The Indie band Arctic Monkeys give a great example of breaking out of traditional marketing think.
If you haven't heard of them, they are a band from England that decided to go around the normal marketing strategy for bands and instead offered their music for free on the web. The result of their campaign was that it launched them to number one in Britain.
Not only didn't they go through the procedure of making a demo and running everywhere to try to get it played on radio, but they burned the CDs themselves and gave them away for free at their live 
concerts.
Not only didn't they care what their fans did with them, they hoped that they would copy and share them everywhere with their friends. It worked fantastic as when they released their first album in January, the buzz created was so strong that they went to No. 1 on the British charts in a few days, selling 118,000 CDs.
The record companies may hate this but the artists love it. As I quoted on another blog concerning whether the artists really care about the fall of the CD from monsters and critics:
"And as far as artists are concerned, the industry has been stealing from them all along. Artists tend to receive 25 cents in royalties on a CD that costs 50 cents to produce and which retails for 15 dollars -- meaning the middle-men get most of the money."
Still, even some of the artists aren't getting this as they are flocking to Germany to try to land a big deal with the record companies. Why settle for crumbs on the floor when you can eat the full meal yourself? Viral marketers are starting to understand this power.
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