Legal P2P music site Rhapsody announced plans to reach out to music consumers using exclusive video footages of their favorite bands and singers in TV ads following the successful launch of the new Green Day album, “21st Century Breakdown”.
In an interview, Rhapsody label relations General Manager David Krinsky said that the company got hold of the exclusive footage of the band with its featured single “Know Your Enemy”, which they helped to promote by airing advertisements that show Green Day’s music video.
Krinsky said that the rarity of artists filming custom video footages for a certain company made it an instant hit to retailers and other partner companies, which released the song clip in their network simultaneously.
The GM also said that Green Day’s featured single is just the pioneering clip in a series of video advertisement spots that is expected to come out every other month.
Rob Thomas, one of the new artists with new album coming out, will be the next artist that will be released by Rhapsody in one of its ads.
It was learned that Rhapsody, owned by RealNetworks, has forged a $230-million agreement with MTV’s Urge music service to form what is now known as Rhapsody America, which will commit serious advertising airtime for the online music service company including ads on other networks under the MTV title.
Aside from company service advertisements, Rhapsody said that it is aim to capitalize on the deal by monopolizing the content of each artist involved. As to Green Day’s album, the company had the exclusive streaming rights for a period of one week prior to its May 15 release.
The band’s single and album also appeared constantly on partner TV programs and online sites such MTV’s the Leak. Based on records, there are now more than 150 million video viewers and 100, 000 play hits on popular social networking sites MySpace.