kidmercury

The band The Outs of Outland is, in my opinion, a great case study in what the future of music (and by extension, most if not all other forms of digital media) looks like. Here's why:

1. The primary means The Outs have marketed themselves is through their YouTube channel. Like the rock stars of the future, they got their start as bedroom rock stars.
2. Like most bedroom rock stars, The Outs obtained their notoriety by performing cover songs. Specifically, they did covers of Oasis.
3. As part of the marketing efforts behind Oasis' new album, Dig Out Your Soul, Oasis launched a cover contest -- i.e. a contest to see who can do the best cover version of one of the new songs on their album. The Outs won the contest with their cover of "Bag It Up." Below is a video of their winning performance. Oasis' guitarist and principle songwriter, Noel Gallagher, said The Outs won the contest because they "captured the spirit of the song."


4. Unsurprisingly, after they were declared winners and praised by Noel himself, The Outs popularity soared (at least relative to what it was before). They're even being imported into the Kid Mercury Music Channel here on our site! That's how you know they've made it!

5. On the heels of their newfound popularity, they've recently released an EP entitled Definitely Pleasing -- an obvious reference to Oasis' debut album, Definitely Maybe. The tracks for the EP were all uploaded to YouTube. Below is my favorite song off the EP, "Bright New Rainy Day."


Take Home Points

Here are the key observations, in my opinion:

1. By covering Oasis songs, styling themselves the way Oasis does, and writing original songs that are pretty Oasis-esque, they are more or less totally leeching off the Oasis brand. The old school mentality is to say, "Hey! Those people are thieves! Shut them down!" This is what that f'ing douche bag Prince does, like when that little bitch made YouTube take down my cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U" (although that song was popularized by Sinead O'Connor's brilliant interpretation it was originally written by Prince....although consider yourself lucky if you never heard the original by Prince. My ears are still traumatized by that experience). I should totally write a song dissing Prince. LOL, you know he'd try to get YouTube to take it down due to slander or something like that. Anyway, the new school approach -- the approach of almighty kings, not lowly princes -- will be to seek to promote bands that leverage one's brand. For instance, given that Noel has already endorsed this band, he could easily sign them to his record label, promote them that way, and profit from the fact that this band has leveraged the Oasis brand (i.e. brand hijacking). We've talked about this concept before, when we've discussed how the future of music involves bands turning themselves into labels by promoting artists from within their community, something they can easily do via cover contests/American Idol type games. Revenue models in such scenarios will likely involve 360 deals, as such deals are necessary as publishing rights become commoditized and value shifts to the brand of the musician.

2. The Outs have released their music for free on YouTube. Granted, they are probably looking forward to selling copies and that will probably be their primary source of revenue, and they will probably be quite desperate for revenue. But this is a nice step. Slowly but surely, we are moving towards free music, and it is the artists of the future -- the ones outside of the established corporate system, the bedroom rock stars -- that are most likely to take us there (this is a classic example of "underdog's advantage" -- scenarios where the underdog is actually better positioned than market incumbents. Business strategies will know this as disruptive theory -- see our archive on disruption).