This band changed their song titles to promote new release

To promote their comeback in 2020 Swedish indie sensation Bye Bye Bicycle changed the name of all their songs and albums on Spotify. Probably pissing off Spotify in doing so. They are the first band in the world to make this spectacular move.

The Spotify Parenthesis from Milk on Vimeo.

Turning our old songs into ads for the new ones seemed pretty obvious to us. It’s the one thing that made people like us in the past, and hopefully connects them with our new stuff. It’s weird that no one has ever thought about using the song titles on Spotify as a marketing platform before, says lead singer André Vikingsson.

The last release from the band was the album “Nature”, now called “Nature (Of This Parenthesis Is To Inform You That “Specular” Drops Reeeeeal Soon)”, in 2012. In a week when Spotify announced their new plan of giving bands better exposure on the platform if they agreed to get less compensation for their songs Bye Bye Bicycle decided to use the platform to gain publicity of their own.

Connecting our old material with our upcoming release seems like a natural and organic way of announcing our comeback, says Vikingsson. We hope Spotify feel the same way as this ties in to what Daniel Ek was saying earlier this summer about bands needing to creating a story around a release.

By adding a parenthesis to each song title the band reached their core audience of people listening to the band through thousands and thousands of playlists. And had the fans echoing their comeback message on their respective platforms. Creating a reach far superior to that of a regular press release or social campaign. BBB now joins a prominent list of bands that’ve pulled off spectacular album announcements/releases. Specular drops November 6th through Lazy Octopus.

Bye Bye Bicycle joins a prominent list of bands that’ve pulled off spectacular album announcements/releases.

Other spectacular album releases

2007 Radiohead released In Rainbows and let the fans decide what to pay for it.

2007 Nine Inch Nails launched ”Year Zero” with an online game that almost turned into a series on HBO.

2012 The XX teamed up with Microsoft to create a map of how a single song spread virally across the globe.

2014 U2 crashed everyones iPhone…

2014 Wu Tang Clan released only one copy of ”The Wu – Once Upon A Time in the Shaolin” and had it tour museums.

2020 Woodkid launched a alternative reality game to promote the release of ”Goliath”

Credits:

Copywriter: Anders Malm

Art director: Niklas Olovsson

Copywriter: Anders Holmström

Art director: Andreas Bergendahl

Designer: Fanny Öhlund

Project Manager: Gabriella Moberg

Source: Milk

  André Vikingsson, Bye Bye Bicycle, Milk Sweden, Parenthisis