There’s a commercial currently playing for a new title for X Box, Gears of War, and while we’re sure the game is going to be a huge Christmas hit. The real winner might be iTunes, which has seen a spike in the downloads of Mad World, a song from the soundtrack to Donnie Darko.
The song has gone from past novelty to current day hit status, built only on the fact that it forms the soundtrack of a thirty second commercial.
The original song goes back as far as the early Tears for Fears days of the eighties, though it didn’t have the benefit of a hot new video game to spur on the sales in those simpler days of radio and that newfangled thing the video channel.
Version after version has come along since; the current variation has a techno variation pushing the synthesizer to the max, accompanied by those eerie vocals to develop the haunting sound.
And while Roland Orzabal will probably collect the royalties on the lyrics, it’s the latest one seems to be the one resonating with the music buying crowd these days, iTunes features it on a cinema and movies compilation, and with the heavy play of the television commercial the song climbed to number one on November 27th and since settled around third spot after a busy weekend of downloads.
The talk today has been how the iTune bubble may have popped, with collapsing sales and an expected further drop in the pass through clicks of the site as the next year dawns. However, you would be hard pressed to believe that today judging by the success of a relatively unknown song heading into the start of November.
The advertising concept for the Xbox game has been a pretty impressive launch, the music seems to set exactly the right tone for the game they're selling. It's done wonders for the theme song, it will be interesting to see the sales figures for the game after Santa makes his rounds.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment