Album reveals have been a very popular and effective way to Like-gate or Share-gate exclusive artist content (album cover, i.e.) as a way of generating social media buzz around the release of a new single or album. We have many options available on both Facebook and Twitter depending on your preferred social network, unlock mechanism and potentially album or single create.
In general these are the available album reveal approaches:
- Single Like-Gate: user likes the page to see the album cover
- Crowdsourced Like-Gate: when a certain number of users like a page, a part or all of the album cover is unlocked
- Single Share-Gate: user shares a message on Twitter or Facebook to see the album cover
- Crowdsourced Share-Gate: when a certain number of users share a message, a part or all of the album cover is unlocked
- Comprehensive (Multi-Action): user is asked to do multiple actions such as liking, sharing on multiple players, watching videos or listening to music in order to unlock pieces of the album cover
- Game Driven: users plays a game or solves a puzzle (such as a graphic puzzle) in order to reveal the album cover
- Time Driven: users are encouraged to share, but album cover is revealed based on a timer
PLATFORM-BASED AND PATTERN-BASED EXAMPLES:
- Comprehensive Sharing – Like, Share, Tweet, View (Dwight Yoakam, WBR Nashville)
- Comprehensive Sharing (The Killers, Island Def Jam)
- Simple Like-Gate (Various)
- Jigsaw Like-Gate (Ricardo Monaner, Sony Latin) – Crowdsourced version
- Mosaic Reveal (Portugal The Man, Atlantic)
- Mosaic Reveal (My Children, My Bride, Tooth and Nail)
- Twitter Countdown (Cody Simpson, Altantic / Alajandro Sanz, UMG Latin)
Other Options
- Timed Release (Alice In Chains, EMI)
By Pattern:
- Jigsaw (Ricardo Monaner, Sony Latin)
- Horizontal Slide (Alice in Chains, EMI)
- Stages (The Killers, Island Def Jam)
- Pixel Reveal