Chicago prog rock sextet Umphrey's McGee is trying out a different sort of hype/marketing campaign to move copies of their fifth and latest studio album, Mantis, which came out on Sci Fidelity January 20.
In October, the band announced new and intriguing pre-order promotion: for every X number of copies of Mantis ordered in advance of its release, Y amount of exclusive bonus material would be unlocked. A total of nine levels containing more than 45 unique and previously unreleased audio tracks had the potential to be released. Once the album dropped, every copy sold from January 20 through the rest of the year can unlock even more content — bonus material, live tracks from the tour, and other goodies. Interested fans are invited to sign up to get text alerts when a new level of content from Mantis has become available.
This past Friday, the band revealed the next part of its Mantis campaign: a virtual tour of live videos hosted at five different websites, with a new one for each day of this week and leading up to the start of their Winter Tour next week. Here's the release details:
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2009.