Yungblud’s album ‘Weird,’ was officially released yesterday, with copies already available across a variety of mediums including streaming, Yungblud also released all of the tracks on his Youtube channel with unique looping videos to accompany the audio for each one, with the exception of his collaboration with Machine Gun Kelly, ‘acting like that,’ which was leaked three days ago to tease yesterday’s release. Rather than following the narrative approach of traditional music videos, Yungblud has instead opted for a more current looped approach with short film strips of the artist in different scenes and shots of lyrics written in note books repeat throughout the songs.
The videos all follow a unified aesthetic with all the footage shot in black and white with occasional strips of red to add contrast. Yungblud’s distinctive look is present throughout the videos somewhere between punk and glam throughout and they scream with attitude. This is a unique approach to releasing music online which is almost entirely groundbreaking. While short looping videos have been pioneered, particularly on the Spotify streaming platform which is generally sceptical of adding any video content to their audio based platform, this is the first time anyone has released an entire series of unified videos in this style coinciding with a full album release.
Sure enough, the short looping videos which are featured on the Youtube uploads for all tracks on the ‘weird,’ album are also viewable when listening to the album on the Spotify mobile app. Although shorter and less narrative focused than a traditional video, the addition of these short looping videos to streaming versions of the able is a very nice touch and really brings the experience into the 21st century, making the album more engaging on the move without becoming as much of a data hog as a full video might, and also allowing the primary focus for the audience to be the music itself.
While it is still to early to say how the album will perform in the charts, Yungblud has certainly worked hard to make this album appealing to the current generation. Where other artists, usually those with fans of a slightly older demographic, are often critical of all advances in technology and streaming in particular, Yungblud seems to have embraced the technology available to him and sought to make the best of it. While the streaming revenue he can gain from Spotify or Youtube may not be much, he is still using the platforms for what they are really good at, which is reaching a very broad audience in a way which is very convenient for them.
As well as making his album very appealing for streamers, Yungblud also has plenty of deals on his online store here for fans who have been tempted to make the leap from online consumption to the world of physical mediums and merchandise.
