Thursday, March 5, 2009
Cream Taylor Swift, Ricky Braddy, Tacos: Whole Lotta Thursdee, Nashville
Posted by Steve Haruch on Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 7:07 AM
* Do you realize that all CDs are 25 percent off at The Great Escape for the entire month of March? Let's see: There are 31 days in March. If you save 25 percent every day, that's basically like saving 775 percent. In a manner of speaking.
* Yesterday afternoon, the Scene office basically turned into one big Vice Records style cubicle-jerk when we discovered Ron Winter's drum kit.
* Nashville bands: Ever heard of the fucking INTERNETS? (Hint: You're on it right now, asshole.)
* In TV news: Taylor Swift will be on CSI tonight, playing someone who's young and troubled, or something, and I'm willing to bet there will be a crime scene that needs some investigating. If you know what I mean.
* Also in TV news, @thebraddybunch reports that their boy, Nashville dude Ricky Braddy, will sing for a wild card spot tonight on American Idol. Whatever that means!
* Tapes 'n Tapes throw down at Mercy Lounge tonight, whereas Shake It Like a Caveman re-invent the wheel at Springwater.
* Hope you got some free hot dogs yesterday.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
Y'know, I sold all 75 of the original pressing of my first cd and however many (20?) of the split tape with MACOS from Murfreesboro all through playing shows or word of mouth. I've never sold one thing on the internet at all. Now granted that's not that many in the grand scheme of things, but I defy the idea that a band that doesn't use the internet to the fullest extent is somehow selling themselves and their fans short.
I think a lot of people are just accustomed to the ease of being able to find anything on the internet (myself included). I can understand how a critic or a blogger would need more info to highlight an artist's release, but most methods of digital distribution kinda suck. I'm definitely one of those people that needs a copy in my hand.
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Discussion point on digital distribution: who's down with using BitTorrent as a distro technology? Right now the problem looks to me like high resolution audio requires bigger file sizes, which requires more bandwidth than is generally available right now. BitTorrent seems to address this problem pretty well, imho. What do you think?
@HighonLife, I don't disagree. If you can create a small number of physical copies and distribute them via word of mouth - great. However, I think the article is assuming that since you're on a website reading about Internet promotion, that it is something you are interested in. It's not meant to be a blanket statement for all bands.
I think BitTorrent is a good solution as well but that's a super niche audience of people that would even think to look there for a small bands release.
BitTorrent seems like a much more viable option than paying a company a lot of money for hosting, then in return getting a widget and a few e-mail addresses. You can accomplish the same thing with a Paypal account and hosting on multiple BitTorrent sites, although the one-stop convenience isn't there with that method. The only downside seems to be that if you're the one user that's got a file, it's gonna be a while before the download time is more manageable for downloaders.
And who needs PO boxes? Carrier pigeon is my preferred method.
@highonlife, Bandcamp costs exactly Zero dollars. Not sure what the risk / loss is there.
@Michael, that's pretty cool, sounds like a great deal. I was referring to a site that was featured on Cream a while back that offers the option of paying for a download or referring 3 email addresses to download for free. I can't remember the name off the top of my head. The initial fee they charged was WAY too much for the service in my opinion.
I think that was Noisetrade. It's like $250 or something crazy. Paying to give your music away.
@HighonLife, how about this as a way to spread the downloading load around: find folks within your band's fan base who will contract to be seeders for the privilege of having your record first?
They get first dibs, and a free copy of your record, or maybe some exclusive stuff, but they have to agree to leave their download going for a certain period of time or until they've uploaded so much data. You could even make it work with an LP-and-download-card deal.
Is that a fair deal, or is it shady? At what point do you get enough bang for your buck to make that worthwhile?
I agree that it would be a challenge to manage though. You don't have control over technical issues or much security. DRM is shitty, but at what point do you go to the honor system? We're essentially on one anyway, but in this scenario you're handing out records in a very ready-to-share format.
That sounds like a great idea. I'd definitely spring for a free LP if it meant leaving my account up and running for a while for others to get the material. That and there's always stuff like sharebee where they host it for you and you just provide a URL link for users to download it. A lot of music blogs use that for downloading obscure or out of print albums. A lot of them allow pretty high quality downloads as well.
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