Give away your music for Free? Or commercialise it only as usual?
Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 2:48 pm

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Hi, I've been helping out a musician friend of mine over the last year in a semi management role.

He's got the talent, and artistic flair, but I give him some direction, businesses advice and try and keep him focused... He's formed his own label and is the sole shareholder/director, so very small scale at this stage.

He has produced and paid for everything himself (through part-time jobs and the artists dole), so there are no record labels involved taking their cut at this stage.

We've had a few debates lately about his upcoming album, as to whether this is released free to the public through his website, or sold.

Radiohead have done this very successfully and Ryan Adam releases a ton of free stuff through his website also. Radiohead made a lot of money through donations people made through their website. However both are very big well know artists.

The album will be sold in music stores through a major distributor. However I think people may be pissed off if they buy the CD and find out they could have downloaded it for free. He believes people want the actual physical product and will be happy to pay for it, even if they have already downloaded the album. He also thinks giving it away free will really help develop a loyal and loving fan base. He would have a donation option on the website, so hoping to recover some funds that way.

The main goal really is to make enough money to pay for the recording costs, and allow him to produce another album. Well really it is to be rich and famous and live like a rockstar, but we'll see.

SO really I just wanted to see what thoughts people had about this? Many businesses give away free e-books, web seminars, product samples etc, this is just taking a similar approach really but in a different and super competitive industry. I think if he is giving away the CD for free as a download, he'd really need to add value to the physical CD, whether by including extra tracks, music video, CD booklet etc But otherwise I am still confident enough in his music for even without these to be OK.

Thanks a lot, oh and you if you want you can check out the music yourself and download the first single for free here http://www.thesteviestarr.com

There was also this week an article on this: http://digg.com/music/Raging_against_the_machine

RE: Give away your music for Free? Or commercialise it only as usual?
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 10:42 am

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If he paid for it himself using the dole then we have already given him our money for it.

RE: Give away your music for Free? Or commercialise it only as usual?
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 11:57 am

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Actually he was only on the benefit for a short period (and thus on Standing Ovation's books), the rest of the time he was working (to pay for this album).

There is a reason that there is social welfare, in such a recession as this I think you would understand that.

It is near impossible to do much on the so called artists dole other than the usual cliched indie tweed crap. Originality means experimenting in the studio which is expensive (hence him having had to work to fund it). And if he didn't care about art he would have just written a song about a girl called Sally who is skanking or some 'Who is my shaker booty?' song

Also he had no fundiing for this album so any time spent on the unemployment benefit between jobs (where he had to work to fund his music) compared to all those bands getting govt grants, NZ On Air, music video funding etc (which means we have definitely already paid for their music) is hardly comparable compared to being on the dole for any period of time.

Anyway visit his site http://www.thesteviestarr.com and by all means download the track and listen to it...

RE: Give away your music for Free? Or commercialise it only as usual?
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:00 pm

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If you give it away for free, I think you're deluding yourself that people are going to buy the album if they like it. Chances are, those willing to download music from a website are just going to chuck it onto their MP3 player anyway, so they won't have a use for the actual physical CD.

I agree that you'll have to include something pretty special with the CD to encourage people to buy it.



So you're saying we shouldn't pay for music if the artist has received any form of government assistance? In that case, all NZ music should be free.

RE: Give away your music for Free? Or commercialise it only as usual?
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:20 pm

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Giving it away and expecting to get a return... hmmmm, don't think so... unless the music is that mind-blowingly-amazing that people will flock in droves to the live shows and pay for tickets and merch to an extent that it recoups the production costs.

RE: Give away your music for Free? Or commercialise it only as usual?
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 2:29 pm

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Kraven the reason he is giving it away for free is for people to actually have a chance to listen to it and see if they like it and some people have already donated for the track. So it is having some success, but thanks for the feedback though...

K.I.N.G download it and see what you think, also check out his Myspace http://www.myspace.com/thesteviestarr where there are some more tracks that will be released officially in June.

By the way the album release party is on Thursday June 18th at Mighty Mighty so yes he knows that he has to do the hard yards and play a lot live also and he is going to be touring later in the year.

RE: Give away your music for Free? Or commercialise it only as usual?
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 11:52 pm

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