Little Tybee. (Photo by Andrew Kornylak; used with permission)
There's something magical about Little Tybee's progressive folk sounds. The Atlanta band's catalog, which dates back eight years, is like one gorgeous glisten expanded for eternity. But even the most beautiful music sometimes goes unheard – so to make sure theirs reaches as many people as possible, the group become incredibly stellar in DIY marketing. In fact, their most recent effort sent their music on a trip around the world.
As promotion for their forthcoming fourth album, frontman Brock Scott worked with an electrical engineer to tweak seven transistor radios to play the entire record. He called for globe-trotting fans and filmographer friends to each take one and film the music being played in different settings. Now, the #TybeeRadio project has amassed about 300 videos from 50 or so contributors which will soon be compiled into a single-track video.
“I've got the last bit that I'm waiting for,” Scott says. “This guy's been driving from London to Beijing, and he's gone through the Middle East and Mongolia and all these places, so the footage is going to be crazy. And I have another one in Rio for the Olympics.”
The logistics and plotting of the project are daunting, as Scott worked to connect nearby contributors to keep shipping costs down. (Luckily, a lot of them absorbed that cost themselves with no complaint – most were happy to support the project moving forward.) But the process of its execution seems overwhelming, too: each collaborator submitted anywhere from five to 20 videos, Scott says, and he's hand-picking the “best view” from each.
“It's jam-packed,” he says. “[The video] is constantly moving; it's traveling very quickly – literally every continent is in there. It'll go from the Arctic Circle to the Panamanian cloud forest, rainforest, South America, to Beijing, all over the place. All in the course of, like, 10 seconds.”
The initial spark of inspiration came when Scott inherited his father's old transistor radio before heading out by bike on the Camino de Santiago trail in Spain. He imagined his father listening to it as he traveled as a navigator for the transatlantic shipping industry, which motivated him to film the radio intermittently throughout his journey.
“It's kind of an experiment, but it's working really well. It's better than any PR campaign you could do because you don't have to convince people. It's one of those things that's inherently viral,” he says. “If you think about things that go viral, it's like the guy who travels with his girlfriend all around the world, and he's holding hands with her and all these different photos, that kind of stuff.
"It's kind of cheesy and narcissistic, but...this one is not about each individual person; it's just about the project overall, and everyone can contribute without it seeming like they're just helping us out. Everyone's equally a part of it.”
The personal nature of the project means each collaborator already has an incentive to share, he adds. “You think about how many collaborators are going to be sharing it without me having to plug them," Scott says. “It's going to spread organically, I think.”
The project is also connected to their Kickstarter fundraiser for the album, which amassed more than $21,000 from 430 backers. Rewards included the typical digital download or physical copy, but also a truly unique option: USB drives with tin casings custom designed to look like the radios from the project.
The base model includes a copy of the album and commentary videos featuring members of the band, while the second-tier B option contains more than 200 .WAV tracks of individual instrument parts (known as stems) that can be used by DJs for remixing or by musicians who want to play along. The ultimate model has all of that, plus behind-the-scenes videos from recording engineer Ben Price.
Working with multiple manufacturers – a candy company, a flash drive company, and a lapel pin company – wasn't easy. Some were overseas, and the fear that any of them could rip him (and the Kickstarter backers) off was nagging.
“Then the Kickstarter people would hate us and all our fans would hate us,” he laughs. “But it all came together. We sold out of the ones we brought on tour, then the rest are going to the Kickstarter people, then we'll put the remaining few hundred online to sell. I learned a lot about manufacturing. But also we sold more flash drives than CDs just because it's kind of a cool shape, it's like an art piece.
"I think people want tangible things. That's why they buy CDs in the first place. Not because they need the CD – they could listen to it on Spotify or Pandora or download it – but they just want to have a physical thing that's [theirs]. If that's their mentality in the first place, might as well give them something that's not going to just end up under their car seat.”
Artistry isn't the only reason the USB drives work, though. They appeal to a sector of Little Tybee's fanbase they've come to realize is a majority: musicians. Engineers and producers too, for sure. But the number of fans they've got who also play – guitarists especially – is continually growing.
The band scored endorsements with Ibanez, Dunlop MXR, and Fodera, and Scott describes them as mutually beneficial relationships, especially when the brands share Little Tybee videos with their million-plus followers.
“They're pushing to music fans, all the people that follow [these brands]. It's densely populated with music people. It's not just a passive like on Instagram. It's the people who will come up after your show and they're interested in what you're doing compositionally and creatively,” he says.
Tour clips and show footage are a big part of Little Tybee's social media game. He believes their quality content is one of the main reasons they landed those endorsements.
“I think we're at a time now where you can employ these strategies that were not possible before and really have effect without ever having to hit the road. If you have one video that goes viral and gets 200,000 views, that's so many fans that you've gained without having to put one mile on your van, and it's worldwide,” Scott says. “We have people coming to our shows because of these videos, because of the Internet, and every year we see it exponentially growing because of quality content.”
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Let's be real, though. Scott is a truly talented artist of basically every medium, from film set design to sculpture work to photography and more. He's got something of a leg up on most in terms of creating beautiful art. But he confidently assures us: anyone can learn the basics well enough to create his or her own aesthetically pleasing and effective content.
“See what other bands are doing that you like and just learn as much as you can on the internet. You don't need to know much as far as video stuff. With YouTube, you can learn [from] quick little videos about how to do correct lighting, how to set up your camera, how to get compositional shots. As you're doing it, you'll improve,” he says.
“Anyone is capable of creating good-quality content. It might not be the most original or creative thing, but you can create something that looks good. In the end, you're really just documenting your music, which is the art form that you're really pushing. So just create content, create it on a regular basis, and put time into the details. Things you think people won't care about, it kind of creates a standard that people will come to appreciate that you take that time and effort into your quality.”
Jhoni Jackson is an Atlanta-bred music journalist currently based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she juggles owning a venue called Club 77, freelance writing and, of course, going to the beach as often as possible.
