PIXIES PODCAST promo perfection?

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INDUSTRY MONETISING And the brand played on

No alternative: how brands bought out underground music 

Timberland hosts rap gigs. Princess Nokia makes films for Maybelline. And Red Bull is the new school of rock. Have brand partnerships destroyed counterculture? Or are they all that’s keeping it alive?

Is it possible, in 2017, to sell out? Not so long ago, cosying up to big business was considered the gravest sin an underground artist could commit – but these days new and leftfield musicians seem to spend their days hoovering up cash provided by brands while fans barely bat an eyelid. It’s not simply a case of moral bankruptcy, but rather literal bankruptcy: new and independent artists have had their potential income slashed by streaming and have been forced to mine money from an alternative source. But what’s in it for the brands – why have massive companies like Budweiser, Versace and Adidas invaded the alternative music scene? And can an underground even exist when so many of its artists are in cahoots with multinationals?

WEBSITE ALBUM SAMPLER Suede's non-music vid video!

An example which highlights three points:

1. Websites are routinely updated to centre on the latest album release
2. Bjork, The Pixies and many more are trailblazing a growing trend of creating videos for ALL album songs, not just the singles, recognising this boosts revenue-gaining YouTube hits ... but the importance of additional videos (unwrapping, lyric, live, UGC etc) is growing faster still, and Suede's "album sampler" is a good example. It would have Vernallis jumping up and down screaming I TOLD YOU SO given its narrative-free (is that possible?!) nature
3. Its another reminder of the convergence between film and music video - bear in mind that the 1964 Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night [Wiki] is widely considered as having created the music video template (archetype) with its video-like scenes ... and MJ's Thriller! While you will generally be creating youth-targeting productions with bands' existing (older) audience now the secondary target for you, Suede are possibly reinforcing their mature adult appeal with an entire feature-length arthouse movie released with their album. Its nature might also suggest an oddly upmarket (ABC1) audience for an Indie band. Read more here.

Here it is so you can judge for yourself - you should be thinking of this as an easy, but creatively free, extra (like the single shot video, lyric video...), so long as you remember to keep it MUCH shorter (or it'll just get blocked).

The website splash/landing/home page on 10.10.17:

The "album sampler"

...

WEB 2.0 Social first, UGC, me too memes, cashtags key to promo

Short and snappy overview here from Wired of how 'social first', trying to seed interest and stimulate sharing and UGC before paid-for campaigns kick in, has become the industry norm.

Some contrasting examples of 'organic' underground successes and notable failures by the likes of Katy Bloody Perry - hit or flip the common key is some degree of replicability, whether dance or ... spraying water on your face (KBP).

https://www.wired.com/story/memes-music-promotion/

BRANDING DIGIPAK Anthrax album trailer, vinyl, digipak

BRANDING + MARKETING ACROSS MULTIPLE PLATFORMS

What you can learn from this example

- you should have a clear, consistent brand image and concept to promote
- that consistency would extend across multiple platforms and even merchandise
- most artists will change website banners, YouTube icon/banner (etc) to highlight their latest release or tour
- artists increasingly create video content that can be shared (ideally go viral) ... even short promo clips for an album with self-filmed interview-style footage
- artists also increasingly embrace and create content that was seen as typical of UGC/fan-made videos, notably the lyric video
- you can present research into any coursework topic by creating content that takes on a recognised media format: magazine feature, radio or TV interview/chat show appearance, e-zine interview (more informal, including setting), podcast ...
- the Anthrax Twitter's most recent update was on Record Store Day - formats like these are ideal to convey your grasp of industry topics like the role of vinyl; the issues around streaming and revenues; influences ... even technology ...
- ... it could the album producer, songwriter, video director, video editor or cinematographer (especially to discuss technology used: hardware or software) sleeve art designer, record label executive, band management, fans, ... there are many options. Great website content, research evidence, Evaluation content...

The self-produced Anthrax new album promo is like an interview or TV feature

Pics to be added - a bang up to date example of the multi-formatting that forms part of the marketing for many album releases now.

Unlike many other examples, this isn't a reissue - indeed, the thrash godfathers have put up a video of interviews to trail the album release, with the YouTube description featuring US and UK links for different formats.

Look out for magazine ads for this - drop me a link if you see one.

As usual, convergence is evident here: someone posted a link in a FB group pointing to a metal news site that had their own video which in turn linked to the band/record label's trail video...all accessed, viewed, clicked, read and blogged on through my phone - albeit pictures, saved from phone, formatting and tagging will have to wait til I'm sat at a PC/Macbook!

THE ANTHRAX ALBUM PROMO

ANTHRAX DRUMMER INTERVIEWED FOR AN E-ZINE'S PODCAST SERIES, AND E-ZINE ARTICLE ON THIS!

INDUSTRY How Rihanna represents digitised disrupted new norm

Lengthy feature, packed with highly quotable lines (music video has displaced audio for current generation, Rihanna makes money from social media driven sponsor/endorsement contracts than music sales...)

ARTICLE: Up the Anti: how Rihanna rewrote the rules of pop.

INDUSTRY Universal acclaim down to marketing spend

A truly angry article, packed with useful detail on the monopolised music industry and how the biggest player, Universal, used its vast resources to seal influential critic awards.

A sample quote:

Add in similar costs for a TV and radio plugger, to get the music aired in public and make voters feel that said act really is the kind of label priority worth voting for, and the same again for an online marketing team to make things appear “viral” and “organic”, and you will be lucky to get much change out of £100,000. Labels say that the cost of developing and launching a new mainstream pop act today can be anywhere between £500,000 and £1m. With winning the tastemaker polls seen as the blue chip moment in a launch campaign, it’s clear why an increasing number of chips from a decreasing number of bettors are being stacked on the side of the BBC’s roulette wheel.

ARTICLE: How do you become music's next big thing? You hope your record label will spend, spend, spend.

WEB 2.0 MARKETING Britney Spears mints new marketing concept

The small scale of this clearly indicates a reliance on media coverage and social media sharing to be an effective campaign, which it seems to have achieved.

Pretty Girls – a new Britney Spears song featuring Iggy Azalea – premiered on Sunday, and who nabbed the world’s first listen? Not radio, not even online, but a handful of Uber cab riders.

A limited number of Britney-branded SUVs decorated in black and yellow bee print drove around Los Angeles at the request of fans, who could book the cars for up to 30 minutes to hear the song.

Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea marked a duet single by premiering the track through branded Uber taxis, requiring a 30 minute booking (30 minutes of Spears singing - I know taxi journeys can be torture but come on!).

Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea debut new track Pretty Girls to Uber riders.

 

Turns out that without a more traditional promo campaign, including TV appearances (there was a music video), it wasn't terribly successful, leading to a bit of a twitter flame war between the two.

Pretty Girls throw shade: Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea clash over 'flop'.

Only, no there wasn't, actually, it was the media inventing beef and wanting only to sexualise the pair's relationship, apparently ...

Iggy Azalea criticises press for stirring row with Britney Spears.

Streaming album for publicity: The xx

Attempting to echo the viral style in which they broke through to mainstream success, the xx chose to offer free streaming of their new album to help publicise its release, linking this into a graphic global map that added points of light everytime it was streamed. Fans soon launched a campaign to light the entire globe by getting someone in every country on earth to stream it.

This is a clever response to the challenge of digitisation, though a risky one - before digitisation buying an album was generally a risk, as you wouldn't have heard much of it before purchase. Now, you may be able to stream it, you'll often get snippets of each track on Amazon, or you could illegally download it via BitTorrent or some equivalent as soon as someone rips the CD and uploads the tracks.

What is also interesting here is the implication for the 'release date':

Music downloading and social media have made the pre-release album stream an integral part of the modern music marketing scheme, and Beggars Group hoped the visualization would draw attention to the physical release date.
"It's really hard to focus people on a release date – it's almost like the release date has become something that's become an adjunct to the whole campaign," said Farrell. "Even though for most bands and from the label perspective, it's the most important date because the record's available for sale everywhere."

Here's the full article:

How the xx shared their new album Coexist by releasing it to just one fan

Superfan in London given album to share online before its official release – and snowball effect causes host site to crash

The xx: going viral. Photograph: Jim Dyson/Redferns/Getty Images

To recreate the word-of-mouth phenomenon that made them famous, the xx shared their album stream Coexist with a single fan just outside London last week – days before its official US release.
It was a risky marketing move that set out to test whether the band could replicate their initial viral success with a map that tracked shares with a visualization on the Coexist stream's host site.
Twenty-four hours after the stream was shared with a fan on Facebook, the site crashed from the millions of streams, with the average user spending 2.1 hours on the site.
"From a statistical perspective, it's one of the most significant album premieres we've ever done," said Adam Farrell, vice-president of marketing at Beggars Group, which owns the Young Turks label on which the xx's records is released.
Farrell said the xx were instantly able to determine the superfan who would first receive word of the stream due to their frequent postings on xx-related social media.
"The fan was the only one listening to it for an hour or so. It seems like they were hogging it for a bit," Farrell said.
Once the superfan finally released the stream, it spread quickly among the xx's online community, avoiding the eyes of music blogs until the next day, when media outlets finally got hold of it.
"What we saw on the first album was a real word-of-mouth phenomenon we had never seen before," said Farrell.
To promote the xx's second album Coexist, the label had to find a way to inspire the same sort of virality that greeted the band's eponymous debut. Beggars Group then entered talks with tech companies, and Microsoft agreed to create the visualization, which was inspired by Aaron Koblin's visualization of flight patterns in the US.
The stream's visualization prompts a burst of lines as the album is distributed across the globe, cascading from its origin to the opposite ends of oceans, where it then radiates to another point on the map.
Music downloading and social media have made the pre-release album stream an integral part of the modern music marketing scheme, and Beggars Group hoped the visualization would draw attention to the physical release date.
"It's really hard to focus people on a release date – it's almost like the release date has become something that's become an adjunct to the whole campaign," said Farrell. "Even though for most bands and from the label perspective, it's the most important date because the record's available for sale everywhere."
Coexist's release was one of Beggars Group's biggest album premieres. The group – which owns and distributes several other labels – counts Vampire Weekend and Jack White among their clientele.
A day before the album's official US release, the viral move made it to the homepage of Reddit, where fans motivated by the visualization initiated a campaign to get the album spread in each country of the globe.
Despite its success, Farrell doesn't plan on replicating this visualization site for other bands: he says he finds it especially suited to the sensibilities of the xx.

Video Teasers: Love+Death (horror style)

I've mentioned this repeatedly: just as with films, bands increasingly seek to use social media, blogs and ezines to build anticipation and buzz around new releases not just with the full release of the vid, but with teaser clips too, as with this eg from http://loudwire.com/love-and-death-chemicals-video-teaser/:

Love and Death Release Teaser for ‘Chemicals’ Video

by: Amy Sciarretto 2 weeks ago

Love and Death will drop the video for the title track from their ‘Chemicals’ EP on May 7, but to stoke the fires of fan excitement, the band has issued a 32-second teaser. It’s short but chilling snippet. It’s also horror movie creepy, featuring masked marauders and more.
Love and Death, featuring former Korn guitarist Brian ‘Head’ Welch, have crafted quite a cinematic, dark and downright scary vid and we feel that way based only on the half-minute of footage the band has chosen to share. One can only imagine how terrifying the complete clip will be.
Welch has a mask attached to his face early on by an ominous person and that’s when weird stuff starts happening. Not too much is revealed in this super short clip, but it’ll get your mind curious to see more. If you like horror flicks, then this teaser, which is shot in black and white and in color, is right up your dark, deserted and desolate alley.
The band also performs in a claustrophobic room, which certainly ups the tension. In other scenes, Welch’s dreads are flailing about as he rocks out.
Watch the clip below and then take a listen to the EP stream, which Loudwire recently hosted!

Band website exclusives: Metallica mag

You can read more about this at http://loudwire.com/metallica-james-hetfield-calls-megadeth-dave-mustaine-a-big-mouth/

'A special edition of Metallica’s fan club magazine ‘So What!’ is being published in conjunction with ‘Metal Hammer’ to commemorate the band’s 30th anniversary concerts in December of 2011 at the Fillmore in San Francisco.
... The special editon of ‘So What!’ will be available May 14.  There’s also a video preview of the magazine.'

Here's the preview vid: