To push his new album, Egypt Station, Paul McCartney is leaving no promotional stone unturned – and playing live is a huge part of that.
He already performed at The Cavern in Liverpool as well as The Philharmonic pub in the city (the second gig being part of an extended Carpool Karaoke on The Late Late Show with James Corden).
Release week saw the live bar being raised significantly. Despite writing an open letter to the European Parliament ahead of last week’s vote on changes to the Copyright Directive that attacked the “value gap” and “some user upload content platforms” (who could he have meant?), McCartney marked the release of the album (on 7th September) with a show at Grand Central Station in New York and streamed it live on… YouTube.
Is this just the most high-profile example yet of what we can perhaps refer to as The Schrödinger’s Cat Of Online Content?
The paradox here, of course, is that YouTube might not (currently) pay musicians and rightsholders what they would like for the use of their music, but they also know it’s the preeminent destination for music consumption on a global level. So, carrying on with the Schrödinger motif, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics here means that YouTube is simultaneously killing musicians and keeping them alive.
We could tie ourselves in philosophical knots here when really this is ultimately just a musician playing a pop concert and hoping people notice and maybe investigate the new album. And those are really the terms on which we should judge it as a success or a failure.
For an hour and 40 minutes, McCartney played parts of the new album as well as a run of songs that are, unquestionably, among the greatest compositions of the past century. Within three days, close to 2m people watched the performance on YouTube. McCartney is also on course to have one of the biggest albums of his solo career (Wings don’t count, sorry). So, yes, we can chalk this up as a success.
The album release also saw Spotify dramatically increase its own video ambitions. Back on 23rd July, McCartney played a special show at Studio 2 in Abbey Road – the place, of course, where The Beatles recorded the bulk of their material – and the streaming service pulled out all the stops. On 14th September, a special 17-song Spotify Singles (called The Paul McCartney Box Set) was released on the streaming service, but what it did with video was much more interesting.
On the Spotify mobile and desktop app is Paul McCartney: Under The Staircase – where 34 videos are split into all the songs he played at the Abbey Road show as well as betweensong anecdotes. This also includes a 94-second trailer/intro that opens as an animation and then switches into video footage of McCartney going into Abbey Road, through the Studio 2 control room and then onto the stage in the studio.
Spotify has not done anything on this scale with a star of this magnitude before and it could point towards the future for its Spotify Singles initiative – which has been an audio-centric effort to date. With everything YouTube is doing, with Apple Music throwing its weight behind documentaries and with Amazon (see overleaf) also moving into this space, Spotify cannot be seen to be just an audio service anymore.
Getting McCartney to be the showcase artist for what it can do here was clearly a coup for Spotify, but for McCartney it was just another platform ticked off his list as part of the huge amount of marketing that has gone behind this album. What remains to be seen is if Spotify will get other artists to follow in his footsteps here and help position it as a video, as well as an audio, heavyweight.
Will it once again be a case of where McCartney leads others follow?
