Daft Punk Didn't "Get Lucky" When It Created This Summer's Biggest Hit
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
Yeah, that's BS, Daft Punk are regarded as the kings of commercial dance music. You don't have to be into them (I'm not, though I too like their new work) to recognize this and respect them for it. The writer omits to mention that DP also scored (and appeared in) the long-awaited and heavily-promoted Tron: Legacy film released in 2010.
The mystery of it — What did it mean? Was Daft Punk announcing a new song? A new album? Something else?—attracted millions to the site on the first day.
...which should have been a clue to their pre-existing popularity. The marketing campaign for the album was very conventional, indeed old-fashioned; straight-up saturation through old media channels like flyposters, billboards and TV. But rather than being a throwback to the 60s or 70s, this is how (mainstream) music used to be marketed up to the 00s, when file-sharing, recession and war sent the industry into a general funk.
Part of the signaling here is to position DP as a big, established act - a classic example of 'the medium is the message.' Another part is that the band members have never been into personal publicity, so TV interviews are not gong to happen and they're not especially video-oriented either.
For a less well-known act also doing a 'comeback' release but taking a much more viral approach, check out Warp Records' low-key campaign for the new Boards of Canada album, which started with a few records placed and then found by customers in record stores on 'Record Store Day' and used cryptic clues hidden in places like web page headers to guide fans to an un-advertised website, culminating in a livestream of the whole album on YouTube. See for details: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1560063/boards-of-can...
I think you're both right. Somewhere between Homework and Discovery is where I'd say that Daft Punk turned from French house into pop. Basically the release of Homework in 1997 on Virgin was the beginning of the end. I remember it being somewhat strange that Da Funk was getting radio play in anticipation of the album, but that track still isn't pop music, and neither is the B-side Musique.
Bangalter had the Roule label as a side project and Guy-Manuel had Crydamoure. The release of Stardust (i.e. Music Sounds Better With You) on Roule by Bangalter (and Alan Braxe) in June 1998 turned into a massive crossover hit. This was probably what pushed them into pop territory more than anything else. The only release by Bangalter on Roule to follow was Trax On Da Rocks Vol. 2, and it's definitely house music. Guy-Manuel was releasing stuff as The Knight Club on Crydamoure until 2002, but for many people the house party stopped when Bangalter stopped.
Or do you really believe that Homework was a pop music album? This is Rollin' & Scratchin', for example:
What? I'm not sure if this is just a US perspective but Daft Punk are very well known this side of the Atlantic (Ireland/UK).
While a fan of their stuff, I actually hate "Get Lucky"...
http://www.billboard.com/artist/300085/daft-punk/chart?sort=...
And even more for their albums in their genre
http://www.billboard.com/artist/300085/daft-punk/chart?f=322...
I also would have liked Get Lucky to have more of Daft Punk in it. As it is, I can only tell it is a DP song the last half minute of so when the vocoder section starts.
I'm not sure of their actual commercial performance, but their cultural impact is widespread in the US. To the Pitchfork/Coachella crowd they're living legends and RAM was perhaps the most anticipated album this year.
"This video contains content from WMG, SME, Dance all Day, CD Baby, Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that."
Not the best quality, but it works.
Interstella 5555 was co-produced by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato, Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999...), by the way, who Daft Punk were huge fans of as children. Need I say any more?
I guess you'll just have to take it with a grain of salt.
In theory yes, but it happens more often than you'd think. A lot of editors cut to music - if the score isn't available, they'll often cut to some classical piece that can be freely used as a basis for the score without copyright worries. It's an easy way of making sure your edit has rhythm.
I know and love Daft Punk as well, but by these and other commercial objective measures they are obscure. Daft Punk are famous in some circles, and unknown in others. In particular, Get Lucky has achieved chart success previously unknown to Daft Punk, which is interesting and makes one wonder how they broke through this time and not before.
By changing their sound and style.
There was a pretty nice fervor surrounding their involvement in the Tron soundtrack as it was their first new work in 5 years. It went gold and peaked at number 4 in the billboard charts - not the dance charts, not soundtrack, the billboard 200. And that was just a soundtrack.
Stronger was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 - it features a Daft Punk sample; they were even in the single's music video.
They may not be the hottest act globally, but they are a well established band that transcended its own subculture.
"second rank" might be more fitting.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_%28Daft_Punk_s...
[2] http://www.nme.com/list/150-best-tracks-of-the-past-15-years...
The success of this single is not due to the marketing or "mystery" this article suggests. The success of this single is due to the contributions of legendary recording artist AND producer Nile Rodgers, who has written dozens of break out singles including:
Good Times - Chic
We are Family - Sister Sledge
Let's Dance - David Bowie
Material Girl - Madonna
If you listen to this album, it does not have hit songs except for Get lucky. Almost all marketing focused on this single, because it was the only good track.
Learn more about Nile Rodgers Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGUAiAxpu3E
Basically it was Bowie looking to get a mainstream hit. Which he did, and the Serious Moonlight tour ended up far larger than expected.
Here, the journalist writes that "[Daft Punk] opted for their own small-scale marketing strategy", having billboards popping up all over the world and TV spots doesn't sound at all like a small-scale operation to me, just creative. I assume that a lot of recording artists out there would love to have access to such small-scale marketing strategy.
But that's just me, and what do I know?
I think the journalist means it's small compared to the huge marketing operation a record label would usually put in place for this kind of release.
In summary, musicians make music "listenable"- but marketers make music "discoverable".
That's really not saying much because most of the tracks are intentionally constructed to be unfriendly to Top 40 radio; e.g. the end of Contact.
"The success of this single is due to the contributions of legendary recording artist AND producer Nile Rodgers"
Nile Rodgers is a legendary producer but Get Lucky was produced by Daft Punk like every other track on RAM. How confident in their production are they? They used legendary producer Giorgio Moroder only for his (non-musical) vocals. The whole album would have come off as a huge act of hubris if it came out and only had one good track.
"it was the only good track."
Opinions are like children -- we often like our own more than other people's. Instant Crush and Contact are great tracks. Better than Get Lucky? I don't know how you graph track quality. The entire album is good though.
Lose Yourself to Dance is one of the weaker songs on the album but more radio friendly and so I think it's going to be the second single which is a disappointment because it isn't very good next to Get Lucky.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/random-access-memor...
And they tell some of the rest of it:
"The thing we can ask ourselves at some point is like: We're making music for 20 years. How many bands and acts do you have that are still making good music after 20 years? It always sucks - almost always, you know?"
Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo concluded: "So our new album is supposed to really suck." http://www.mtv.co.uk/news/daft-punk/381428-daft-punk-new-alb...
When it comes down to it they squandered amazing talent like Julian Casablancas, Pharell and Nile Rodgers to give history lessons on electronic music. The album would have been better if it had been released as a mixtape with no marketing at all.
I expect that in a couple of years, people who obsessively listened to this album in an analytic manner will be producing the chart-topping hits.
You hire Nile Rodgers to help write a disco tune and this is what you get. A very catchy disco tune.
I thought this article was going to be how Daft Punk assembled their music, not their social media marketing strategy.
The article would claim the success of the songs is just because of their marketing effort after they were produced, but this isn't quite the case. The success for Daft Punk's product (its music) starts where the success for everything starts - baked into the product itself.
The song is downright catchy, and Daft Punk knows that (although, myself I rather detest the song). But more importantly their songs have been catchy and interesting from the beginning, and they were able to build up a fan base.
It's important to note in a case like this that Daft Punk has a cult following. Calling them an "unknown" band is like calling Radiohead unknown - they're only really unknown if you're completely detached from the music world, and even then you would still recognize their music. If you're an unknown band and you post a picture of your album cover online nobody would care, and carrying around an album in a titanium case would feel very gimmicky. But people have been waiting for a new Daft Punk album for some time, and the possibility of them releasing one is instantly news.
The marketing was, for Daft Punk's situation, spot on. They got word out about their song and album in a way that didn't feel like marketing. But this was really only possible because they have a huge following and have gained traction from their product in the past.
Interesting sidenote - I just read that Lady Gaga is trying out the whole "mysterious" thing for a huge fanbase for herself - she just made her "Twitter avatar the egg and left the message This interface has been shutdown temporarily. Please check back for updates." It's like she's rebranding herself publicly, and I'm willing to bet this will cause quite a stir.
It was expected that Random Access Memories was going to be one of the bigest records released this year.
Is Business Week really that out of touch?
Two or three days before the release of the album those posters popped up all over Hamburg. I saw them at least twice on my way to work and the city. Just the helmets, album name, record label. Very unlike all the other ads (even those for music, usually concerts, with big bold letters, many colours) you tend to see in those spaces. I’m fairly certain that those posters made me preorder the album and wait until midnight to download it – listening to the album stream they offered while waiting for the download – instead of buying in in a few months (maybe for a bit less money).
I’m not the biggest Daft Punk fan and I’m usually not waiting for new stuff to be released. Usually I only notice that a few months later. Daft Punk made me actually anticipate something and that was really nice (plus, the album kicks all kinds of ass – undoubtedly their best work since Discovery, probably even surpassing that).
Obviously the strategy worked fantastically well and I'm not taking anything away from that. I just think it's important to point it it's unlikely this would work for anyone else. In fact it probably wouldn't even work for them a second time.
a) Overreacting to disco in the past like "Disco Demolition Night" event. b) The progression from Disco to Eurodisco to Eurodance and other Hi-NRG styles in Europe.
Is that possible?
In either case, if the boys keep producing good music and wearing those helmets, they will never sound or look old.
The eschewed today's marketing methods for yesterdays, no digitally distributed copies to music influencers, instead they sat down and let them hear it in person a couple times.
This got listeners onto iTunes, where Apple put up a pre-sale button. Music industry convention is that pre-sales count towards 1st week sales. The end result is artificially high opening week sales, which further builds the buzz.
I personally think this album helped the reluctant labels signup for iTunes Radio, since labels were able to see free streaming can convert into digital purchases.
Also, Daft Punk did place an album in the Top 50 (Albums often rate higher than singles in some genres).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NV6Rdv1a3I
At least it won't get as overplayed as Music Sounds Better With You did/does, which is a pretty good song the first time you hear it, and for which there was truly explosive demand out of the gate.
Live PA stylie
It has a blend of smooth rock, jazz and old-school disco more than electronica.
Also, it's funny you bring up Katy Perry, when "Last Friday Night" and "Teenage Dream" sound like songs from Discovery that she happened to sing over.