Outspoken Group Releases Album as Free Download 457
SirNuke writes "Harvey Danger, a Seattle based rock band, has released their newest album Little by little for free mp3 download. They are doing this partially as an Internet publicity experiment, and partially as a stand against the Music Industry's attack on filesharing. From their website, 'In preparing to self-release our new album, we thought long and hard about how best to use the internet. Given our unusual history, and a long-held sense that the practice now being demonized by the music biz as "illegal" file sharing can be a friend to the independent musician, we have decided to embrace the indisputable fact of music in the 21st century, put our money where our mouth is, and make our record, Little By Little..., available for download via Bittorrent, and at our website. We're not streaming, or offering 30-second song samples, or annoying you with digital rights management software; we're putting up the whole record, for free, forever. Full stop. Please help yourself; if you like it, please share with friends.' I suggest you check it out."
jeff cliff (Score:5, Informative)
Also available in OGG (Score:5, Informative)
Patent-free Ogg Vorbis (Score:4, Informative)
Clap Clap Clap (Score:5, Informative)
MUSIC INDUSTRY BREAKDOWN: Where the money goes (Score:5, Informative)
For a standard artist (not yet established), out of every CD sold they receive about $0.20. For you non-math whizzes, that means when their album turns platinum (1 million copies sold), they bank $200,000. Seem low? It is, but we'll get to that.
For an established artist, there are 2 possibilities. The first is that they have their own label. If this is the case, they will still use one of the major labels for distribution, and they have to pay all those little people that made things happen, but they're pocketing more cash. The second possibility is that the record company convinced them to stay by offering a MUCH better contract, which ends up being about as much as having their own label minus the hassle.
But this still isn't a big portion of their income. That comes from several other sources.
ASCAP is The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. They dictate who can play your music, such as music at a bar or in a restaurant. They have a virtual monopoly on all genres of music (out of 100 established artists, maybe 1 or 2 are not signed with ASCAP), they are expensive, and they are about as well liked by the people that know them as the RIAA is here. Tactics include sending in "undercover agents" to places not paying ASCAP, and writing down the inevidable songs that they play. Then comes an agent, who will "aggressively suggest" that you pay up to ASCAP or be sued out of business. They've actually had people call the cops on them thinking it was a mafia shakedown. Oh, and they've never lost in court.
There's some issue over how much of that cash actually makes it to the artists, but rest assured it's much more than they're getting from their label for album sales.
Licensing of music is stepping up into a bigger payscale. This mostly refers to commercials, movies, and now video games. Obviously the pay scale varies widely based on the popularity of the artist and of the specific song, but there are virtually no costs for the artist.
Touring is where the money is really at. To give you an idea of how much, you need to understand what a "floor" is. This refers to the minimum amount an artist is willing to make in a performance. Let's take Britney Spears for example. Her "floor" is (or was, it constantly changes) $750,000. What this means is that if the show only makes $500,000, she still gets paid $750,000, and the organizers eat a loss of $250,000 plus production costs. Also keep in mind that organizers know what they're doing, and shows hardly ever hit the floor. So you can assume for her last tour, Britney pocketed $1+ million for each of the 37 shows on her last tour.
And that's just at the gate. Don't forget to buy your T-shirt, or poster, or anything else "Britney" that cost a dollar to make and $8/hr for some schmuck to sell it to you. All of that money goes straight back to her.
For the really big artists, you can cap it off with an endorsement or two. Britney's Pepsi endorsement deal was reportedly $10+ million.
Substatial evidence that music sharing doesn't effect album sales aside, there's a reason sharing music doesn't hurt artists. Singles act as commercials for all the other things that make them money. They want their music played on the radio so you can hear it for free. They want their video played on MTV so you can see it for free. It's called exposure, and it's a good thing like Martha Stewart doesn't even know. If an unsigned artist found out people had downloaded 100,000 copies of his song, he'd crap his pants he'd be so happy.
There's a reason Harvey Danger is willing to do this. It's also like VW letting people download their latest commercial. Good. It will probably make more people buy their cars.
It's not just a publicity stunt or moral stand, it's a brilliant financial move.
Simply incredible (Score:5, Informative)
For those who don't realize why this is a rather big deal, Harvey Danger was a fairly popular rock band from the late nineties. They're most known for Flagpole Sitta', off of the album Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?. That album and Kings James Version are both pretty decent and it's kind of sad the band has fallen to the wayside as of late. Hopefully this publicity will do something for them besides raise their bandwidth costs.
While the whole idea may not be entirely novel, they're still one of the few more popular bands that are offering a full album for download off of their site. Also their site doesn't have any terribly gaudy and annoying flash elements. Kudos for that.
Re:"as an Internet publicity experiment" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gimme a break... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmm whats their label ? (Score:3, Informative)
According to the RIAA, their most successful album, "Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?", was certified a Gold record in early 1999, which means it sold at least 500,000 copies. Since it wasn't upgraded to Platinum, that means it didn't sell as many as 1M. As the single for "Flagpole Sitta" from there hit #3 on Billboard's "Modern Rock Tracks" chart, they may have sold a good number of those as well. I suspect they're planted firmly in one-hit wonder territory myself, but it's quite possible they could have a lucky hit or something and sell 750,000 copies of the new album.
Related topic of lost revenue--not for artists (Score:2, Informative)
None of this advertising had any direct benefit to the artists that the MPAA claims to be protecting. You'd think we should have control over what we'd paid to see, though the MPAA obviously feels differently about it. It's clearly intended to create demand, and if there's any additional benefit to the artists, it's basically accidental. However, the part that really annoyed me was that all but one of the movies they were plugging were stupid ones without any relation to the feature film that we rented. The "featured advertisement" with the long trailer was actually for a totally annoying movie that I'd never heard of--probably one of those direct-to-DVD losers. The trailer totally failed to motivate renting or buying that garbage movie, and we didn't (and never will) watch the "free bonus" part of that garbage movie at the end.
Yeah and lets not forget... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Well, it worked with me... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How is this novel? (Score:4, Informative)
bt.etree.org (Score:5, Informative)
Again, this is a good thing that Harvy Danger is doing. It just makes me wonder why it took them so long (Maybe they had to wait for a contract to expire or something), other than the fact that they haven't had a hit in years and are probably desparate.
Easy to Contribute (Score:3, Informative)
And it's easy to contribute just by leaving your torrent on to upload for others. Even if you didn't like the album you can show your support for artists (and tweek the nose of the RIAA) who support free(dom) content by acting as seeders for the file.
Alternative? (Score:3, Informative)
And if they were to get into a contract with the RIAA they are shafted then for sure. At least this way an unknown band has a chance of making it to the top without having to sell their soul, and their fans can benefit in the mean time with free music.
You miss one glaringly obvious point (Score:4, Informative)
It is up to the artist and his or her representatives to decide which data to give away, and up to you to respect their wishes.
Quit whining and pay for your music (if the artist asks).
Re:bt.etree.org and jamedo.com (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.jamendo.com/ [jamendo.com]
Difference between BitTorrent and website bitrates (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Not only do they rock... (Score:3, Informative)
They performed (along with The Presidents of the United States of America) at the UW this week as part of a "welcome back" concert (pictures here [livejournal.com]... ironically enough, it was partially sponsored by Dell and Napster [theregister.co.uk]), and it wasn't until they played "Flagpole Sitta" that many people realized who they actually were. Most people claim they don't know them or "Flagpole Sitta," but I'm sure they'd recognize it if they heard it. That's not to say that's their only good song, though -- their entire set rocked.
Re:Why this is good... like you didn't already kno (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Decent band (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gee... sort of like mp3.com (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, I know I sounded like a weird PR spokesperson, but the band is not a bunch of unknowns. I wanted to make that sort of clear.
I'm interested to see where their sales will go. It looks like this band broke-up a couple of years ago and is now having another go at it without using any majors. I wish them the best, and if I like the album and they play a show around here, I will probably go see them.
Re:Great marketing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Who's going to buy it? (Score:2, Informative)