes for devotees of the performing arts, including an Epiphone guitar for music fans; a Rodgers + Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music package along with gift certificates to digitaltheatre.com for theatre lovers; subscriptions to online streaming services for film and television buffs; and Met Opera on Demand gift subscriptions for classical music and opera enthusiasts.
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