Teaser videos + YouTube channels: Caliban

Good example here of how the very concept of music video is evolving in the face of the challenges and opportunites thrown up by digitisation and new media.

The band Caliban (described as 'deathcore'), signed to US label Roadrunner Records (former Indie, now a subsidiary of WMG [Warner Music Group], one of the music industry monopolist leviathans], have made good use of YouTube and social media, using 'teaser videos' and TV-style vodcasts, trailed through mainstream media but also MySpace, Facebook etc, to publicise their tours as much as their album releases - which neatly sums up the shift in focus away from pushing record sales to flogging tickets (in the expectation that will also then generate merchandise and some back catalogue sales) for concerts.
Metal Hammer featured the band's 'teaser video' for their upcoming tour thus:

Caliban To Cover Rammstein And More

terrybezer / News, Uncategorized / 01/04/2011 14:58pm

Find out what German metalcore bruisers, Caliban, will be covering on their upcoming ‘Coverfield EP’ and get a teaser video inside.

Caliban will be releasing a cover EP titled ‘Coverfield’ that will feature the following tracks:

01 – “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” (Type O Negative cover)

...

[The vid was embedded on the page; interestingly, the band - or their management - disabled embedding, compelling viewers to watch it on YouTube and be exposed to the suggested links featuring more of their YouTube uploads. Watch the teaser vid here]

They also created a trailer for their previous tour:


Here's CALIBAN TV - Episode 11 Part 3 - Summer Festivals - much of the footage is simple enough handheld material BUT there are slick, professional production values, even down to the cliched but appropriate for the target audience use of a curvaceous, leather-clad blonde female presenter. Episodes aren't brief affairs either - episode 11, taken in combination, would exceed half an hour. This points the way to the music vid being just 1 part of a multimedia mix, including blogs, using social media for viral marketing, behind-the-scenes footage, and TV-style vodcasts or webisodes creating motivation to subscribe to a channel ... which in turn acts as advertising for that channel to generate more hits.

The 1st part, noticeably, has been blocked by WMG/EMI - the music monopolists are so vast in scale they don't even trouble themselves to support their own acts!!!

Here's the band's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Calibanofficial