MIT's radio show French Toast has been playing other tracks from the album, not as edgy as their older stuff but quite good. Get Lucky is catchy but a little repetitive.
I had the opposite reaction. I quite like Get Lucky, but the other songs from the album felt really bland without anything that made them memorable. Not even worth pirating... No offense.
I also would have liked Get Lucky to have more of Daft Punk in it. As it is, I can only tell it is a DP song the last half minute of so when the vocoder section starts.
It appears to be a concept album about humans reaching their full potential (the stars) and is uplifting in general if not edgy. I compare it to Flaming Lips album Yoshimi. Even in Get Lucky there is a double meaning of up all night working on something and up all night to party, both equally valid.
I like it a bit better, it's still very repetitive and the beat just isn't that great to me. I like his voice better and the song is better when you remove daft punk from the equation oddly. I think that's why my stomach turned at the song it's not what I expect/want out of daft punk. Same problem w/ Around the world.
It's not a US perspective, that journalist is just massively out of touch.
I'm not sure of their actual commercial performance, but their cultural impact is widespread in the US. To the Pitchfork/Coachella crowd they're living legends and RAM was perhaps the most anticipated album this year.
"This video contains content from WMG, SME, Dance all Day, CD Baby, Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that."
Interstella 5555 was co-produced by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato, Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999...), by the way, who Daft Punk were huge fans of as children. Need I say any more?
I'm not sure if you are saying that just because or because you know that what you say is actually true. Tron: Legacy was actually the first movie where the soundtrack was made before the film was finished, and the film was actually edited to fit the music (all other movies are scored after the final edit and the music is fit to the film).
(all other movies are scored after the final edit and the music is fit to the film)
In theory yes, but it happens more often than you'd think. A lot of editors cut to music - if the score isn't available, they'll often cut to some classical piece that can be freely used as a basis for the score without copyright worries. It's an easy way of making sure your edit has rhythm.
My college roommate and I were definitely jamming to Homework in 1998 or so. Around the World was a huge hit in the late 90's and people have been raving about their live shows at Coachella 2006 and the Alive 2007 tour forever. The new album and live performances have been highly anticipated for a long time.
The text following your quote substantiates their claim, you should respond to it: "their biggest previous single, 2000’s One More Time, peaked at No. 61 on the Billboard chart in the U.S., and they had limited Internet presence and no live performances in 2013"
I know and love Daft Punk as well, but by these and other commercial objective measures they are obscure. Daft Punk are famous in some circles, and unknown in others. In particular, Get Lucky has achieved chart success previously unknown to Daft Punk, which is interesting and makes one wonder how they broke through this time and not before.
Operative word being 'were'. I lived through Discovery coming out in the club world back then. What's happened since has been a slow yet steady growth in their popularity/mythology. My parents know who they are now.
There was a pretty nice fervor surrounding their involvement in the Tron soundtrack as it was their first new work in 5 years. It went gold and peaked at number 4 in the billboard charts - not the dance charts, not soundtrack, the billboard 200. And that was just a soundtrack.
+1. Kanye West sampling them on a single a while ago helped a lot too to introduce them to millions of people. If anything their success proves that easy access to new music helps the cream rise to the top.
The US is way more into dance music now than they were 10 or 20 years ago when Europe etc. were quite into it. Daft Punk are predominantly known for dance music, so this album got more interest from US music publications etc. Of course, this album is the least “dancey” they’ve made, and heh, no doubt that helped!
They are popular in Canada and the US by anyone who was around and listening to music in the 90s -;) Back in '97 they had the massive hit, "Around the World" [1], NME placed it at number 21 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years" [2]. Here's the Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9MszVE7aR4
Yeah that journalist is just out of touch. I'm not a fan of them but calling them obscure is like calling Radiohead obscure just because they haven't released an album in a while. And the success was pretty much assured, most fans have been dying for a new album. So the hype was already off the charts.
As always with these things it seems like this was an outlier. They hadn't released an album in quite a long time (8 years) so with any hint of new music people got excited. They are also a very popular group - I doubt this strategy would work for the average band or even most successful bands. They were also lucky they had an iconic image they could use to promote the unannounced song (the helmets). Very few bands have logos that iconic that they could run a strategy like this.
Obviously the strategy worked fantastically well and I'm not taking anything away from that. I just think it's important to point it it's unlikely this would work for anyone else. In fact it probably wouldn't even work for them a second time.
Marketing doesn't make a song listenable. Musicians do.
The success of this single is not due to the marketing or "mystery" this article suggests. The success of this single is due to the contributions of legendary recording artist AND producer Nile Rodgers, who has written dozens of break out singles including:
Good Times - Chic
We are Family - Sister Sledge
Let's Dance - David Bowie
Material Girl - Madonna
If you listen to this album, it does not have hit songs except for Get lucky. Almost all marketing focused on this single, because it was the only good track.
Musicians make a song listenable, but not necessarily a hit. There are many artists out there who write music that is as good (or sometimes better) as that written by artists who make it, and who will remain mostly unknown outside a circle of dedicated followers. If success depended on good music alone, they would be better known than they are.
I guess there is more than one reason for this, image and marketing are just two.
Here, the journalist writes that "[Daft Punk] opted for their own small-scale marketing strategy", having billboards popping up all over the world and TV spots doesn't sound at all like a small-scale operation to me, just creative. I assume that a lot of recording artists out there would love to have access to such small-scale marketing strategy.
>> "Here, the journalist writes that "[Daft Punk] opted for their own small-scale marketing strategy", having billboards popping up all over the world and TV spots doesn't sound at all like a small-scale operation to me, just creative. I assume that a lot of recording artists out there would love to have access to such small-scale marketing strategy."
I think the journalist means it's small compared to the huge marketing operation a record label would usually put in place for this kind of release.
Without marketing, potentially breakout hit songs fly under the radar. I'm pretty sure it happens more often than you think. If memory serves, the work of both La Roux and Ed Sheeran ("The A Team") didn't become popular in the USA until a year or two after the songs in question were released. If that can happen, I have no difficulty believing other songs are simply never "discovered"- which is something marketing helps address.
In summary, musicians make music "listenable"- but marketers make music "discoverable".
When did Niles Rodgers last produce a breakout hit? I too am of the opinion that the success of the song had more to do with the music than the marketing in this case... but I dont think picking to work with a 'washed up' 70s & 80s producer was an obvious no brainer.
"If you listen to this album, it does not have hit songs except for Get lucky"
That's really not saying much because most of the tracks are intentionally constructed to be unfriendly to Top 40 radio; e.g. the end of Contact.
"The success of this single is due to the contributions of legendary recording artist AND producer Nile Rodgers"
Nile Rodgers is a legendary producer but Get Lucky was produced by Daft Punk like every other track on RAM. How confident in their production are they? They used legendary producer Giorgio Moroder only for his (non-musical) vocals. The whole album would have come off as a huge act of hubris if it came out and only had one good track.
"it was the only good track."
Opinions are like children -- we often like our own more than other people's. Instant Crush and Contact are great tracks. Better than Get Lucky? I don't know how you graph track quality. The entire album is good though.
Lose Yourself to Dance is one of the weaker songs on the album but more radio friendly and so I think it's going to be the second single which is a disappointment because it isn't very good next to Get Lucky.
This album was a huge let down. They made this big hoopla about how it was 'so expensive to make' because of the amazing talent like Julian Casablancas they brought into the studio, and they made something no one wanted to listen to. The sales tell part of the story:
"The thing we can ask ourselves at some point is like: We're making music for 20 years. How many bands and acts do you have that are still making good music after 20 years? It always sucks - almost always, you know?"
When it comes down to it they squandered amazing talent like Julian Casablancas, Pharell and Nile Rodgers to give history lessons on electronic music. The album would have been better if it had been released as a mixtape with no marketing at all.
Instant Crush is one of my favorite songs in recent years, for what it's worth. The chorus is just absolutely meticulously well engineered and well performed. Couldn't stop listening to it for days, along with Doin' It Right.
Yes, the rest of the album is a sort of primer on the elements of disco and that track is the example of what happens when you put all the elements; hooks, beats, bridges, vocals and feelings together.
I expect that in a couple of years, people who obsessively listened to this album in an analytic manner will be producing the chart-topping hits.
The article mentions the Coachella event in passing, but it had a huge role in building anticipation for the album. Thousands of people (many of them influencers) were hoping for a Daft Punk surprise show. This anticipation (and subsequent disappointment when they did not perform) created an emotional connection that is hard to achieve through traditional marketing channels.
I really liked their advertising posters. They were unlike anything I have seen in a really long time and actually did work on me.
Two or three days before the release of the album those posters popped up all over Hamburg. I saw them at least twice on my way to work and the city. Just the helmets, album name, record label. Very unlike all the other ads (even those for music, usually concerts, with big bold letters, many colours) you tend to see in those spaces. I’m fairly certain that those posters made me preorder the album and wait until midnight to download it – listening to the album stream they offered while waiting for the download – instead of buying in in a few months (maybe for a bit less money).
I’m not the biggest Daft Punk fan and I’m usually not waiting for new stuff to be released. Usually I only notice that a few months later. Daft Punk made me actually anticipate something and that was really nice (plus, the album kicks all kinds of ass – undoubtedly their best work since Discovery, probably even surpassing that).
It might be just me but I feel "Get Lucky" is also highly derivative of a lot of hits that came just a bit before it, including Katy Perry's Last Friday Night. Never mind the marketing, I think the song itself has been engineered according to careful analysis. Not that I have anything against Daft Punk, they made some pretty awesome music, but this particular song doesn't feel all that original or engaging to me.
No, it's not just you. But is a collage considered not art because it contains cut bits from previous works? I guess it's all down to just how derivative it all is. I don't think "Get Lucky" is all too original, but I did enjoy it.
It has a blend of smooth rock, jazz and old-school disco more than electronica.
You are describing all of Daft Punk's previous work. They made their career taking samples and stretching them out to make 3 minute songs. The new album's a bit different in that they used mostly original writing and instrumentation to create a feeling of the past. Daft Punk has never been my thing (they've always been too repetitive for me, even their prog-rock freakouts on the latest album), but I think you're not giving them enough credit.
Also, it's funny you bring up Katy Perry, when "Last Friday Night" and "Teenage Dream" sound like songs from Discovery that she happened to sing over.
Daft Punk's early work, their Homework album, and the releases on Roule were some of the best things to ever happen to house music. However, they sold out in a big way and it's been all downhill since then. (They signed with Virgin for Homework.) Skipping through it on YouTube, this song is no exception, unfortunately.
At least it won't get as overplayed as Music Sounds Better With You did/does, which is a pretty good song the first time you hear it, and for which there was truly explosive demand out of the gate.
A laptop and/or tablet in a titanium case with a client certificate installed and a server that requires the client to present said certificate for authorization, i.e. https
The eschewed today's marketing methods for yesterdays, no digitally distributed copies to music influencers, instead they sat down and let them hear it in person a couple times.
Not entirely. Daft Punk had a big success with free streaming on iTunes a couple weeks before the album was officially for sale.
This got listeners onto iTunes, where Apple put up a pre-sale button. Music industry convention is that pre-sales count towards 1st week sales. The end result is artificially high opening week sales, which further builds the buzz.
I personally think this album helped the reluctant labels signup for iTunes Radio, since labels were able to see free streaming can convert into digital purchases.
Ha, the journalist has no idea what he is talking about. Daft Punk is not obscure at all, and it has a massive cult following. They consistently (but infrequently) produce quality tracks. Of course their releasing a new album caused massive excitement.
It still doesn't fit the narrative. "obscure" to summer hit would be someone like Manu Chao that went from "never placed a song" to 189 weeks in european charts instantly.
Also, Daft Punk did place an album in the Top 50 (Albums often rate higher than singles in some genres).
True, but that's not that uncommon either, when albums pick up steam post-release. For example, even though Nine Inch Nails' debut album, 1989's Pretty Hate Machine, was quite successful, it caught on slowly and never rose above #75 on the album charts (even worse than Daft Punk!). None of its singles broke into the top 100 on the singles charts, either. But still it was not that surprising when 1994's Downward Spiral debuted at #2 on the charts, because by 1994 NIN had built up so many fans that there was a ton of anticipation. I don't think you could honestly talk about it as a sleeper hit from an obscure Cleveland musician who came out of nowhere, even though it's technically true he had never had a top-50 hit previously.
I wish Daft Punk would be get back to the shit they were doing the first time the played America, like 1995 or something. In a field, in Wisconsin, in the summer, on a card table.
Daft Punk is one of the most popular dance/electronic duos of the last decade. The article makes it sound as though they're some unknown duo that came out of nowhere.
It was expected that Random Access Memories was going to be one of the bigest records released this year.
Yeah, that's BS, Daft Punk are regarded as the kings of commercial dance music. You don't have to be into them (I'm not, though I too like their new work) to recognize this and respect them for it. The writer omits to mention that DP also scored (and appeared in) the long-awaited and heavily-promoted Tron: Legacy film released in 2010.
The mystery of it — What did it mean? Was Daft Punk announcing a new song? A new album? Something else?—attracted millions to the site on the first day.
...which should have been a clue to their pre-existing popularity. The marketing campaign for the album was very conventional, indeed old-fashioned; straight-up saturation through old media channels like flyposters, billboards and TV. But rather than being a throwback to the 60s or 70s, this is how (mainstream) music used to be marketed up to the 00s, when file-sharing, recession and war sent the industry into a general funk.
Part of the signaling here is to position DP as a big, established act - a classic example of 'the medium is the message.' Another part is that the band members have never been into personal publicity, so TV interviews are not gong to happen and they're not especially video-oriented either.
For a less well-known act also doing a 'comeback' release but taking a much more viral approach, check out Warp Records' low-key campaign for the new Boards of Canada album, which started with a few records placed and then found by customers in record stores on 'Record Store Day' and used cryptic clues hidden in places like web page headers to guide fans to an un-advertised website, culminating in a livestream of the whole album on YouTube. See for details: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1560063/boards-of-can...
I definitely wouldn't call Daft Punk the kings of commercial dance music. In fact, far from it. Pop music is what call commercial dance music, and Daft Punk is far from being pop music. They are French house pioneers, though. I know, I've been listening to them since the late 90's, and they've pioneered that genre and paved the way for the likes of Justice, etc...
These categories aren't musically exclusive. I've been DJing and producing electronic music since the 90s so I don't really care about your personal genre schema.
Well that's a bit of an argument from authority, no?
I think you're both right. Somewhere between Homework and Discovery is where I'd say that Daft Punk turned from French house into pop. Basically the release of Homework in 1997 on Virgin was the beginning of the end. I remember it being somewhat strange that Da Funk was getting radio play in anticipation of the album, but that track still isn't pop music, and neither is the B-side Musique.
Bangalter had the Roule label as a side project and Guy-Manuel had Crydamoure. The release of Stardust (i.e. Music Sounds Better With You) on Roule by Bangalter (and Alan Braxe) in June 1998 turned into a massive crossover hit. This was probably what pushed them into pop territory more than anything else. The only release by Bangalter on Roule to follow was Trax On Da Rocks Vol. 2, and it's definitely house music. Guy-Manuel was releasing stuff as The Knight Club on Crydamoure until 2002, but for many people the house party stopped when Bangalter stopped.
Or do you really believe that Homework was a pop music album? This is Rollin' & Scratchin', for example:
The article would claim the success of the songs is just because of their marketing effort after they were produced, but this isn't quite the case. The success for Daft Punk's product (its music) starts where the success for everything starts - baked into the product itself.
The song is downright catchy, and Daft Punk knows that (although, myself I rather detest the song). But more importantly their songs have been catchy and interesting from the beginning, and they were able to build up a fan base.
It's important to note in a case like this that Daft Punk has a cult following. Calling them an "unknown" band is like calling Radiohead unknown - they're only really unknown if you're completely detached from the music world, and even then you would still recognize their music. If you're an unknown band and you post a picture of your album cover online nobody would care, and carrying around an album in a titanium case would feel very gimmicky. But people have been waiting for a new Daft Punk album for some time, and the possibility of them releasing one is instantly news.
The marketing was, for Daft Punk's situation, spot on. They got word out about their song and album in a way that didn't feel like marketing. But this was really only possible because they have a huge following and have gained traction from their product in the past.
Interesting sidenote - I just read that Lady Gaga is trying out the whole "mysterious" thing for a huge fanbase for herself - she just made her "Twitter avatar the egg and left the message This interface has been shutdown temporarily. Please check back for updates." It's like she's rebranding herself publicly, and I'm willing to bet this will cause quite a stir.
I suspect that US does not know Daft Punk as well because of two events:
a) Overreacting to disco in the past like "Disco Demolition Night" event.
b) The progression from Disco to Eurodisco to Eurodance and other Hi-NRG styles in Europe.
Is that possible?
In either case, if the boys keep producing good music and wearing those helmets, they will never sound or look old.
The best things about this is that the kids of the people who staged Disco Demolition night are probably listening to Daft Punk's work with Nile Rodgers. Revenge is dish best served cold etc. etc.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadWhat? I'm not sure if this is just a US perspective but Daft Punk are very well known this side of the Atlantic (Ireland/UK).
While a fan of their stuff, I actually hate "Get Lucky"...
http://www.billboard.com/artist/300085/daft-punk/chart?sort=...
And even more for their albums in their genre
http://www.billboard.com/artist/300085/daft-punk/chart?f=322...
I also would have liked Get Lucky to have more of Daft Punk in it. As it is, I can only tell it is a DP song the last half minute of so when the vocoder section starts.
I'm not sure of their actual commercial performance, but their cultural impact is widespread in the US. To the Pitchfork/Coachella crowd they're living legends and RAM was perhaps the most anticipated album this year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8PrIzCX5mI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daft_Punk's_Electroma
"This video contains content from WMG, SME, Dance all Day, CD Baby, Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that."
Not the best quality, but it works.
Interstella 5555 was co-produced by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato, Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999...), by the way, who Daft Punk were huge fans of as children. Need I say any more?
I guess you'll just have to take it with a grain of salt.
In theory yes, but it happens more often than you'd think. A lot of editors cut to music - if the score isn't available, they'll often cut to some classical piece that can be freely used as a basis for the score without copyright worries. It's an easy way of making sure your edit has rhythm.
I know and love Daft Punk as well, but by these and other commercial objective measures they are obscure. Daft Punk are famous in some circles, and unknown in others. In particular, Get Lucky has achieved chart success previously unknown to Daft Punk, which is interesting and makes one wonder how they broke through this time and not before.
By changing their sound and style.
There was a pretty nice fervor surrounding their involvement in the Tron soundtrack as it was their first new work in 5 years. It went gold and peaked at number 4 in the billboard charts - not the dance charts, not soundtrack, the billboard 200. And that was just a soundtrack.
Stronger was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 - it features a Daft Punk sample; they were even in the single's music video.
They may not be the hottest act globally, but they are a well established band that transcended its own subculture.
"second rank" might be more fitting.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_%28Daft_Punk_s...
[2] http://www.nme.com/list/150-best-tracks-of-the-past-15-years...
Obviously the strategy worked fantastically well and I'm not taking anything away from that. I just think it's important to point it it's unlikely this would work for anyone else. In fact it probably wouldn't even work for them a second time.
The success of this single is not due to the marketing or "mystery" this article suggests. The success of this single is due to the contributions of legendary recording artist AND producer Nile Rodgers, who has written dozens of break out singles including:
Good Times - Chic
We are Family - Sister Sledge
Let's Dance - David Bowie
Material Girl - Madonna
If you listen to this album, it does not have hit songs except for Get lucky. Almost all marketing focused on this single, because it was the only good track.
Learn more about Nile Rodgers Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGUAiAxpu3E
Basically it was Bowie looking to get a mainstream hit. Which he did, and the Serious Moonlight tour ended up far larger than expected.
Here, the journalist writes that "[Daft Punk] opted for their own small-scale marketing strategy", having billboards popping up all over the world and TV spots doesn't sound at all like a small-scale operation to me, just creative. I assume that a lot of recording artists out there would love to have access to such small-scale marketing strategy.
But that's just me, and what do I know?
I think the journalist means it's small compared to the huge marketing operation a record label would usually put in place for this kind of release.
In summary, musicians make music "listenable"- but marketers make music "discoverable".
That's really not saying much because most of the tracks are intentionally constructed to be unfriendly to Top 40 radio; e.g. the end of Contact.
"The success of this single is due to the contributions of legendary recording artist AND producer Nile Rodgers"
Nile Rodgers is a legendary producer but Get Lucky was produced by Daft Punk like every other track on RAM. How confident in their production are they? They used legendary producer Giorgio Moroder only for his (non-musical) vocals. The whole album would have come off as a huge act of hubris if it came out and only had one good track.
"it was the only good track."
Opinions are like children -- we often like our own more than other people's. Instant Crush and Contact are great tracks. Better than Get Lucky? I don't know how you graph track quality. The entire album is good though.
Lose Yourself to Dance is one of the weaker songs on the album but more radio friendly and so I think it's going to be the second single which is a disappointment because it isn't very good next to Get Lucky.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/random-access-memor...
And they tell some of the rest of it:
"The thing we can ask ourselves at some point is like: We're making music for 20 years. How many bands and acts do you have that are still making good music after 20 years? It always sucks - almost always, you know?"
Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo concluded: "So our new album is supposed to really suck." http://www.mtv.co.uk/news/daft-punk/381428-daft-punk-new-alb...
When it comes down to it they squandered amazing talent like Julian Casablancas, Pharell and Nile Rodgers to give history lessons on electronic music. The album would have been better if it had been released as a mixtape with no marketing at all.
I expect that in a couple of years, people who obsessively listened to this album in an analytic manner will be producing the chart-topping hits.
You hire Nile Rodgers to help write a disco tune and this is what you get. A very catchy disco tune.
I thought this article was going to be how Daft Punk assembled their music, not their social media marketing strategy.
Two or three days before the release of the album those posters popped up all over Hamburg. I saw them at least twice on my way to work and the city. Just the helmets, album name, record label. Very unlike all the other ads (even those for music, usually concerts, with big bold letters, many colours) you tend to see in those spaces. I’m fairly certain that those posters made me preorder the album and wait until midnight to download it – listening to the album stream they offered while waiting for the download – instead of buying in in a few months (maybe for a bit less money).
I’m not the biggest Daft Punk fan and I’m usually not waiting for new stuff to be released. Usually I only notice that a few months later. Daft Punk made me actually anticipate something and that was really nice (plus, the album kicks all kinds of ass – undoubtedly their best work since Discovery, probably even surpassing that).
It has a blend of smooth rock, jazz and old-school disco more than electronica.
Also, it's funny you bring up Katy Perry, when "Last Friday Night" and "Teenage Dream" sound like songs from Discovery that she happened to sing over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NV6Rdv1a3I
At least it won't get as overplayed as Music Sounds Better With You did/does, which is a pretty good song the first time you hear it, and for which there was truly explosive demand out of the gate.
The eschewed today's marketing methods for yesterdays, no digitally distributed copies to music influencers, instead they sat down and let them hear it in person a couple times.
This got listeners onto iTunes, where Apple put up a pre-sale button. Music industry convention is that pre-sales count towards 1st week sales. The end result is artificially high opening week sales, which further builds the buzz.
I personally think this album helped the reluctant labels signup for iTunes Radio, since labels were able to see free streaming can convert into digital purchases.
Also, Daft Punk did place an album in the Top 50 (Albums often rate higher than singles in some genres).
Live PA stylie
It was expected that Random Access Memories was going to be one of the bigest records released this year.
Is Business Week really that out of touch?
Yeah, that's BS, Daft Punk are regarded as the kings of commercial dance music. You don't have to be into them (I'm not, though I too like their new work) to recognize this and respect them for it. The writer omits to mention that DP also scored (and appeared in) the long-awaited and heavily-promoted Tron: Legacy film released in 2010.
The mystery of it — What did it mean? Was Daft Punk announcing a new song? A new album? Something else?—attracted millions to the site on the first day.
...which should have been a clue to their pre-existing popularity. The marketing campaign for the album was very conventional, indeed old-fashioned; straight-up saturation through old media channels like flyposters, billboards and TV. But rather than being a throwback to the 60s or 70s, this is how (mainstream) music used to be marketed up to the 00s, when file-sharing, recession and war sent the industry into a general funk.
Part of the signaling here is to position DP as a big, established act - a classic example of 'the medium is the message.' Another part is that the band members have never been into personal publicity, so TV interviews are not gong to happen and they're not especially video-oriented either.
For a less well-known act also doing a 'comeback' release but taking a much more viral approach, check out Warp Records' low-key campaign for the new Boards of Canada album, which started with a few records placed and then found by customers in record stores on 'Record Store Day' and used cryptic clues hidden in places like web page headers to guide fans to an un-advertised website, culminating in a livestream of the whole album on YouTube. See for details: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1560063/boards-of-can...
I think you're both right. Somewhere between Homework and Discovery is where I'd say that Daft Punk turned from French house into pop. Basically the release of Homework in 1997 on Virgin was the beginning of the end. I remember it being somewhat strange that Da Funk was getting radio play in anticipation of the album, but that track still isn't pop music, and neither is the B-side Musique.
Bangalter had the Roule label as a side project and Guy-Manuel had Crydamoure. The release of Stardust (i.e. Music Sounds Better With You) on Roule by Bangalter (and Alan Braxe) in June 1998 turned into a massive crossover hit. This was probably what pushed them into pop territory more than anything else. The only release by Bangalter on Roule to follow was Trax On Da Rocks Vol. 2, and it's definitely house music. Guy-Manuel was releasing stuff as The Knight Club on Crydamoure until 2002, but for many people the house party stopped when Bangalter stopped.
Or do you really believe that Homework was a pop music album? This is Rollin' & Scratchin', for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbb8kZw-xRg
The article would claim the success of the songs is just because of their marketing effort after they were produced, but this isn't quite the case. The success for Daft Punk's product (its music) starts where the success for everything starts - baked into the product itself.
The song is downright catchy, and Daft Punk knows that (although, myself I rather detest the song). But more importantly their songs have been catchy and interesting from the beginning, and they were able to build up a fan base.
It's important to note in a case like this that Daft Punk has a cult following. Calling them an "unknown" band is like calling Radiohead unknown - they're only really unknown if you're completely detached from the music world, and even then you would still recognize their music. If you're an unknown band and you post a picture of your album cover online nobody would care, and carrying around an album in a titanium case would feel very gimmicky. But people have been waiting for a new Daft Punk album for some time, and the possibility of them releasing one is instantly news.
The marketing was, for Daft Punk's situation, spot on. They got word out about their song and album in a way that didn't feel like marketing. But this was really only possible because they have a huge following and have gained traction from their product in the past.
Interesting sidenote - I just read that Lady Gaga is trying out the whole "mysterious" thing for a huge fanbase for herself - she just made her "Twitter avatar the egg and left the message This interface has been shutdown temporarily. Please check back for updates." It's like she's rebranding herself publicly, and I'm willing to bet this will cause quite a stir.
a) Overreacting to disco in the past like "Disco Demolition Night" event. b) The progression from Disco to Eurodisco to Eurodance and other Hi-NRG styles in Europe.
Is that possible?
In either case, if the boys keep producing good music and wearing those helmets, they will never sound or look old.
¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual