Sweden's biggest music award, Rockbjörnen, had lost its relevance due to new forms of communication and music consumption. Albums and records have been replaced by playlists and streaming services. The easy access to content has increased the relevance for unique material. As a consequence, live concerts have grown at an explosive rate in recent years.Focus was to reinstate the relevance for the Rockbjörnen award, and to engage a new target group of digital and selective music lovers which viewed Rockbjörnen as obsolete. The solution was to embrace the two top trends on the music scene – live and digital. And in addition capitalize on the digital sharing potential of their preferred medium.We developed YouLive, a real time application that enabled digital live concerts where the audience could interact with friends and have direct contact with the artist at the same time, creating the world’s first truly live concert online.

The qualitative goal was to reinstate the relevancy of the Rockbjörnen award by gaining exposure outside Aftonbladet's own channels and in contexts that are relevant for a new target group of highly digital and selective music lovers. Focus was to make them perceive Aftonbladet as an innovative news media channel.The quantitative goals were to double the traffic to the Rockbjörnen website and to create the biggest live music event in Sweden. But because of our target group, we needed to create this event online, with all the features of a traditional live concert, and without compromising exclusivity or interactivity.

By integrating live music with Facebook's unrivalled interaction, YouLive created a genuinely live concert online in which the audience could interact with each other, and with the performer in the studio, all in real time. The audience could applaud, take photos, hold up lighters, and request songs etc, all while the artist followed the actions on a live monitor.Seven concerts were created with Sweden’s biggest artists. Digital tickets were created to access these concerts. The tickets offered a way of reinforcing the live feeling and as a tool for distribution, since they were intended for sharing. To build hype the tickets were initially shared in the performers' own channels and by fans in social media.With strong content and creative ways of contact, YouLive tapped into the biggest and most relevant flows of information to achieve a greater reach. Spotify published the tickets to their 630,000 Facebook members.

During seven concerts and the total time of 105 minutes, YouLive attracted 44,000 unique visitors, from 63 different countries, making it the biggest festival in Sweden during 2010. The goal was 30,000 visitors.Did the application work? Well, it generated 2.4 million interactions; applauds, raised lighters, requested songs etc, during the concerts! A flood of bootlegs, pictures, social interactions and traditional PR followed, showing that YouLive was highly relevant.YouLive had a total PR reach of 29 million and increased the amount of unique visitors to the Rockbjörnen website with 300%, from 85,500 unique visitors during the previous most intensive period, to 337,000 during the YouLive activity.In addition a new business model for the music industry has been born which puts Aftonbladet in the leading position of new media. YouLive enables a direct interaction between the performers and their most important critics - the fans.

As a consequence of the changed music consumption, live concerts have grown at an explosive rate. This has altered the platform for music awards completely. The solution was to embrace the two top trends on the music scene – live and digital. And in addition capitalize on the digital sharing potential of the target group’s preferred communication channels.

To gain exposure for the award we created YouLive, an advanced application – the first ever web casted concerts with full interaction. Streamed concerts has been done uncounted times before, but never with interaction possibilities as a real life concert.

YouLive channelled the audience’s passion for their idols, tapping into their news feeds on Facebook and Twitter. Making the artist the messenger, and connecting them to the audience through live interactions, both the artists and the audience were engaged in spreading the hype for the Rockbjörnen award.

In 1979 Sweden’s biggest tabloid Aftonbladet launched Rockbjörnen, the first music awards with the people as jury. Rockbjörnen soon became Sweden’s biggest music awards.

But over the last few years, traditional news media and music awards lost its relevance in the younger demographic, mainly due to new forms of communication and music consumption. Albums and records have been replaced by playlists, and various streaming services such as Spotify have gained ground. The easy access to content has increased the relevance for unique material. In 2010, it was truly a do or die situation for Rockbjörnen.