Since the life of bands, DJs and everyone elso who is producing music became much harder due to the music industry blindness, the artists have to watch out for newer ways to avoid hearing record companies say “You can’t do that. Too expensive.” or “This won’t sell!”.
The one-year deal with one of my favorite DJ teams and killer tune producers Groove Armada (“shaking that ass”, “purple haze”) can open image doors to the 21 to 30 year old party audience and dance music interested consumers. How does the music & brand mix look like. The DJ team will be available for the exclusive Bacardi B-Live concerts in cities like Athen and the home of the music conference Miami. They’ll also do the advertising music for global ad campaigns as well as radio shows (no station announced yet) and television documentaries around the act. And I guess we can expect some viral videos on YouTube, too. Followed by downloadable songs on Napster and iTunes.
Good news for other artists thinking about to follow the Groove Armada-example: The band keeps the full copyright of their music.
Bacardi recognized (next to McDonalds, Jägermeister, Smirnoff and a few other brands) that the music industry crisis can be a huge chance to use tunes and their heavy protagonists as brand ambassadors. May the consumer industry be the new record label? Let’s see if brands like Bacardi will break or rape this opportunity! From my perspective the colabo looks like a win-win for both parties (only the music 1.0 record labels might be the loser)… Can’t wait for your comments and thoughts on this!

Source: Wall Street Journal, June, 27th 2008; investigations; Euro RSCG
More on Beyond Madison Avenue