2. •The xx are an English indie-pop band and
are signed to the record label, Young Turks.
Young Turks is a British independent record
label and was originally launched by Caius
Pawson as an imprint of XL Recordings in
2006.
3. •The xx distribute their music through a
distribution company called Beggars Group
whom also house a number of independent
record labels including XL Recordings. Beggars
Group has a worldwide network in place and so
The xx’s music has experienced worldwide
distribution.
4. •The xx’s music is commercially sold in both physical
and digital format. Interestingly, The xx have joined
the surge of artists who are reverting back to vinyl
format and so The xx’s music is also available on vinyl
as well as CD. Their physical format albums are
commercially sold on their own site and places such
as Amazon.
5. • Social media and virals has played a big part in The xx’s success as it was their
initial viral success that first put them on the map with almost a virtual word-of-
mouth phenomenon. The release of their second album ‘Co-exist’ sought out to
replicate the viral explosion that the band had experienced with their first album.
A particular risky marketing campaign was used where the xx shared the album
stream with a single fan via Facebook. Twenty-four hours after the stream was
shared with a fan on Facebook, the site crashed from the millions of streams,
with the average user spending 2.1 hours on the site.
• Along with this, XL began talks with technical companies such as Microsoft who
agreed to create a visualization of the album stream being shared - inspired by
Aaron Koblin's visualization of flight patterns in the US.
• The stream's visualization prompted a burst of lines as the album is distributed
across the globe, flourishing from its origin to the opposite ends of the world,
where it then would shoot to another point on the map.
• Music downloading and social media have made the pre-release album stream an
essential part of the modern music marketing scheme. XL Recordings hoped the
visualisation would draw attention to the physical release date and their work
paid off as it debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 58,266
copies in its first week.
6. •Both The xx’s albums are commercially available
online on such places as ITunes, Amazon. As well
as being commercially sold online their music
can be found on illegal downloading sites like
mp3skull.com.
