Twenty One Pilots or How to Release a Single in 2020

It started yesterday at 8:15 p.m. I wanted to show my children classic music videos. Went on Youtube and Bam; here it was. Twenty One Pilots’ notification: new video premieres tonight at 9:00 p.m. 

So much for an earlier bedtime. So we watched older videos. It felt as if they were commercials. A-ha. Nirvana. Guns and Roses. Dire Straits and a few French artists. At 8:58 we breathed deeply. Twenty One Pilots Youtube home page. The video started at 9:01 with a 2:32 countdown. The drummer talked for a while and there it was. “Christmas saves the year,” by Twenty One Pilots. The kids were all over the place. TOP is our favourite band. At first, I thought it could be a cover, so I opened a new tab and typed in the title, expecting to discover who was singing the original version. I didn’t find a cover. However, the TOP music video (still playing live in the other tab) was already showing in the results at the #1 position. Had been indexed before and all ready to roll. 

A few other links… What? The lyrics were already available on Genius. How’s that possible? 9:02. Notification on my cell phone. “Twenty One Pilots Premiere.”

“Dad… The song’s now on Spotify” says my daughter. It’s 9:06. Video’s finished. We watch it another time. We listen to “Christmas saves the year” on Spotify. Just to make sure they’re the same version... At 9:30, lyrics annotations on Genius have already popped. And long ones. With pictures. Who wrote that?

At 10:00 p.m., Youtube counts 315K views. 

The TOP channel has 11.5 M subscribers. 315K views represents about 3%. But some people watched it twice. Alright. Let’s say 2% of the 11.5M subscribers have watched it within the first hour of release… Huge. TOP is trending on Twitter. #25 in the US. 

#12 in Google Trending stories.

Got the Youtube notification by email and a related tweet at the #1 position in my Twitter feed.

Last data check on Google trends. 

I can’t find live data for Spotify or any other music streaming platform. However, the song is showing at 0-0. Ready. 

This requires a lot of thinking and coordination. 

The title of the song - A unique title, resembling nothing else, easy to get meaningful data to analyze. It wouldn’t be the case if they’d named it ? Merry Christmas ?. 

The release date - No big game, no big event or election monopolizing the air. But it’s 2020. Nothing’s happening anyway.

The happening - The song debuted after a Twitch stream where lead singer Tyler Joseph played in a Fortnite tournament to raise money for the Make-a-wish foundation.  

The pre-indexing - Whoever works with Google knows that even if you have a unique name, you can’t rank number #1 the moment you put your website online. True, it’s Twenty One Pilots, not John Doe cupcakes. But still. 

It also requires great expertise (and money we all agree) to synchronize all platforms, target and retarget the audience, pin publications in people's feeds, be visible everywhere.

Of course, the label (Fueled by Ramen) plays a huge role, but so do the fans. They’re the ones sharing the content, and (supposedly) contributing to platforms such as Genius and Wikipedia. Of course, ? Christmas saves the year ? already appears on the collaborative encyclopedia. 

Last but not least, the content. How’s the song? Is it good? Will it air and gain traction? Can it become a Christmas classic? Time will tell. 

As far as I’m concerned, ? Christmas saves the year ? will probably be the only Holiday song that I’ll play in December. But I’m biased. 

By the way, I want to know... What saved your year?