The internet in the right hands has allowed for many artists to rise up and release full and successful albums. Today we’ve see an ever-increasingly-familiar marketing strategy spring up:
The most obvious example of this is Bastille, who released Bad Blood with only a few new tracks, but through “EP hype” and intelligent use of social networking gain success, a no.1 album and a double-platinum single was achieved. MR MS and Charli XCX have also used this tactic, with the former irritating the critics a little with their album feeling a little “recycled” from previous material.
Recently we’ve seen veterans Arctic Monkeys adapt their normal strategy of releasing singles from an upcoming album with B-sides in record stores, to releasing the B-sides only on the internet, and then weeks later on the 7”. This just highlights the importance of the internet in the music industry and also suggests that the decline in CD’s has left us sometimes having the only physical copies of “rarer” tracks being on 7” vinyl.
- Release single tracks on Soundcloud
- Build up hype for an EP
- Use EP(s) to build hype for an album
- Release album with success already ensured
The most obvious example of this is Bastille, who released Bad Blood with only a few new tracks, but through “EP hype” and intelligent use of social networking gain success, a no.1 album and a double-platinum single was achieved. MR MS and Charli XCX have also used this tactic, with the former irritating the critics a little with their album feeling a little “recycled” from previous material.
Recently we’ve seen veterans Arctic Monkeys adapt their normal strategy of releasing singles from an upcoming album with B-sides in record stores, to releasing the B-sides only on the internet, and then weeks later on the 7”. This just highlights the importance of the internet in the music industry and also suggests that the decline in CD’s has left us sometimes having the only physical copies of “rarer” tracks being on 7” vinyl.