Institutional Context - Why Are Music Channels Commercially Viable?

Whilst Creative Zen Micro continues to be second place to Apple's iPod in the MP3 player market, it has raised the awareness of the brand that owned the sector. It has established itself in the minds of 16-34 year olds as a unique and desirable product. It is clear to them that young people spend more time watching music TV than any other channel genre, and music consumers make up Creative's target audience. This led them to pitch the EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) strategy which was a media first and broke the mould in TV advertising, sponsorship and promotions.
When Emap advertising created a partnership with Sky TV's music channels, Creative Zen offered a solution that enabled them to own the majority of the 22 music channels, at the most relevant times of the day for their audience. It gave them a presence on 13 consecutive channels on the EPG (60% of music channels available at the time.) It cut across music genres providing unique access to the diverse musical tastes of the 16-34 audience. This inspiring execution was designed to fit specifically with the essence of each community and varied depending on the genre of music being played. Separate sponsorship bumpers were created to ensure the association was relevant for each community, with 272 hours per week being sponsored and within these hours, 2,000 break bumpers were shown. The content being sponsored was focused on the idea of 'downloading.'
This shows how music channels are commercially viable because the 6 week sponsorship reached over 76% of the core target audience of 16-34 adults and reached over 46,991 entries. This caused the Zen Micro to be sold out nationwide within weeks, proving the commercial power that music channels have, meaning that music channels are justified in charging companies large amounts of money for advertising time.