Complementary Experiences - Music Fights Back

Boing Boing had a really interesting tidbit about Slacker.com creating a streaming playlist of punk songs that go along with the current Spin magazine's October issue, "1977: The Year Punk Exploded!" While it supposdly "consists of handpicked songs representing the most influential punk music spanning three decades", it is designated as the musical counterpart to the punk rock articles.

History lessons aside in great tunage, this is a great idea and one that seems to be emerging in the world of music. I believe music has really lost its sense of intimacy as we continue in this digital age. Everyone can download songs, and while that encourages diversity, it eliminated the dreamlike sequence we had when we listened to a CD from start to finish. Gone are the B-side tracks, and the (often-annoying) skits seemed to have lost their relevance as well. All of those though bite at the creative genius musicians used to harness, as well as how consumers immerse themselves in the music.

Gareth has a nice thread going about Radiohead's new model system which lets people choose the scale of content you want. All of this circumvents the iTunes model as well.

I'm very proud to see how the music industry is seeming to swing back with these creative marketing and alternative models. While sales are plummeting due to digital, its nice to see it not completely roll over. What really brings me in is how this plays into complementariness. (if thats even a word). I'm beginning to feel that brand experiences are truly multi-sensory or at least should be. I also think that different brands can carry conversations between each other of these sorts as well. Music is starting to play with things that capture consumers outside of the listening experience. The Slacker playlist brings music to a publication in a specific way that complements to create the full/ aka full experience(music publication + music for that publication =aural bliss). Thats what people are reading the magazine for anyways.

Agencies keep wanting to look at what consumers doing and ideate off of that versus creative executions that often come off as a bit of announcements, shouting matches and never really in synch with consumer behavior in the first place. We need more things like this, that create fuller, richer, deeper experiences based on what current consumer behavior is doing. The Slacker/Spin playlist is an excellent idea because it incorporates a passion with a behavior in a complimentary way to create a total branded experience. Radiohead are using consumer involvement with a passion to create an experience as total (or minimal) as the consumer wants it. Brilliant use of consumer integration.

Will more brands seek complementary ideas that create total experiences? Targeting the senses is certainly one way for a singular brand. Using passions and technology are another. Inter-branded is one of the more intriguing, and im hopeful we can see that in the future.

Music is an interesting field which has been forced to really look at itself and undergo a revinvention of sorts with the digital dawn. Music is forever and I for one, am excited about Music 2.0.


PunkExplosion

[Ed. Note] - The Seminal tackles this too, more eloquently