I just came across one of the coolest music videos I’ve ever seen, and the beauty of it? It was made by a fan, just for the fun of it. Incredible.

Link: Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew.

One of the first things I thought about while watching Gabe’s video was whether this would be yet another take-down viral video because of copyright infringement? But, a group like Grizzly Bear (or their record label) would be crazy to complain about the soundtrack because of the attention it generates for the song.

You could either be a band that removes the soundtrack from someone’s artistic work, infuriating them and accomplishing nothing. Or, you could capitalize off it, much like Chris Brown’s (or his record label’s) decision to not remove the soundtrack from the “JK Wedding Dance” video that ended up boosting him to #4 on the iTunes charts and possibly saved his career.



Another recent example is the use of Barcelona’s “Please Don’t Go” song in a tranquil aquarium video that has been 1.8 million views at the times of this posting. The band was so pleased that they posted a video response to introduce themselves to their new fans and credited the video towards increased albums sales and concert attendance. Instead of saving a career (as in Brown’s case), this very well could make a career for these guys, and all because they lucked out and had a passionate, artistic fan that wanted to showcase both their works, together.




Gabe’s video is yet another great example of how music artists (and any celebrities) for that matter can use their fans to crowdsource ideas and content. Instead of spending thousands or millions to produce a video, you can get really high quality content for next to nothing, all because your fans are passionate about your work and want to be more involved. So get them involved, they want to be, and they’ll reward you for the opportunity.

As a final example, here’s a video from Tilly & The Wall which was completely crowdsourced by their fans. All they did was ask users to send in clips of them singing their song “Rainbows in the Dark” and spliced them all together, making an awesome, fun, and cheap video. Imagine a progressive band like Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead saying they weren’t going going to make a video for their latest single and instead were holding a contest for a fan to make an “official video” for that song and awarding $20k? Contests like that can become a breeding crowd for viral videos, something all musicians are dying for nowdays.




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