Suburban Home Records, when faced with the complexity and unpredictability of online consumer behaviour, have thrown their hands up and said ‘Oh go on… just download the album already’.
Sometimes the adaptation process takes a bit of a leap of faith, and it looks like these guys are ready to take it.
The fine folk at Suburban Home Records [via Indie HQ] have decided to embrace the very technologies that the major record labels decry, and so now you can download a 14-track sampler:
I Celebrate Their Entire Catalog.
This from a label who has just sent out entire album downloads to customers who have pre-ordered the vinyl or CD. That is… they’ve been given the download before the pre-ordered physical album is available. That’s kind of interesting, right?
But perhaps what’s interesting here is not that they’re giving the album away, but that they’re giving it away using the same tools that some people use to distribute unauthorised copies.
If you like what we do and what we are about, I encourage you to forward the YouSendIt link to anyone and everyone you know.Just copy and paste this url:
http://download.yousendit.com/7399CB6878C37021.Post it in your blog, send it out in a Myspace bulletin, burn it onto CDs and give them to your friends, hell text it to your Grandma. We want everyone and anyone to download the sampler.
As they put it: “If we hope to be releasing new music years from now, it is only natural that we adapt to the many changes that are happening.”
But what comes next? Is it possible to see what’s on the other side of this, do you just have to get it out there and hope for the best? I mean… it’s not as if giving your album away for free is remarkable enough to get you onto the front page of the Guardian or the LA Times anymore. It’s hardly even noteworthy, outside the confines of the blogosphere.
I’ve heard people say that giving music away for free has just ruined it for the rest of us. I’ve heard that there’s no point giving it away for free because it’s just a gimmick that no longer works. And I’ve heard that now that free albums are a mundane practice, there’s just no question about it: you just give it away because that’s just the minimum standard expectation these days.
Where do you stand on this? And, I suppose most importantly… what do you think of the record?
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6 Comments
Giving music away is a great way to promote yourself and a cheap way to discover what your key demographics are if you take the time to set it up this way. Why not “give” music away in exchange for doing a 10 question survey?
If someone you give it to identifies with your music they will spend money on you and spread the “idea” of you. If they don’t like it you’ve lost nothing. So it doesn’t matter if you choose to give it away or sell it, what matters is that you have a way to monetize the relationship once it is established.
Problem with Yousendit is that the file has an expiration – and that link has expired.
Ive been using a similar site http://www.senduit.com to offer free downloads of my album of contemporary piano music (“utterly spellbinding” Birmingham Post!) for some time, but the link has to be renewed and replaced once a week.
What I havent really done yet is pasted a link for the page http://www.richbatsford.com/?page_id=5 around the web a lot and sendt it around via email.
I would think some sort of hopefully viral style email with an MP3 sample embedded in it might be the way to go.
Of course a major issue is taking the time to do these things. I may pursue this more on my forthcoming break in the sun. In the meantime I have had an encouraging chat with my target label “Just Music” who have said that – were they to take an interest in releasing my music – they wouldnt mind at all that I had been distributing myself in the meantime – theyd just ask me to stop doing so as and when they make me an offer.
Now to send that CD ..
Rich
Xx
Just curious why you guys are using expiring links to distribute your music. It’s self defeating. I’ve gone to both Suburban Home Recordings and Rich Batsford sites to hear the music (and I’m very willing to pay if I like it!) But you’ve shot yourselves in the foot because your links don’t work and I’m unlikely to come back in a week to see if they do.
Why not just offer straight links to your files (without all this expiring garbage) and a PayPal donation page to accept payments?
the reason people have to use links that ‘expire’ is because the only other way is to pay for the bandwidth yourself. which most people can’t afford to do – and if your download is successful then you’re really screwed. it’s all very well having a donation link to paypal, but until landlords offer a donation service, one can’t afford to see whether people are prepared to donate!
I don’t think bandwidth costs are a realistic issue these days, I use http://www.bluehost.com and pay around 7us a month for 2048000 MB of bandwidth (and the same amount for storage space).
I make my latest three songs available for direct link download at the top of my homepage, and these songs usually get between 3-4000 unique downloads per month, I can afford $7 a month for that kind of distribution – no problem.
My back catalogue is available only to registered users (free and easy) which is to make sure the bulk of my music is only downloaded by those actively seeking it. The top three tunes do a very good job of grabbing peoples interest, and of course I encourage new users to pass the link/tune on if they enjoy it.
I also offer other media, such as tutorial videos and Ableton Live “packs” ( http://www.ableton.com ) which can be up to 100 meg each, again all for free.. and I have only exceeded my cap once, when I had close to 7000 downloads of my first Ableton Live pack which was made freely available to those looking to jump start into the world of live laptop performance. That was one of the best promotional moves I have ever made, and it was worth the excess data 100 times over.
So, I don’t think bandwidth costs is a valid excuse for not direct linking high quality music.
-Tom
http://www.cosm.co.nz
You still have an option with archive.org…
You upload the files up there and leave them free for download?!