Cheat the ‘tube

How to make your YouTube virals as successful as possible.

The Secret Strategies behind many ‘Viral’ videos, by Dan Akerman Greenberg, via TechCrunch

NB. Widely discredited. If you want to run a poorly recognised, dangerously false campaign, read Akerman and get to work. You’ll be kissing goodbye to clients faster than you can say ’breach of trust’.  

More digital music shenanigans

Everyone’s having a bit of a play with the digital distribution toys. Radiohead’s ‘pay what you want‘ ploy got a positive response - paidcontent has noted thirty-eight percent of those who downloaded the title indeed chose to pay something, while 62 percent kept their change in their pocket; Madonna’s recognised the changing climate of the record industry and jumped ship from Warner, and more than ever, Record lables are trying to claw back revenue with digital initiatives.

Now DaftPunk has produced an really interesting marketing widget for thei next launch. From Mashable… 

Daft Punk Promotes New Album With A Widget

October 25, 2007 — 03:06 AM PDT — by Stan Schroeder — Share This

Daft Punk, the French electronic duo known for making music that scares your cat and using robots for live shows, are being hip again. This time, they’ve decided to promote their new live album, Alive, with an embeddable widget, which allows visitors to listen to previews of new tracks, buy the single, read Daft Punk’s biography, read the newsletter, and see a photo gallery of the band.

The widget below is yet another proof that “standard” promotional tools are giving way to web based promotion and social networking. And, since the creation of such a widget costs next to nothing, we expect to see more and more bands take this route and move much of their marketing activities online.