Facing The Music With 30 Seconds To Mars

There’s always a new way to engage with your audience, and putting them on your album cover is a good example of how a simple idea can generate a lot of positive publicity. This is exactly what 30 Seconds to Mars have done with their latest album…

Music Promotion Meets Crowdsourcing

First of all, I have to admit that until this week I had never heard of 30 Seconds to Mars, and even still I have never heard any of their music.

But whether I might like it or not, I am now aware of them simply because I read about their audience engagement techniques on other websites.

Last year, the band held a series of summits where fans were invited to sing on their upcoming album.

I have heard of similar approaches by other artists, but for this to succeed you do need to have a significant fanbase in place already.

The first ‘summit’ was held in Los Angeles, and the response was so positive that they extended the event to eight other cities in Mexico, Canada, the UK, Japan, Australia, Germany, Italy and France – with more fans making submissions from Iran and elsewhere in the world via Twitvid.

Promoting Cover Charges

So fans made their mark on the actual recording, but the band didn’t stop there. Before the release of their album ‘This is War’, they announced that the first 2,000 people to send in photos of themselves (that met a set of criteria) would be featured on the cover of the album itself.

This created a huge buzz, and basically transformed the album into a sort of collectible, almost in the trading card style. This effect was further enhanced by the fact that there were a few celebrity covers thrown into the mix. As an exercise in fan engagement, this is exemplary, but its also a great illustration of the direction that music promotion in 2010 is heading…