With over ten million units sold, Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch have become new tools for music promotion, with Snow Patrol and Pink in the vanguard of artists introducing promo applications for the devices through the App Store this week.
The news confirms our September 1 report that Snow Patrol and Apple have been working together to develop an interactive iPhone application to promote the band’s new album, ‘A Hundred Million Suns’ (available now).
The App is available for free download and as predicted offers a ton of interesting content, including art, lyrics and three video reports explaining the making of the album.
“Experience album artwork like never before with Snow Patrol’s ‘A Hundred Million Suns’ interactive booklet. Navigate your way through the origami star field featured in the artwork for the album. Unlock exclusive content by unfolding various origami stars through the touch screen,” the App Store listing states.
Pink has introduced a similar app, ‘P!nk’s Funhouse’, which includes 30-second song previews, news, photos and other bits and pieces to consolidate the artist’s relationship with her fans.
There’s a host of interesting activity in this space right now – Radiohead linking with iTunes to run a remixing competition, and Nine Inch Nails move to introduce a special version of Tap Tap Revenge including tracks from that band all underline the personal nature of music promotion using the iPhone.
Given the nature of creativity, it would be no surprise to see creative artists embracing the Apple devices for future artistic expression. It’s not hard to imagine artists introducing applications that enable access to all existing and future music from the band on a subscription basis, for example.
We also think these applications could be developed to be complete collections of music, art, images and photographs for biographic accounts of the work of artists, musicians and other notables. In a sense, the application becomes its own work of art. (We’d love to see a Psychic TV retrospective in the form of an iPhone app, for example).
Right now, though, we have Snow Patrol, and Pink.
October 29th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I think iphone is the best gadget ever made in the history of gadgets
http://iphone-pink.com
October 30th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
[...] NYHET: Bandet Snow Patrol er ute med sitt nye album ‘A Hundred Million Suns’, og har samarbeidet med Apple om å lage interaktivt innhold som erstatning for det fysiske CD-coveret. Dette inkluderer både en PDF-Booklet og også en gratis iPhone-applikasjon. Apple fortsetter å utforske nytt territorium i forsøket på å berike de digitale mediene. Man vil kanskje ikke sørge over tapet av den fysiske CD’en (muligens i motsetning til en vinyl-LP), men det er noe eget med å ha et CD-cover i hendene, og kunne ha cover-art og også tekster tilgjengelig i et medfølgende hefte. Apple har en stund samarbeidet med enkelte artister om å lage digitale versjoner av dette, i iTunes Store kalt Booklets. Og med SnowPatrols nye album gikk man så lang som faktisk å lansere en egen iPhone / iPod Touch-applikasjon som inneholder interaktiv cover art, sangtekster og video-klipp. SnowPatrol-programmet for iPhone kan lastes ned gratis her. Via DistortedLoop [...]
November 8th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
[...] a wave of iPhone applications from musicians promoting new albums, now Fall Out Boy has joined Snow Patrol, Pink, David Cook and the Nine Inch Nails in making a music-focused pitch at fans using the Apple [...]
November 13th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
[...] Snow Patrol’s iPhone application generated 30,000 downloads during its first week of release, a senior executive from the band’s label has revealed. [...]