The days of sitting passively watching a music video could soon be a thing of the past as a growing number of artists adopt an interactive approach to showcasing their songs.
Bombay Bicycle Club are among a small but growing number of groups making interactive music videos, a relatively recent phenomenon.
Their video for new single Carry Me allows users to take over and customise their visual experience by controlling what the group do.
“The technology perfectly matched what we were doing with other areas of the album and it relates to the music as well,” the band said.
Ste Thompson, one of the directors behind the video made by Powster, explained how it all works.
“What the interactive music video does is take multiple frames and allow users to interact with them at any point throughout the whole sequence.”
“You can manipulate the band like stop-motion puppets so you can actually control them to move their bodies while they are drumming to the beat.”
Fans can interact with the band
“They are constantly lip-synching and drumming but you can move them while they are doing that – it’s an experience that people haven’t felt before but the interaction you get is something unique and different and pretty much they are like puppets in your hand.”
And Bombay Bicycle Club are not the only artists trying to find new ways of connecting to fans online. Arcade Fire’s interactive We Used To Wait music video uses Google Maps, whereas the band’s Sprawl II video allows viewers to direct the content with a webcam or mouse.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers also embraced an interactive format for their Look Around music video, where a viewer can click and drag the cursor from room to room to view the antics of any given band member.
The technique is helping established artists to find new ways to build their audiences digitally, which has become a priority as album sales fall.
For Island Records, interactive videos like Bombay Bicycle Club’s are delivering results.
Guillermo Ramos, Senior Product Manager at the label said: “The video went viral, we achieved half a million plays in a couple of weeks, really exciting. The fans talked about it continuously and shared it a lot.”
“Digital is not something that’s in one office at the end of a corridor, digital is a part of every day for every label, I’m sure.”
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