EDIT: KO KO changed their name to Pacific Air, and now only have Float available on their SoundCloud as of 10/10/12. Good change, because it was impossible to Google anything about them.
Reminds me of: Miike Snow, Bombay Bicycle Club?, the soundtrack to a meaningful moment in Gossip Girl.
KO KO is a neat little pop outfit from Los Angeles, I believe. There isn’t that much information available on them that isn’t just from other blogs, so I’ll cut to the tunes. They’re perfect for spring. Delightfully poppy, full, atmospheric jams with heavy drum backing. These 3 are from their first EP, Float.
Got three fantastic remixes of some classics for your party pleasures this weekend – The Clash, Kool & the Gang, and Talking Heads. There are some added beats’n'bass. Some choppin’. Quite a bit of filtering thrown onto the Get Down remix. Pretty much making them modern-day-dancefloor ready. Throw them on, get down on it, enjoy, etc.
The Clash – Rock the Casbah (Funkagenda Remix)
Kool & the Gang – Get Down (Alex Louvré Edit)
Talking Heads – Girlfriend is Better (Bit Funk Edit)
Let me preface this post by saying that I know there are probably lots of business dealingy, contracty, label signingy, financially focused reasons for the content of Spotify’s ads. I also realize that whining about commercials on a free, instant, multi-million track library is unbearably #firstworldproblems, etc. But I’m looking at this as an advertising enthusiast, as a young strategist who thinks that advertising has an incredible opportunity to give back to consumers while also serving it’s own interests. That being said… Spotify!
I got on the bandwagon. This post won’t be about how apparently it’s pretty much exactly the same as other music services, yet somehow advertised themselves to be a revolution… no, right now I’m thinking about their ads. Now, I had originally written this before I signed up for the premium account. I saw the value in it (especially offline listening with the iPhone app) and absolutely detested the ads.
The ads. Oh… the ads.
Two anecdotes about their wonderful ads.
I’m sitting there, listening to some Janelle Monae, and really diggin’ it. Then, this song starts playing. A great song. A ‘start nodding your head and singing along even though you haven’t heard it before’ song. One I’d awkwardly sidle up to the register and ask the employee of whatever store I was in what track was playing kind of song. This song.
Well, it pretty well fit with what I was listening to. I loved the sample it gave me, then the lead singer told me to listen to his album on Spotify. I did. Great job, Spotify!
Now, technically, this ad played its part – upped their click throughs, got an album listen. And they won’t know it, but I’ll definitely go to their concert when they swing through. Deeper, though. It provided a real benefit. It gave me something I love – I got to discover a new summer jam. More: I get to tell my friends, I get to use it to soundtrack a Friday night gathering. All this incredible, deep benefit to their audience, from some banner ad. Phenomenal.
Now, the second anecdote: I’m listening to the ‘progressive breaks’ of Way Out West, revisiting some old classics, and really getting into the groove of things.
(might want to skip about halfway through to get a feel. Needless to say, I was zonin’).
Then, BAM! I’m listening to Bob Marley! The tasty licks of The Doors!
Like, holy shit! They’ve got Bob Marley on this thing? I finally have a way to listen to some classic Doors albums?
I turned off the sound, turned it back on again because I realized that if you turn the sound too low the commercial pauses (clever girl, spotify) and sat at my computer, pausing all work, to think about how stupid it is to remind me that Aretha Franklin has a greatest hits album.
Then I realized something about this volume trick they did: it creates an us vs. them mentality. It’s saying “you wanted to skip the commercial? Like you do on every other medium? Too bad, you will sit here and listen to this odd-voiced man tell you to upgrade to spotify premium.” It let’s the user know that this is Advertising: one-way, business interested, tell you what to do advertising that doesn’t care what the customer feels. It makes it that unpleasant time-placeholder, only there because that’s the way advertising works – it interrupts those free things you love.
What irks me is that there’s so much opportunity. I’m pretty confident that Spotify could somehow find out more about me. Digital footprints and all that (I mean, it connects to your Facebook! Use your ‘liked’ bands, look for local bands through your location… something!). Aside from that, they could’ve asked: what music do you like? Where are you located? Choose some genres, some decades you’d like your ads to focus on. Hell, talk to Hypem.com, Pandora, get some targeting going on.
So why not give links to concerts (like iConcertCal? Target the ads to genres, playlists, labels, you might like? Give back to your supporters, start a dialogue with them, make it a two-way conversation. Hell, disguise it: if it’s so valuable to the consumer that we barely recognize we’re being advertised to, I sure won’t care about its intent either way.
The point of all that would be to give some BACK to the customer. Make the ads provide that benefit that I randomly happened upon with Fitz and the Tantrums. Now that’d be a way to make it a real money grabber.
Yesterday I was going through the ticket buying process (something I’ve been doing much more of since moving back to Portland) and once again was faced with a 30% increase in cost from initial price to checkout, all through fees. On a separate note, I went to a concert last week and once again felt like that experience immediately became a set-in-stone thing of the past.
What this resulted in was a brief that I made for fun last night (yeah… really). Comments welcome: I put it together somewhat quickly, and am still searching to see if there’s a site that already has filled this niche. And the SMIT needs work, but hopefully it gets the point across.
Also, stay tuned for a multi-part walkthrough of a pretty cool campaign. Been working on it on and off for awhile, and it’s just about ready.
These are songs that have that cinematic feel. They have the attitude that can carry a commercial. Whether it be a badass Coen brothers movie (Lykke Li?), the newest indie production about a young man returning home and finding himself, or something (Lookin’ at you, Family of the Year and Local Natives), I think these songs would be great in trailers.
