One way to discourage music piracy is to use creative marketing strategies to heighten the experience and the enjoyment of acquiring music legally. The Kaiser Chiefs, whose new album The Future Is Medieval was released digitally earlier this month, have done just that.

The band has released the album on an innovative digital platform that allows fans to pick their favourite ten songs from twenty previews available on the band’s website and compile their own track-list. They can also design their own artwork. All for £7.50. And furthermore, there is the option for fans to sell their album from a unique web page and receiving £1 commission for every one sold, and (potentially) earn their £7.50 back, and some. Not surprisingly Kaiser Chiefs singer, Ricky Wilson’s own album selection has proved the most popular, so his profits are being donated to the band’s chosen charity, the Alzheimer’s society.

Because of its uniqueness, this strategy The Future Is Medieval has become an industry talking point and gained much wider media coverage than it might have had it simply been a standard release. The strategy has divided opinion on news sites and across social networking channels, though: Some see the strategy as a distraction from the music itself; Some have questioned the band’s song-quality control; Some, the fact that the album has the potential to be sold twice to hardcore fans who want all 20 songs.

Whatever the opinion, this marketing strategy combined with the release of the band’s video for the first single, news in early June that the band rejected a lyric they asked David Bowie to contribute to a song on the album, and their series of small warm-up gigs for appearances at and Glastonbury, V Festival and the Isle Of Wight Festival, have all combined to create a well planned and well timed marketing campaign to announce to the world that the Kaiser Chiefs are back after a two year hiatus.

Let’s have a look at the effect of all this internet activity on the Musicmetric app.

As you can see from the Twitter Activity graph (above), after nearly six months of gaining an average of approximately 35 Twitter followers a day, there is sudden spike in the number of followers they get on a daily basis. The first is inspired by the video release of the band’s first single from the new album, Little Shocks, on 31st May. The second spike is the day following the release of the album on 4th June.

It’s not clear what came first: the marketing concept or the 20 songs – I do wonder – but Kaiser Chief’s do seem to genuinely want to help to find to revitalise the record industry. Their lead singer, Ricky Wilson, describes the band’s inspiration for the release: “No one invests much in buying a record anymore, so we had to find a way for people to have an emotional attachment to it. You can ignore what’s happening with the music industry or you can do something about it. Something has to change”

Something has to change, indeed, and it’s ideas such as this, made technically possible by interactive production company Special Moves, that will hopefully inspire others to experiment with creative release strategies to help regenerate music sales.

Toby Burton