FYS Yourself with Four Year Strong

Four Year Strong's newest album, Enemy of the World, was recently released and in order to help promote it, they've come up with an amusing/unique web site.

I saw a few of my friends tweeting, "FYS yourself like I did" with a picture of themselves containing various cartoon-y graphics such as clothing, tattoos, piercings, etc. that they added to their picture. Curious as to what that meant, I clicked the link and it brought me to a page in which I could upload a picture of myself and add different kinds of graphics to it. This page was also continuously streaming 4 songs from Four Year Strong's new album [as I added things to my picture]. At the bottom left of the page is a link to a contest in which you can enter the picture you've created with a chance to win the "Enemy of the World Package" which includes a skate deck, vinyl, CD, tickets, and more. At the bottom right of the page were various links to follow the band on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube.

This is like the culmination of everything we've been talking about in class. I thought this was a really smart way for Four Year Strong to get some of their music out there for free in order to promote their new album. It was mentioned in class that it's not really a good idea to give away ALL of the music for free, which FYS didn't do. In my opinion, they put up just the right amount of songs up to give the listener a good preview of the album. The thing I really liked too was that they were getting people to come to the Web site through these funny pictures that people were creating of themselves. Initially, I didn't click the link wanting to hear the band's new music, per se. I just wanted to make a goofy looking picture of myself because I was bored. While I did so, however, I found myself to be digging the music as I had fun turning myself into a scene kid with the "Fys yourself" game. This led me to tweet my picture which in turn, probably got some of my followers to click the link and hear some of the songs as well.

Unique move by this band in my opinion. They didn't force the music down your throat, you had the option to pause it if you wanted and you also had the option to enter the free contest. And even if this doesn't lead to people buying the album, they may still check out the band's Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace page and buy tickets to see them in the future.

If you're bored like I was, I recommend you go "fys yourself" and maybe listen to the music too. Personally, "Wasting Time (Eternal Summer)" was my favorite song.

- Samantha Bruno

Source:

http://www.fysyourself.com/