Como Uma Banda De Rock Independente Starlet Fez O Maior Sucesso No Youtube Sem Mesmo Tentar

How Independent Rock Band Starlet Found Major Success on YouTube, Without Even Trying

It began, according to lore, on Jan. 1, 2013, with the reception of "The Message," a transmission emanating from a star in the Ophiuchus Constellation in the year 2047 that foretold the end of humanity -- and contained the required knowledge to avoid that fate. What followed was a series of events that could have been pulled straight from the pages of a Stephen King sci-fi thriller: The Message was delivered to Dr. Aston Wise, head of the mysterious Starset Society, setting off a chain reaction of violence and obsessive secrecy that resulted -- how else? -- in the formation of a four-piece art-metal band tasked with delivering this Message to the masses. That band was called Starset.

Led by singer/keyboardist Dustin Bates, Starset claims influences as diverse as Sigur Ros, Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park and the film Minority Report. And Bates -- principal songwriter on the group's debut album, Transmissions, released July 8, 2014 via Razor & Tie -- has a research background in the U.S. Air Force, a history teaching at the International Space University in France and a masters in electrical engineering from Ohio University. In other words, he's the perfect man to lead the charge against the end of humanity as we know it.

Or something like that. The reality is, regardless of how humanity eventually decides to hurl itself into oblivion, Bates and his coterie of cinematic doom prophets have a knack for skillful marketing that goes well beyond the scope of the usual music industry spin cycle. Beyond Transmissions -- essentially a Message-driven concept album which debuted at No. 49 on the Billboard 200 and has sold 79,000 copies in the U.S. to date, according to Nielsen Music -- the band maintains a website devoted entirely to the Starset Society that explains its origins, in the studies of Nikola Tesla; has released a graphic novel, The PROX Transmissions, explaining some of the back story of The Message; and has published a 250-page book of the same title detailing the history even further. Their performances are referred to as "demonstrations," complete with the band in spacesuits and masks and Bates controlling things from a large, transparent screen. Everything, in short, builds into the larger narrative.

As a marketing plan, it's certainly worked -- Transmissions peaked at No. 5 on Billboard's Hard Rock Albums chart upon release, while the band's biggest single to date, "My Demons," enjoyed the longest run to the top five of the Mainstream Rock Songs chart in history at 41 weeks, and spent more time on that chart than any other song in 2014.