Cryptic teaser campaigns, hidden audio snippets and NFTs are all common components in music marketing today – but metal band Slipknot have decided to roll them all up together in one place for maximum impact (and, let’s be honest, maximum marketing topicality).
On a dedicated website called The Chapeltown Rag that appeared at the start of November, the band opened an NFT marketplace; but users need to have set up a WAX wallet (and log into the site via their account details there) to make it work.
A band fan account, the Maggot Fan Page, quickly posted a 40-second compilation of the nine very brief clips in a video featuring a series of rotating 3D shapes for others who are not registered with WAX so that they could get a sense of what was going on. “The NEW #Slipknot music is coming…,” it said portentously.
The band had been teasing the fact that new music was imminent for a few weeks before the launch of the NFT site, hinting that the album was entering the final stages of completion.
They had also announced some tour dates that begin in July 2022, suggesting an album potentially scheduled for early summer next year.
It is not clear just how NFT purchases fit into it all: if fans can “buy” an early version of the music as an NFT; if they will be creating specific NFTs that fit into the wider campaign; if there will be a mixing of the virtual and the real world in the NFT offerings; and so on.
Perhaps this audio teaser site is a way – in effect operating as a non-fungible mailing list – to drive fans to sign up now for a WAX wallet so that, when the NFTs eventually go on sale, they can drive as many purchases as possible.
Or maybe it’s all a red herring and they are just playing around with the aesthetics of NFTs to give the campaign a contemporary sheen.
It will, we presume, all become clear as the weeks progress. But we are hoping there will not be an NFT version of the dead crow they used to keep in a jar and open on stage so that they could vomit on cue.
No one – and we mean no one – either wants or needs a reminder (non-fungible or otherwise) of that.
