I'm not sure of their actual commercial performance, but their cultural impact is widespread in the US. To the Pitchfork/Coachella crowd they're living legends and RAM was perhaps the most anticipated album this year.
"This video contains content from WMG, SME, Dance all Day, CD Baby, Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that."
Not the best quality, but it works.
Interstella 5555 was co-produced by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato, Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999...), by the way, who Daft Punk were huge fans of as children. Need I say any more?
In theory yes, but it happens more often than you'd think. A lot of editors cut to music - if the score isn't available, they'll often cut to some classical piece that can be freely used as a basis for the score without copyright worries. It's an easy way of making sure your edit has rhythm.
I guess you'll just have to take it with a grain of salt.
While a fan of their stuff, I actually hate "Get Lucky"...
http://www.billboard.com/artist/300085/daft-punk/chart?sort=...
And even more for their albums in their genre
http://www.billboard.com/artist/300085/daft-punk/chart?f=322...
I also would have liked Get Lucky to have more of Daft Punk in it. As it is, I can only tell it is a DP song the last half minute of so when the vocoder section starts.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_%28Daft_Punk_s...
[2] http://www.nme.com/list/150-best-tracks-of-the-past-15-years...
I know and love Daft Punk as well, but by these and other commercial objective measures they are obscure. Daft Punk are famous in some circles, and unknown in others. In particular, Get Lucky has achieved chart success previously unknown to Daft Punk, which is interesting and makes one wonder how they broke through this time and not before.
There was a pretty nice fervor surrounding their involvement in the Tron soundtrack as it was their first new work in 5 years. It went gold and peaked at number 4 in the billboard charts - not the dance charts, not soundtrack, the billboard 200. And that was just a soundtrack.
Stronger was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 - it features a Daft Punk sample; they were even in the single's music video.
They may not be the hottest act globally, but they are a well established band that transcended its own subculture.
"second rank" might be more fitting.
By changing their sound and style.
What? I'm not sure if this is just a US perspective but Daft Punk are very well known this side of the Atlantic (Ireland/UK).