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The Wilderness Downtown by The Arcade Fire

With each new piece of technology that comes out we inevitably start hearing about the impending “death” of the music industry. First video was supposed to kill the radio star, and then individual MP3s should have wiped out the album as a cohesive unit. File sharing was supposed to put artists and record labels out of business, and music videos were going to lose their pop culture cachet when MTV ceased playing them. And, all of these gloom-and-doom warnings would have been great to prepare us, except that none of it’s come to pass; video didn’t kill the radio star – it just reinvented the whole concept of one.

While the music industry has been notoriously resistant to change, albums, record labels, artist and, most recently, videos have survived thanks to figuring out new ways to reinvent themselves. Music videos changed the way that people related to songs and opened up a whole new way of promoting musicians. Individual MP3s reinvented the way that artists created albums by forcing them to make sure that each song was good enough to stand on its own. And, instead of putting record labels and artists out of business studies have shown that file sharing dramatically increases music consumption, with even illegal downloaders paying to support the artists they like. And now, the music video is surviving in a post-TRL world by reinventing itself through social media.

Since MTV changed its name from Music Television and stopped playing music videos in 2008, artists have repeatedly tried to revive the music video. Lady Gaga tried to popularize videos by creating an extended version for her song, “Telephone.” Beyonce also attempted to popularize them in her “Single Ladies” music video, and she seemed to have some success when it spawned hundreds of amateur versions online. Beyonce’s engagement with her fans was accidental but it worked to popularize the video so that it’s achieved status as a pop culture reference. However, while Beyonce reaped the benefits of social media and user engagement, she did little to actually court it and the format of the music video itself remained largely unchanged.

Enter, The Arcade Fire and the new video/interactive musical experience “The Wilderness Downtown” for their song “We Used to Wait.” The indie darlings clearly understand their fans’ need to engage since “The Wilderness Downtown” is essentially a music video that has been reinvented to include the viewer/participant from the get-go. The HTML5 experience starts with users going go the “The Wilderness Downtown” page on a Google Chrome browser (Google worked on the project with the band and writer/director Chris Milk) and entering your childhood address. Then, if Google Maps has enough footage of your home, you are pulled into a highly personalized multi-browser music video. As The Arcade Fire nostalgically sings about how quickly life changes, a hooded figure (you) is shown running around your childhood neighborhood. During the experience, you’re given the opportunity to write a postcard to your younger self and whatever you write or draw grows branches. Trees pop up out of nowhere and your postcard and neighborhood literally become “the wilderness downtown.” Then, after the movie ends, the experience continues as you can replay your film, share it and your postcard with others, or even respond to other people’s postcards. So far, The Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown” is currently at number sixteen on the Billboard music chart and has generated a ton of buzz.

The Arcade Fire’s reinvention of the music video via an interactive social media experience is certainly outside the box and groundbreaking when it comes to the music industry and is a great example of how I believe technology will better allow artists to create a closer and more engaging relationship with their fans. In my opinion, the biggest threat to the music industry is not new technologies or illegal downloads, but rather the industry’s resistance to change and their hesitance toward really owning their digital space. Hopefully The Arcade Fire’s critical and commercial successes in these endeavors will prompt more of the industry to start thinking about using new technologies to engage fans more creatively in the future – if not, then the industry really will become obsolete.