Just Teasing: The Art Of Album Promotion

posted in: Music News

Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, artists are no longer forced to rely on posters in record store windows or word of mouth to get fans pumped about their upcoming releases. Whether it’s as simple as tweeting the album art, as Gaga did, or as elaborate as setting up an online scavenger hunt for your fans, like Underoath did, musicians are coming up with a plethora of new ways to create buzz about their work. Most recently, it was Britney Spears who teased her fans into an online frenzy with a series of short YouTube clips leading up to the release of her (totally bizarre) video Hold It Against Me.

The pop princess started releasing 5- to 8-second teasers thirteen days before the video’s premier, giving fans access to a new one every day until the video debuted on February 17. (You can check out MTV’s analysis of all fourteen teasers here.) Not a bad move by Spears ” or her marketing team. According to YouTube Trends, the first clip was viewed more than 2.4 million times, and while not every teaser garnered that many views, they were viewed almost 13 million times in total.

Although Spears isn’t the first artist to arouse our curiosity with bizarre teasers, she’s certainly been one of the most successful. MTV even held an hour-long discussion and analysis following the premier of “Hold It Against Me,” because apparently this video is about as important as the State of the Union Address.

If all this speculation and fanfare has you shaking your head, you’ll appreciate the approach Radiohead took last week. The band made a surprise album announcement on the 14th about their album The King Of Limbs, which was scheduled for release on the 19th.

While that left fans a meager five days to brace themselves for the new material, the Internet was all-aflutter with news of the release. Fans scrambled to purchase the deluxe-edition newspaper album, dropping as much as $53.00 for the combination newspaper album and WAV download. And then, the band surprised their listeners by releasing the album 24 hours early, along with the video for the first single, “Lotus Flower.” King Of Limbs didn’t appear to suffer at all for its lack of promotion; Radiohead, Thom Yorke, The King of Limbs and Lotus Flower all became worldwide trending topics on Twitter almost immediately after the album was released.

So which method is better? Did two weeks worth of teasers really get people more excited about Britney’s video? Would Radiohead have sold even more records if they made an announcement months in advance? It’s tough to say, because in truth, artists as popular as Britney or Radiohead probably don’t have to worry too much about selling albums. Britney’s fans will go crazy over her new video no matter how much she promotes it, and Thom York and co. certainly aren’t going hungry any time soon. But for artists looking to generate buzz and increase their fan base, maybe teasers can be a useful method of promotion.

If you’re looking for a laugh, check out the videos for both “Hold it Against Me” and “Lotus Flower,” and marvel at the fact that at this point in her career, Britney’s dancing may be worse than Thom Yorke’s.