I’m talking specifically about music marketing…. What is it that makes you buy a physical copy, a download or just keep streaming? The reason I’m askng this now is that I’ve just seen a technique that I haven’t seen before and I think it’s a good one. The Molotovs, have, for the first week of release, made the download of their debut album, a ‘deluxe’ version with addition of a live set and sold it for £4.99. Sold! No thought required! It’s a technique that used to be employed in the old days (eg free single with the initial quantities of an album – or the other way round in the case of Elvis Costello!)
These days I usually use Spotify and buy (or more often not buy) the physical album or download later or at a gig.
What would/might tempt me to buy more downloads? Certainly the sleeve notes/lyrics etc as a PDF.
Any more ideas that work on you or you think might work on you (and others)?
Which sales techniques work on you?
Although I have decent enough record deck, I rarely use it any more and have long stopped buying vinyl. So the only reason I ever buy a download is when the band or artist decide they are too cool to issue their latest on cd. Happens rather too often, with prohibitive shipping costs from the US or Oz another reason. Of course I then rip to cd-r.
I would be the opposite. Buy a CD and then rip it and hardly use the physical piece of plastic again. The resultant files will be lossless and sound the same anyway.
As for what would I buy on downloads. Box sets, where they want several hundred dollars for them and all the music is available for $50 or $60 as a download that’s what I will do. Recent examples Springsteen (Tracks II) and the Nick Drake set. You don’t get a nice book that I might look at a few times and they take up no space. I did buy Nebraska 82 physically because it was a very fair price (and then ripped the files)
I still invest in physical copies of DJ mixes in particular: recent purchases are the Joris Voorn and Anna Global Underground sets and John Digwee’ds Live In London. So the scarcity model works on me – I can’t but think I’ll be able to listen to say Four Tet’s last album somewhere in the future whatever happens. DJ mixes inevitably have licensing issues as a potential future reason to withdraw them from streaming.
The only time I ever buy physical product these days is to support the artist at a gig, and I have never and would never pay for a download. (I don’t do dodgy downloads either, I just stream with rare exceptions.)
I was speaking to a very accomplished female singer after an excellent gig last year, enquiring if she had any CDs.
She said no, she’d never released any recordings, because she couldn’t really see much point in it.
She said it’s an expensive and time-consuming thing to record and release music to the standard she’d like to be known for. And it would be quite a long time before she recouped the outlay if she did. She just wasn’t really interested.
Is it possible for anyone apart from well-established stars to make money from music these days?
There still persists the myth that getting signed by a label will make you rich, but mostly it just makes you indebted to your label and having to keep touring to try and pay off what you owe and keep going.
It’s certainly possible to make some money without a major label, although the old model of touring a album release is less viable. I’ve seen a band go from street busking to back to back tours of the US and Europe, where live receipts are as important as streaming (songs released individually), merch and a limited amount of physical product. They aren’t signed to a major label, and most of what they make goes back into the band but they are making a living.
Legacy acts like Blue Oyster Cult stopped releasing albums because they thought it wouldn’t make money but as they now acknowledge, they didn’t understand modern recording processes and marketing, and they released 2 more albums thanks to Richie Castellano’s technical prowess. What they lack now (and fair play, the 2 original band members are over 80) is new material or the momentum to record it.
I only really buy second hand items from the 60s or 70s or re-issues on CD box or on vinyl. The only new things I tend to buy- with very few exceptions- (usually on vinyl) are by previously-loved artists like the Waterboys or Macca etc.
Physical, the cheapest option (CDs), as it’ll always be there… and now is the time to buy, buy, buy. Forget vinlys, CDs are as cheap as chips.
Streaming (is that ‘Alexa’? – well it is to me) works if I don’t have the physical version, but how do I know if what I’m listening to is the real deal?
I raced through Clouds by boringjoni recently to reason if I really wanted to keep a physical version of it I had (I didn’t) and ‘Both Sides Now’ was a recent live recording. Would those who hadn’t heard that LP cotton on to that fact? I doubt it.
CD over download for me. I like to see what I have, rather than rely on memory.
Will always try and buy direct if I can (even though I’m patently aware the order may be fulfilled by a third party supplier).
Crowd funding is a way foward for many – gives a feeling of contribution, and a weird pride seeing your name in the printed “Thanks to:” section of the CD booklet.
For SDE-style album reissues, a multimedia virtual box set would be good. You pay £XX and get your hi res files and streams, plus Atmos mix or whatever, video archives, and an ebook with essays, archive images etc.
Broadly, just telling me it exists is enough, then I’ll decide if I want it. I loath advertising beyond that. If it’s something I absolutely love I might fall for the demos etc knowing I’ll play them twice. Currently I’m buying old vinyl albums on eBay. My bid on a mint copy of No Roses is currently looking good.
CDs lots of the blighters. Streaming fills in the gaps, it helps me to check albums out and if I like it enough I’ll buy a hard copy. It’s also a convenient way to download albums onto my DAP for listening when I’m out and about. I don’t have a tendency towards hype so advertising has very little effect upon my buying habits. I listen and if I like it I buy it, nothing more complicated than that. At least with streaming the days of buying blind and crossing one’s fingers are gone unless you enjoy amassing cardboard sleeves containing a unlistenable reminder of eternal regret.
I go to my online vendor (NOT Amazon), select music/CDs and click on the “Upcoming Releases” tab, then scroll through and put anything that takes my fancy in my virtual cart.
When I’m done “pre-ordering” I click the “Latest Releases” tab and scroll through that just to make sure I haven’t missed some album since the last time I pre-ordered.
The albums I hear of (here or in print) and want, but doesn’t appear at my online shop, or only on vinyl, I write down on a list and a few times a year I go to Spotify to listen to them. I listen intensely for a few days or a week, then I leave Spotify alone until I have enough new names on my list.
Or occasionally I’ll listen to a new album, unavailable on CD, via YouTube.