Music Ally

Congratulations to the digital services team at Sony Music UK, which won a prestigious MediaGuardian Award for Innovation last night for its work on the AC/DC Excel spreadsheet video released last year to promote the band’s new album.

You remember, the one that turned the song’s actual video into an ASCII animation viewed inside an XLS doc. Oh, you know:

It won the Best Advertising Campaign award at the ceremony last night – not bad at all considering it was up against Honda’s famous live skydiving TV ad, and a home office anti-gun and knife crime campaign. “We spent about 0.005% of the cash that the others did,” Sony’s Daniel Ayers tells us.

We’re eager to see what they come up with next.

One of the things we’re tracking at Music Ally is how artists and labels are using mobile and online to promote music. And since we’re tracking it on an ongoing basis, we thought it was worth rounding up some of the notable campaigns for last month.

Not all are straight digital marketing campaigns – some are more distribution deals – but we think they give a snapshot of what companies are up to. See what you think.

1. AC/DC Excel video (above). Sony BMG turned the new video from the Aussie rockers into an ASCII-art video, embedded into an Excel spreadsheet. The idea: fans would be able to email it round workplaces without fear of getting carpeted by bosses. Watch It

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Whoever at Sony BMG came up with the idea of turning AC/DC’s new Rock’n’Roll Train video into ASCII art embedded in an Excel spreadsheet is already Music Ally’s man or woman of the year. Watch it above, or click here to download the actual spreadsheet file.

What have AC/DC and The Eagles got in common? No, Don Henley doesn’t spend his weekends duckwalking in a schoolboy uniform (as far as we know). But AC/DC have followed The Eagles’ lead in signing an exclusive distribution deal with Wal-Mart for their next album, according to the Wall Street (more…)