Look At Free Music, Look How It Drives Web Traffic To You….

May 1st, 2008 at 5:58 pm

Let’s not forget these are ESTABLISHED acts, not totally new artists. Money is still needed to promote and build a fanbase. Music SALES will still be a factor for up and coming Music Stars…

May 1st, 2008 at 6:05 pm

Sorry but as usual web 2.0 “gurus” only understand a small portion of the real story. The economics of the current web simply don’t support a web 2.0 utopian view of content creation. Great content produced by a business requires real business models, not “put adsense next to it” business models. Adsense is by far the most efficient way to monetize reference content, and it simply does not, and cannot, pay enough to create expert, authoritative, edited content. A few rules:
1. When people are in “listening mode” they dont give a shit about ads on the page.
2. Perceived value is value. Paid content monetizes better then ad-driven content for content which is valuable.

May 1st, 2008 at 6:23 pm

“poorly executed”? give me a break.

May 1st, 2008 at 6:28 pm

Everyone loves to go for something which is good and free rather than paying for it. No wonder why everyone is running for Google these days.

May 1st, 2008 at 7:07 pm

“300,000 people Coldplay can now market albums, concerts and merchandise to.”

OK so now they can market free albums to 300,000, no revenue there since apparently no one will eventually pay for music.

So t-shirts, stickers and concerts are the only legit source of revenue I guess, and if you’re a band that doesn’t perform live or sell your name on a t-shirt?

I don’t know if these articles are here to sort of help people rationalize stealing via piracy or what. Because if it’s supposed to be helpful advice, it affects like maybe 5 readers that create music on the scale that this advice would even help if it were good advice.

Everyone, I would imagine, is aware that free things drive traffic.Popular free things even more so. Thinking in Java, The Purple Cow thing, I mean none of this is news. But however many successes of ‘free’ will never mean there aren’t other completely legitimate business models for different kinds of artists or authors or whatever kind of content creator.

May 1st, 2008 at 7:19 pm

@Morgan

I think you’re leaving out the profit margins associated with t-shirts and concert tickets. A $20 t-shirt costs AT MOST $10 to make, leaving $10 in profit, give or take. Compare that to a the $1.40 that David Byrne of the Eagles says most artists make from an iTunes sale (http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all). Then think about the amount an artist like Coldplay makes from a $50 ticket. Unfortunately I have zero idea how much they get from that, but if they get the same 14% from a ticket sale that they do from an iTunes album sale, that’s $7 per ticket x 5,000 seats in an amphitheatre x a 25-date US tour = $875,000 profit from ticket sales alone.

I think anyone commenting and writing about the state of the music industry really needs to Steve Albini’s essay called “The Problem With Music”

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

May 1st, 2008 at 8:02 pm

duncan…

you obviously have biases towards the “web 2.0″ koolaid!

your comment regarding radio play, was along the same thought process as your former comment regarding “Prince”!! alot of noice, and very little actual rigorous substance/analysis.

for whatever reason, radiohead stated that what they tried was not going to change the game, and it was a one time deal. as far as i can tell, if it had been wildly successful, from a financial standpoint, it would have been continued.

you guys somehow believe that music/content should be free, and the artist should somehow fend for themselves…

puhleze!!

peace

May 2nd, 2008 at 1:42 am

Yes, giving free music away will drive traffic to you, but only if you have enough fans. And how to you get that many fans, by selling your music, touring and promotion etc… (The usual)

So to give away music for free and make it a success, you already have to be a successful band.

The only people you will impress and get to sign up is people who otherwise wouldn’t buy your music, but might just listen to it on the radio and like it. I think there is a very small percentage of this new traffic you will get from your free give-away that will actually go away and buy the album as a result.

Most of the people who do buy the upcoming album would have probably bought the new album regardless of whether the last track was free or not.

Overall I’d say a pretty pointless task unless you are famous enough for people to give a shit, and even then your only going to attract people who don’t like you enough to pay for your music.

Having said this Coldplay are playing a few free gigs which they are paying for themselves, so I’m sure that the Free music was more a way of attracting people for the Free gig they have coming, rather than a way of generating more sales.

May 2nd, 2008 at 2:54 am

Oh and who the heck is Dr. Sam and the Frivolous Action Blues Band? Has anyone been to this site? Its a joke.

May 2nd, 2008 at 4:58 am

I’m another perplexed by the statement that Radiohead’s free release was a poorly executed publicity stunt. Clarification?

May 2nd, 2008 at 8:53 am

I did this with the first album of my band three years ago. It worked. It got the band attention, local press and helped build the fan base. So I can argue (with proof) that this works for all acts that actually perform live, regardless of status. To build a b(r)and with little money, you MUST remove all obstacles to spreading the music, including the burden of making a purchase. If you have Sony behind you, you obviously don’t need to do that, but how many acts start there anyway?

If anyone cares, the band is at http://myspace.com/diepilot. I no longer manage them.

May 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 am

How many bands have free music on Myspace that we’ve never heard of and will never hear? Some of the bands are probably good, but we won’t hear them until a label signs them, or they get some sort of exposure other than the free music they offer.

May 2nd, 2008 at 12:33 pm

@9Mike– New Kids on the Block is BACK! New single goes to air in a couple weeks, and they’ll be performing on one of those morning shows as their first live performance together in 15 years. Not saying you should care…

@Bill Gates–Who cares if people don’t put in accurate information? The people who do put bogus information would ignore the marketing anyway. It’s just another “opt-in” method–help the people who DO care find out more about the band, ignore those who ignore you.

If you want a remarkable indie music success story with some mild similarities, look to The Format. They got dumped by their major label, put the severance cash towards making an album the way they wanted to, shunned later offers from other majors in favor of self-releasing, sold mp3s for $7.99 online (the one success story SnoCap had), debuted at #77 on Bilboard (highest ever debut for someone not on a label, if I’m not mistaken), and a year later gained even more fans by giving the mp3s away to anyone who joined their mailing list (many hundreds of thousands of downloads). Pretty impressive.
If you want more on their tale, e-mail me at tyson.v.white at gmail.

May 4th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

very good

May 8th, 2008 at 4:08 am

Yes, giving free music away will drive traffic to you. Free things always attract more visitors and higher rank. I like it. I think it would be success in executing.

May 31st, 2008 at 10:10 am

These results are nice of course, but it’ s good to realise that the research was very small- scaled. Seven schools were observed, two of which as a control- group, and the other five were the schools that had a good music program. The author is also not very clear about the nature of the music educational programs that were offered. It seems rather plausible that learning to read music from paper will stimulate the abbillity to think abstractly, so would making music without learning to read notes have the…