More and more artists are looking for new ways to engage their audiences. Interactive music videos have proven to be the best new tool to achieve this in the music industry.
New trends such as videos filmed with 360ᐤ cameras are on the rise. Take FOALS’ video for Mountain At My Gates as an example. In this video, you can look around during the video and see the rising mountain ranges.
But better yet, there are artists that take even bigger steps with interactive videos. They are experimenting with how they can pull you into the story of the video. We have selected five music videos that we believe are trendsetting interactive music experiences and completely engage us, the viewers.
If you are ready to join in on the fun, you will love these Top 5 Interactive Music Videos.
5. Major Lazer – Know No Better (feat. Travis Scott, Camila Cabello & Quavo)
Who wouldn’t want to become a professional backup dancer for an act like Major Lazer and hang out in a recording studio with Camila Cabello? In this video, we see a young boy daydreaming of just that.
However, his dream is far from his everyday life, as we see him struggling to make friends at school and catching the attention of a girl he has a crush on. You as a viewer get to switch between reality and daydream as the story progresses.
We encourage you to watch the video until the end, to see the surprising ending in both dream and reality!
4. Coldplay – Ink
In the music video for their single Ink, Coldplay tells the story of an animated man and his lover. As you follow the man, you get a set of choices that will influence the story. It’s simplistic, yet beautiful. The ending doesn’t change. I know, spoiler alert. But your journey to get to that ending will be different based on your choices.
The stunning artistic style makes it impossible to look away. You will spend a good while looking at what would have happened if you had chosen one of the other options.
Are you ready for your romantic adventure?
3. ROME: Three Dreams of Black (music by Danger Mouse, Daniele Lupin & Norah Jones)
Are you ready for a trip to a beautiful, dark song?
This interactive film by Chris Milk is the music video for the song Black by Danger Mouse, Daniele Lupin & Norah Jones and is just that! You’ll be swept away through three dream worlds that have been created with 2D and 3D animations, as you control the protagonist’s point of view in the video with your cursor.
Make sure to watch till the end of the video, because you’ll be able to create your own animations with a 3D model creator that you can add to the shared collective dream. Pretty cool, huh?
2. Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling Stone
Have you ever had a song so stuck in your head that it almost seemed like you heard it everywhere?
Well, Bob Dylan’s innovative interactive music video embodies that feeling. In the music video for his song Like A Rolling Stone, you get to switch between channels on a television.
The twist is that everyone is lip-syncing to the song. Fighting reality TV stars, news anchors, and a TV chef together perform the best lip sync to date.
It is both fun and weird to be in this musical twilight song. Besides, seeing these awesome actors do perfect everyday stereotypes will easily make you spend hours skipping through channels.
Time to start looking for something to watch!
1. Kontra K – An Deiner Seite
What would you do if you were out fishing and found a dead body on the docks?
It is an unlikely scenario for most of us. I know I haven’t touched anything related to fishing since I was nine. But this video makes an intriguing murder mystery experience out of it.
In this music video by German rapper Kontra K for his song An Deiner Seite (On Your Side), you get to switch between the past and the present. (Don’t worry if your German is a little rusty, you can enable subtitles in the pause menu).
By switching at the right moments, you can collect up to five clues. These clues help the fisherman to figure out what events led up to the dead body on the docks. The amount of clues you collect influences what the fisherman thinks has happened and what happens at the ending is a direct consequence of your actions.
I won’t spoil any of the three endings, of course, but I can tell you that the cinematography is amazing. The duplicate shots on both timelines make the switching between them immensely fun. It almost feels like you’re playing a video game.
The stunning cinematography and the level of interactivity make us sure that this is the number one interactive music video. Besides, the fact that your actions determine the ending makes this video so much more interesting and fun to play with.
Let’s see how good of a detective you are!
Final Thoughts
We hope you have enjoyed these top five interactive music videos! It just goes to show how interactive videos have the potential to become immensely popular and that they are great to engage viewers.
We think it will be a matter of time before we will be seeing more artists experiment with this format. Curious to see which music videos we would like to see interactive? Check out our top 5 music videos that should have been interactive!
If you want to get some inspiration, check out hihaho’s possible interactions.
