Along with Radiohead, Arcade Fire are probably my favourite contemporary band. The nice thing about both bands is that they're not just innovative with their music but innovative in the way they sell and promote their music. Radiohead for instance sent shockwaves through the music industry when they split from their record label and went alone, offering up their In Rainbows album via their website. What made the move even bolder was that they offered the album for whatever price people wanted to pay. This was in the midst of the file sharing craze when many would have assumed everyone would freeload and download the record for free. Instead the average price paid was £4 and the record sold in huge numbers.
Arcade Fire have used slightly more traditional distribution methods but they have been very creative in their use of videos to market and extend their songs. They first tried out using video alongside their songs for the Neon Bible album. They provided an interactive video for the Neon Bible song where you get to control the hands of lead singer Win Butler. Their latest attempts have taken this a step further though.
For instance they created an interactive video mashup with Google Streetview for their song We Used to Wait where people could have the song playing as a character ran through a location of their choice. It was one of the first videos to make extensive use of HTML 5 and won the band an army of new fans.
They've been at it again though this week with the launch of an interactive video for their record Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains. The record is famous for being, unusually for the band, great to dance to, with co-band leader Regine strutting her stuff throughout the live version of the song. The new interactive version lets you control the video by dancing along with the song. It uses your webcam to capture how you move your hands. The faster you move your hands, the faster the video plays.
All pretty cool and a great way to introduce people to their music in new and unique ways. The one thing I feel they're missing a trick on is not letting people share their 'creations'. With We Used to Wait it was wonderfully viral because you could easily share the video you'd 'created' with friends. It isn't possible with the Sprawl version however. Still kinda cool though. Have a play now.
Haha, that's brilliant. I think the We Used to Wait one is slightly better but they're both great ideas.
It must be very difficult for marketeers now – the marketplace was awash with traditional marketing prior to the advent of social media but the more innovative and effective channels are now positively cluttered with marketing and promotion (twitter; YouTube etc).
It's not necessarily a bad thing, a lot of people use the adverts as an opportunity to do something more productive like put the kettle on (if it's the t.v.) and get the popcorn (if the cinema).
I guess when you add to that the issue of file sharing, music really is squeezed – particularly for the musicians by the time you take the record label's cut off.
The upside is that the more innovative shine, the downside is that sometimes it's the cool ideas that grab all the attention, possibly at the expense of better ideas with more traditional and limited marketing.
I think in a lot of ways the marketing is part of the product now. I don't see why music should get squeezed though. You have other kinds of digital entertainment, video games for instance, that are just as ripe for pirating yet sales are going through the roof because they've adapted and become a lot more social than they were previously. Some musicians have adapted but many still have not.
For instance some have grasped the reality that live music is where the money is, and that recorded music is really just a way to get people to attend gigs. Suffice to say though that record labels probably don't make as much from gigs as from records.
Nice. Had me dancing around the living room like a weirdo lol