'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' and 'Eclipse' soundtracks helping change the industry

'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' and 'Eclipse' soundtracks helping change the industry

Looking back on the way that the three Twilight series soundtracks have been composed, marketed, and revealed, there is certainly a trend.

With Twilight's soundtrack, artists like Paramore and Robert Pattinson contributed exclusive songs for the album, and they themselves became a part of the process - doing interviews, promotions, and the like. The same was true with The Twilight Saga: New Moon, whose feature band Death Cab for Cutie was the musical guest at the big Hot Topic New Moon event in California last year (which brought in nearly all of the cast). This year, it was METRIC which could be seen around, promoting the album for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, while The Bravery's Sam Endicott took on MySpace's Artist on Artist with Kellan Lutz and Peter Facinelli. In other words, album contributors become part and parcel of the Twilight Saga films with this franchise.

According to Variety, this is a major, bold shift in the soundtrack industry.

"The past decade has been so dismal many studios no longer release soundtracks, especially for films that emphasize previously released songs readily available on iTunes. There are some notable exceptions, . . . but nowhere has the value of exclusives been more evident than with the trio of 'Twilight' releases."

With Twilight, some of the songs on the album weren't exclusives. For instance, Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole" was a part of their 2006 album "Black Holes and Revelations." After the album's success, though, things changed a bit and songs placed on The Twilight Saga: New Moon's soundtrack were famously unique and exclusive to the album (even Muse's contributions to these albums).

"The success of the movie and the companion album (Chop Shop/Atlantic), which has sold 2.6 million copies in the U.S. alone, led to the decision to feature all new music from the likes of Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Muse and Grizzly Bear on the sequel, 2009's 'New Moon,' and third installment, 2010's 'Eclipse.' Those albums have sold 1.17 million and 395,000, respectively, to date," reports Variety.

As the publication points out, fans sat around all day while MySpace and others revealed the list of contributors to the Eclipse soundtrack one at a time, in thirty minute intervals.

Definitely a different ballgame, it seems.

Soundtrack coordinator Alexandra Patsavas talked to Variety about the albums, saying "it's always a better experience for the music to be introduced the first time you're experiencing the drama . . .The music you're hearing is always going to be linked in the audience member's mind."

Do you think it is possible that the reason why Twilight's soundtrack success so vastly outweighs the recent two (which were also successful, for sure) is because so many new fans came in and saw the film before purchasing the album - thusly getting that association concept mentioned by Patsavas? Or do you think that it is because it had two songs sung by Robert Pattinson, who has been chosen the "World's Sexiest Man" for two years running? Hint hint (Breaking Dawn can circle back on this, cough cough).

Source => Examiner / Via => Twilightish