If you happen to follow Mark Ronson on Instagram, you may have noticed that he dropped a new music video for “Pieces of Us” on his Instagram Story. This wasn’t just a snippet or a highlight reel—it was the entire video for the song, which features King Princess; and it just may be the future of music videos.
For the track from his new album, Late Night Feelings, Ronson made what may be a world first, a purpose-designed video for Instagram Stories using real-time AR effects with zero postproduction. Since Instagram Stories are designed to be temporary, the video will be periodically reposted in consecutive 24-hour cycles, each offering the viewer a different kind of interaction. Fans can engage and react using polls, lyric stickers, and new AR filters, in addition to sharing the song (and their takes on the video) in their own Stories. The fan-made versions will be incorporated into Ronson’s own in some sort of electro-beat, sticker-covered ouroboros. Eventually, the full video will be made available on Ronson’s IGTV, but since no one watches that, the best place to start is on Stories.
While Ronson may lay claim to the title of world’s first music video made for Instagram Stories (this is the world’s first movie made on Instagram), there’s no way he will be the last. It’s far too useful of a mechanism to deliver music directly to the fans who want to see it and can’t rely on MTV to show it to them. You can watch “Pieces of Us” here if you haven’t deleted Instagram.
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