Yacht are a conceptual pop band based in LA. In 2015, they released their fifth studio album, I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler, through Downtown Records which was a sweeping and visionary pop critique of the 21st century.
For the launch of the single, ‘LA Plays Itself’, the band wanted to release it in a way that was directly tied to the city of LA, so we embarked on an idea to make LA, the city, the play button. It was simple – when LA traffic was bad, the track unlocked. Thus, in a way, a bustling LA automatically hits play. In order to do this, we created a mobile web experience that bound LA traffic patterns to the release of the track via Uber. When traffic was bad, Uber prices surged more than 1.1x the normal rate and the music video unlocked. When traffic was really bad, surge prices doubled 2x and a remix by Darq E Freaker played.
Fans could follow Yacht’s Twitter account for automatic updates when Uber prices surged in LA and the track or remix unlocked. By bonding the track to allow LA traffic patterns to literally play the song we were able to connect the city to the music that inspired it.
On the day of the launch, media coverage expanded far beyond music blogs garnering coverage on every major music and technology site including Pitchfork, BuzzFeed, The Verge, Engadget, LA Times, Gizmodo and Stereogum earning ‘LA Play’s Itself’ more than 15m unpaid media impressions. Within two days, the video had exceeded 100k views and the site was shared more than 5,000 times across social media. By the end of the week, album pre-orders had increased by 23%. And even Uber loved it, contacting the band just hours after the launch, asking to collaborate.
The key takeaway from this campaign showed that, in order to make an impact with releases, you need to create a moment that is inherently interesting to people who are not already in the artist’s ecosystem by creating campaigns that are social by design
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