Australian Band Delivers a World-First Campaign

Hey there, Happy Friday and welcome back.

In this week’s edition:

• Spotify’s NFT tests.

• TikTok’s Sounds for Business.

• Avenged Sevenfold’s deepfake AI troubles.

Australian Band Delivers a World-First Campaign

Assets are an important element for any release campaign, and they can be utilised in many ways. For fans, being given a glimpse of assets like release artwork serves an exciting teaser. It can help build considerable momentum without giving away too much about music that is yet to come.

One Australian band recently shared album artwork unlike anything we’ve seen before. In fact, it’s unlike anything anyone in the world has seen before.

Alongside management and promo company, Slow Clap, Private Function have achieved a world-first with the album sleeve for ‘370HSSV 0773H’, out March 31 via their band-run label, Still On Top Records. The sleeve features a scratchable album cover, with three Australiana-themed icons sitting underneath the scratchie panels. Of the 3000 copies available, only one sleeve will feature three identical icons.

The lucky fan who receives that copy will also receive a signed test pressing of ‘370HSSV 0773H’, $2999AUD in cash, directly from the band, and a photo of their face printed on all future pressings of the album across all variations, forever.

“The concept of the scratchie cover was just one of the many whacky ideas that Private Function's lead singer Chris Penney came up with,” says Cara Williams, Director of Slow Clap.

“The band had been thinking of ways they could engage their fans in a fun and interactive way that had never been done before, and Chris landed on the scratchie idea, which was made complete with a single winning sleeve and a big prize giveaway. The idea was great in theory, the challenge was bringing it to life.”

“We enlisted the help of local designer and graphics wizard, Harry Allan of Studio Balcony, to design a winning variation and losing variation of the cover so it resembled a traditional scratchie in terms of look and feel, complete with the three panels of Australiana imagery on each. But finding the right supplier for the job wasn't an easy task.”

It was important to the team to create a sleeve that was realistic, which led to extensive research and product trials.

“We were looking for a company that could produce the record sleeves for us, and then apply scratchable latex panels onto those sleeves, which is essentially achieved via a screen printing process. Not easy!” Cara says.

“It essentially meant sourcing a supplier that could do both - produce record sleeves that were the correct stock, weight and overall quality as any record you'd find in a music retailer, who could also print the scratchable panels onto those sleeves without ruining the product.

To promote the release, Private Function and Slow Clap shared an EDM with the band’s newsletter subscribers to announce the cover and giveaway, alongside a private link that provided pre-sale access to the record, two hours before the general public.

“We do this with almost all our big campaigns, providing our most loyal fans with first access to special edition products and merch. It works too - we priced one limited edition variation of the new record at $200, which was a literal question mark - we're still yet to disclose what that special variation actually looks like. Those records sold out in under a minute,” Cara explains.

To announce the record and giveaway to the public, the band shared a video demonstration, explaining the concept and the giveaway.

“We knew a static image of the cover couldn't adequately promote the product,” Cara says. “We paired all this with a press release announcing the new record and world-first sleeve, which resulted in a lot of media attention.”

As their first album since 2020, there’s naturally been plenty of hype around ‘370HSSV 0773H’ from Private Function’s fans. With the added element of excitement, thanks to this creative asset, that’s been amplified. In the first 8 hours, Private Function sold 750 records of ‘370HSSV 0773H’.

With their world first sleeve, Private Function’s campaign exemplifies how curated assets can play an important role in any campaign. By getting creative and tailoring a strategic pre-release approach, an engaging asset can be used to amplify a release, before it can even be heard.

In Other News

NFTs could become the key to unlocking certain Spotify playlists. Metaverse band and recent Universal Music Group signee Kingship have revealed that the DSP is using their music to test token-enabled playlists. Spotify told TechCrunch that they have no further news to share, or future plans regarding the development.

Avenged Sevenfold have been hit by the negative side of deepfake AI. A hacker allegedly used deepfake AI tech to impersonate the band’s singer’s voice to falsely announce that the band were cancelling their upcoming festival performances.

Bandcamp and Fortnite have joined forces to bring a radio station to the online game. The curated station will deliver music from 11 indie acts to Fortnite’s millions of players. It features tunes from The Beths, De Lux, Poolkid and more.

Spotify is ditching its heart button, in favour of the new plus button. The button will consolidate the heart and ‘Add to playlist’ button.

Snap has unveiled My AI. The new tool runs the latest version of OpenAI's GPT technology, customized for Snapchat. Snap revelward that My AI will be able to suggest birthday presents for user’s BFFs, plan their hiking trips and even write haikus. The feature rolls out this week as an experimental feature for Snapchat+ subscribers.

TikTok’s Sounds for Business is set to make content marketing easier. The platform describes its new audio library as a “collection of custom sounds designed as templates for easy content creation.” It arrives after 68% of users said if a brand's TikTok video features a song a user likes, they remember the brand better, and 62% say they're more curious to learn about the brand.

Tuned Global’s new deal with Lululemon will see the B2B music company provide athletic apparel brand Lululemon Studio's online fitness classes with soundtracks for its 10,000+ classes.

Fast Facts

👉 After taking all consumption formats into consideration, IFPI has announced that Bad Bunny’s ‘Un Vera I’ was 2022’s biggest album.

Chart

Little Simz's performance last week on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert received a big reaction, leading to 19,000 new Instagram Followers

ICYMI

Catch up on our recent stories:

• Artists Nailing TikTok

• Funny Business: Marketing Artists' Funny Sides

• How an Artist Dropped by Sony Made $250K Selling NFTs

Written by Olivia Gliku.Promoed is published by Habit Music Pty Ltd.

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