"Sales figures" for chip releases? (Page 4 of 12)

As much as I love free music, I disagree with this argument. It seems to suggest that you should only get paid for stuff you don't enjoy doing, and frankly that's depressing. I still buy records, and I'm grateful that new records are still available for purchase. I'm happy to support the effort put forth by artists to create a quality piece of work.

fwiw, iimusic puts out quality free releases AND quality releases you must pay for.  I've enjoyed both from this label.

Some people are narrowing music to "the music business" (that is dying as it is anyway), think music as art and it totally changes the way you distribute the goods. Museums dont look for revenue and they survive by donations and support by government or NGOs, and they only try to bring art to the masses even if they "lose money" doing it. As a curator that's the way i try to do things when i decide to put a new album in the label, just amplifying the voice of and artist and trying to preserve their music for the future (as corny as it sounds).

im a big fan of giving away 1/2 the album free...
and having the other 1/2 a download for $$$

if the music isnt good, it was a free preview, no loss.
but if it is really good, it will continue to entice you
until you are forced to buy the whole album ;D

People should be free to charge for physical albums without ridicule, due to the time and expenses involved in mastering, cover design, and printing. And many people still buy and prefer buying a CD, because it is the most direct way of saying, "I love your stuff, I want to hear more in the future."

As far as digital downloads, Band Camp-style is the future for this. People can preview the entire album (or whatever portion you allow). Then, if someone has a serious connection or response to the music, they can download it and pay whatever they'd like (even $0), not for the bits of data, but for the enjoyment experienced and to directly support the artist.

And keep in mind, the chip community "free music" philosophy is about 5-10 years ahead of the rest of the world, or else iTunes would not earning $3.6 BILLION a year.

When I made my first album, the thing I heard the most was, "How can I buy this?" or "How can I buy the CD?" Of course, these are just regular people, not high-minded chip auteurs.

People like to support artists they really enjoy, and the biggest difference between chip and mainstream artists is, they can support you directly, and you can enhance their experience by being accessible. This is something of immense value that I think chip people overlook - there is a lot of value in being able to talk to your favorite chip artist on a forum, email, or Facebook. Who will a fan support more, some untouchable celeb or some guy they can drink with after a show?

OK, the truth is I required email because Bandcamp recommended it, and it seems to be the norm among Bandcamp downloads, but I've been thinking the same thing you just said and just needed someone else to say it. I'm going to remove the restriction from my downloads and just add a small text file to my EP that tells people where they can go to sign up for my mailing list if they wish to. Thanks for the advice.

Edit: No more email address - http://decktonic.bandcamp.com/album/ret … y-promo-ep

Last edited by Decktonic (Jun 24, 2010 5:17 pm)

im totally with CDK and rushcoil.

Here is my obnoxious businessman 101 side: From the web, at this level you need to look at downloads as a marketing tool, not necessarily a product: you want to make it as easy to get people interested in your music as possible. Since there is little or no production costs to you per download, there is no reason not to make listening free for a potentially interested person. That said, including the option to pay for it is easy and not obnoxious to the listener. The idea is to get people to shows, or to be interested in value-added stuff which you DO sell: CDs, LPs, Tshirts, whatever.

Now, at shows, you definitely want to have a physical product of some sort. At the boston8bit show last night, disasterpeace sold like 8 CDs and facundo/jdd3j/cream in all mustache sold out of what they brought. And this is all to "fans"; not scene people at all, cuz' no offense, but scene people are cheap (and as mentioned, totally saturated). We (bright primate that is) have actually been doing REALLY well with selling download cards (from bandcamp, natch) at shows, and have *sold out* our batch of 200 from febuary. We do a "pay what you want" model for the download cards (which look awesome), and people usually pay from anywhere from $5-$20 (seriously) for a DOWNLOAD CARD of music that they know is freely available online (but if they only have a dollar, we'll give it to them for that too)

Now, I'm really passionate about the availability of free music online, but I think that its because we play a lot of shows and are really visible that the model that we use works for us. I can definitely understand how artists that are less inclined to tour would want to use the web as a marketplace instead of a marketing-place, so its damn tricky (especially with people like myself undercutting the market with free shit). So even though I'm high-and-mighty about free music, I never would look down on someone for exclusively selling their music online, provided they aren't being too obnoxious about it, and I think that most people would agree with me on that. We all need to find what works for us I guess.

*edit* Also, i think this thread is far from a shitstorm and has been a great exchange of ideas on how to get stuff out there. thanks too all for good ideas, imma prolly steal some ;D

Last edited by BR1GHT PR1MATE (Jun 24, 2010 5:07 pm)