Microsoft Songsmith Commercial
Duker91Cited 5× on HN, 2009–2020
other · general · 2009–2020 on HN
A promotional commercial for Microsoft Songsmith, software that generates backing music from a vocal recording. The ad became widely known for its awkwardness.
HN cites it as an infamous example of terrible advertising, though a few mention how big a splash it made in 2009.
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5 comments from Hacker News
Also, to follow up, the introduction campaign for Songsmith is one of the worst things I've ever seen ▶ this video
Do you mean SongSmith? That wasn't 1990s, more like 2009, but made quite a splash at the time with their famous video commercial. link ▶ this video
The commercial for Songsmith was one of the worst things I'd ever seen: ▶ this video I really wish your comment hadn't reminded me of it :)
Microsoft has a long history of terrible advertising. Here's ballmer in a tacky suit selling windows 1.0: link Windows 386 (second half, bear with it): link Songsmith: ▶ this video And of course, the absolute worst: link
This is a much better promotional tool for songsmith than that 'internal' video microsoft put out a few weeks ago. ▶ this video this is actually appearing to be a pretty amazing product.