Releasing a new album! Tell me your thoughts!

July 18, 2009 in Music, Printing | 6 comments

Good god.  I’ve been too busy lately even to write about all the stupid things I’m doing.  I’ll do some sort of round-up at some point.

So, here we are.  The Monroe Transfer‘s new album (title to be announced pretty soon, if we’re all happy with it) is approaching the stage where we’re thinking about how to release it.  If you’ve seen or, god forbid, actually bought one of our releases, you’ll know that we do our level best to package our CDs as interestingly as we can- we print all our artwork by hand, using screen printing, letterpress and foil stamping, and we try to make a physical object that’s worth buying.  In this day and age, of course, it’s particularly hard to persuade anyone to buy music, when they can just get it for free, anonymously, on the internet.

The other day I had a think about all this, and an idea occurred; I genuinely don’t know if it’s a good idea, but I’d very much like to hear your opinion, dear reader.

The Idea
If I were in marketing, I suppose I might call this a release strategy, or something. Essentially the plan involves releasing our record in 2 formats:

1.  A CD, which will be housed in a hand-printed sleeve, with lots of nice bits of artwork and pleasingly tactile materials.  You’ll be able to buy it from us over the internet, possibly through a few interested shops, and direct from us at gigs.

2.  An MP3 version, which will be released for free on the internet.  At the beginning of this version will be a little voiceover, to say something along the lines of…

‘Thanks for downloading the free version of our album.  You’re free to distribute it as long as you leave this voiceover at the beginning; if you enjoy listening to the record, and you’d like us to be able to make another one, please consider buying a copy from our website- because we’re self-funded, you’ll be supporting us directly, and we’ll be able to carry on making music.  Thanks for your time.’

…and then the album begins.

So here is where I want your thoughts:

1. Do you think it’s a good idea?
2. Can you think of any problems that I might have missed?
3. Tangentially- how much are you happy to pay for an album these days?

If you, dear reader, can spare the time to leave your thoughts below, I’d really appreciate it.  Don’t worry, the blog will soon be back to my usual blend of narcissism and pedantry.

n xoxox

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  1. Joanna Pinto’s avatar

    Joanna Pinto on July 19, 2009 at 12:46 pm

    Have you read the article in the current issue of “Wired” about music downloading and distribution in China and in Brazel? It talks about a couple of interesting / evolving ways to distribute music.

  2. Paulie Tuttle’s avatar

    Paulie Tuttle on July 19, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    Hey,

    It is a good “strategy” to allow people to have a easier access to your music, but I find very hard to believe that the people that download it for free will then pay for it.
    And I don’t assume here that they are not willing to help, or are greedy.
    I anticipate that most people won’t Pay for it out of pure lazyness. (unfortunetly a lot of people are not interested by the package, and those who are will probably buy it anyway)

    A solution to that problem could be to motivate them in putting a slightly different music content If you proposed them to download two time the same stuff the majority won’t bother because it’s boring…

    Can’t wait for its release, no matter how.
    Cheers

  3. nick’s avatar

    nick on July 19, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    Hey Jo. I’ve not read it, in fact- I might have to pop down out and get it. Always a good idea to pinch ideas from Wired…

  4. nick’s avatar

    nick on July 19, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    Hey Paulie; thanks for the comment.

    The problem that we (and, I guess, nearly all recording musicians) face is that once one person copies a CD and makes it available in a public forum, there’s very little incentive for *anyone at all* to buy it. My thinking behind the distributable/voiceover-version is that it’s one way to try to discourage someone from ripping a CD: at least this way there’s a plea to be a nice person at the beginning of the record.

    I do like the idea of having some stuff released for free, and extra stuff when you buy a copy, but then we’re back to the same problem of it only taking one person to rip that extra content and the need to buy vanishes. Maybe a combination of the two? Have a voiceover-introduced version, with most of the tracks, but not all of them?

  5. Neil’s avatar

    Neil on July 19, 2009 at 11:18 pm

    I think the main problem with a voiceover is that people don’t like being preached to, especially about downloading. This could make the whole idea counterproductive with people listening to it thinking, ‘not more bloody musicians moaning about downloading’, then playing something else.

    Plus, from an artistic view point, the voiceover will inevitably form part of the soundscape and dent the integrity and clarity of the album.

    Going back to Joanna’s point on distribution, and Paulie’s point about lazyness, surely the main focus should be on making the physical product as widely distributed and easily accessible as possible. I think this link might be something to do with what Joanna was talking about RE: China and Brazil: http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/12/china-the-futur.html

  6. Duncan’s avatar

    Duncan on August 10, 2009 at 11:29 pm

    Would the voiceover be over the beginning of the track, or before the beginning? I’ll assume the latter.

    Presumably the voiceover would be at the beginning of _every_ track (assuming the album HAS tracks) since music is often shared as tracks instead of as whole albums. Clearly nobody would want such a prefixed track to come up on shuffle etc. (the adverts every couple of songs on free spotify are just about bearable), and so would either chuck it in frustration, keep it but always end up skipping past it, or (with the slightest fragment of internet skills) trim it, if they liked it enough to keep it.

    My question would be, what do you hope to achieve by introducing this inconvenience? If one person shares the trimmed version, you now have two versions floating around in cyberspace. The Wisdom Of Crowds would, in principle, weed out the ‘prefixed’ versions of the tracks (which are marginally less desirable).

    A specific question: what sort of person would you expect to have their behavior changed by this scheme, what would be the nature of that change and what specifically would prompt the change?