TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND
THE SITUATION
Tedeschi Trucks Band’s I Am The Moon was an ambitious, four-part conceptual album released over successive months in 2022. The challenge was to ensure that each segment maintained momentum and drove not only streaming but also album, merchandise, and ticket sales. With a fanbase that skews older, I needed to embrace a format that resonated with long-form content consumers while engaging new audiences.
MY STRATEGIC APPROACH
My task was to build excitement and engagement for each release. YouTube became the key platform, where I centered the strategy around full-length visualizer premieres. Understanding the band’s older demographic tends to engage deeply with longer-form content, I structured the digital campaign to increase streams, watch hours, and engagement with the band’s broader catalog, while aligning with the label’s overall release strategy.
I implemented a phased approach, premiering each part of the album with full-length visualizers on YouTube, spread over several months. This approach created massive anticipation for each successive release, keeping fans engaged and actively discussing the project over an extended period.
Key actions included:
Appealing to the Older Demographic: Knowing the band’s core fanbase is heavily skewed towards listeners aged 55-64, I focused on full-length content that would keep these viewers engaged for extended periods.
Catalog Engagement Spikes: Each album premiere not only drove streams of the new releases but also resulted in significant increases in catalog watch hours and streams.
Leveraging YouTube Playlists: I curated and optimized playlists such as The I Am The Moon Complete Collection to encourage continuous listening.
Engagement Through Search and Suggested Videos: YouTube search accounted for 9.9% of views, while suggested videos contributed 13.9%.
Targeted Content for Key Demographics: The majority of the watch time (28.8%) came from viewers aged 55-64.
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR TRENDS
Several key audience behavior trends emerged throughout the I Am The Moon campaign:
Age Demographics: Viewers aged 55-64 contributed the most watch time, with longer average view durations than younger demographics, validating the focus on long-form content tailored to the band’s core older audience.
Content Preferences: The majority of watch time came from full-length visualizers, while live streams, though less frequent, had the highest average view durations, indicating deep engagement from fans tuning in for more interactive content.
Device Usage: While mobile phones dominated views, fans watching on TVs and computers had longer average view durations, showing that older viewers prefer immersive viewing experiences on larger screens.
Geographical Trends: The U.S. fanbase drove the majority of engagement, but international markets like the UK, Canada, and Germany showed promising levels of viewership, presenting opportunities for global growth.
Release-Related Spikes: Each album release led to significant spikes in watch time, sustaining engagement over several months. Catalog streams also increased with each release, showing the lasting impact of the phased rollout.
THE SUCCESSFUL OUTCOME
The campaign produced impressive results across multiple fronts:
Streaming Impact: The visualizers garnered over 17 million views on YouTube with a total of 1.2 million hours of watch time, boosting album streams significantly. Each premiere also drove substantial increases in catalog streams, with watch hours and engagement spiking alongside the new releases. These spikes in catalog streams revived interest in older material, sustaining engagement across months.
Album Sales: The unique rollout strategy propelled the band’s I Am The Moon to #1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart for multiple installments.
Merch & Ticket Sales: The I Am The Moon national tour became one of the band’s highest-grossing tours ever. While it didn’t sell out in every market, the sustained excitement from the YouTube campaign and album release fueled strong ticket and merchandise sales.
Audience Expansion: While the band’s core audience remained strong, I succeeded in attracting new listeners, especially from cities like New York, Chicago, and Atlanta, which had the highest watch times.
This innovative digital campaign elevated the band’s presence on YouTube, increased both catalog and new release streams, and translated directly into album sales and one of their most successful tours to date.