By Mark Evans - Wednesday, June 6th, 2012 at 9:26 am
Technology has not always been friendly to rock bands.They spent millions in the 80s and 90s cranking out pricey music videos for our MTV and MuchMusic enjoyment. In the digital age, they’ve seen their bread and butter from album sales all but disappear.
We may roll our eyes at the Coldplays and Elton Johns of the biz, who still sit on millions of dollars. But the average young band barely makes enough from music to pay the bills.
So it’s nice to see musicians leveraging social media in a way that doesn’t gouge anyone on either side. The Smashing Pumpkins — once a cash cow of an act, back in the day, but not so much anymore — have put out the call for fans to create artwork to represent each of the 13 sons on the band’s new release Oceania.
They’re asking people to post their work on Instagram, Pinterest and DeviantART. They’re also soliciting poems via Tweegram or TextGram about the songs, and via social media — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. And they’re keeping others updated on what’s been posted and what their favourites are.
Clever. As is the work coming in: much of it is pretty stunning stuff. Check out the band’s Pinterest site to see some of it.
Social media has always been about regular folks getting the opportunity to have a voice and express their creativity. And it’s also been a vehicle for public relations.
This project merges the two beautifully: the fans are pulling out the stops with their talents. The band is generating hype. If this is what art is going to look like in the digital age moving forward, I’m all for it.
Tags: music, smashing pumpkins, Social Media
I don’t think musicians ever “gauged anyone” – record companies took most of the profit, but spent millions on the promotion of a new album.
You can gauge at the pumps, or grocery stores – you can’t gauge what people WANT to buy. Albums & CD’s were always at a price point based on marketing & sales information that told records companies how much consumers were willing to spend – which is fair.
Stop name dropping, ‘Pumpkins, Coldplay’ and get your facts straight.
This ‘social media’ launch works for the Pumpkins, only because they got paid during the 90′s and no longer need money to keep the dream going – they have enough of it, and deserve every penny.
[...] of thirdocean, Mark Evans recently wrote a piece in the Sysomos blog about the interesting things Smashing Pumpkins are doing with social media: They’re asking people [...]