Releasing An Album On Dead Formats

It's been quit the thing to do in recent years to release an album on a format that was dead and gone. For a while that was vinyl, then 8-track was the thing to do. No one would be able to play it, but it was good for the PR value.

But how about release an album in just about every format ever used? That's what British musician Trevor Jackson did with his new Format album, making it available in no less than 12 different delivery formats.

Format is available in three sizes of vinyl (12, 10 and 7 inch), CD and mini-CD, reel to reel, USB stick, cassette, VHS, MiniDisc, DAT and 8 track. If none of those work for you, it'll also be available digitally in March.

It'll be interesting to see how many of each format is actually sold (my bet is that VHS and DAT will be the least), but it will be even more interesting to find out just how many of those buyers actually played the thing.

The album is being released by Jackson's label The Vinyl Factory, and actually doesn't have any new material, since it's made up of remastered and re-edited tracks from his previous records.

This might seem like just a PR stunt, but it got us talking about it, so it worked. That said, it still has a way to go to compete with OK Go's DNA album, which was literally released as organic DNA.

The Payout From A Viral Video

As mentioned several times previously on this blog, a viral video on YouTube can pay huge dividends to an artist's popularity, but doesn't necessarily add too much to his pocketbook in the grand scheme of things.

Take Psy's "Gangnam Style," for instance. With over 1.2 billion views, he managed to make about $8.6 million from YouTube, a nice chunk of change to be sure, but it seems way low considering the massive world-wide coverage. Of course, Psy made his big dough from personal appearances and pistachio nut commercials afterwards, which made the money from YouTube look like just a drop in the bucket.

Here's a great infographic that outlines the money made by the 30 most watched music videos, as well as some general rules on what it takes to go viral. It also takes a look at OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" and the massive effort it took to produce.

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