November 17, 2008

The gist of the concept: We give away more free content the more pre-orders we receive. The fans "unlock" levels of content by getting more fans to pre-order. The goal is to give the fans incentive to spread the word, post our widget on their Myspace and Facebook pages, blogs, etc. In just over a week, we've sold out of our 1000 deluxe packages, and have taken more pre-orders than any release in our 11 years as a band.

November 11, 2008

Yet in all of these cases, "experiment" is probably a misnomer --there's no "control group" receiving the placebo treatment. Absent a trip to a parallel universe where you could buy Kid Rock's last album (or the single) from the iTunes store, we really don't know for certain if Kid Rock helped or hindered his total sales. (It's possible, of course, that some record companies have been using control groups of some sort. You could make an album available in iTunes for a specific country or region, and compare sales to those in non-iTunes regions. Though the demographics and fan bases probably aren't identical across regions, so you're still guessing somewhat...)

And even if we knew for certain if an individual experiment was a relative success, it's not necessarily transferable. Just because something worked for Radiohead doesn't mean it would work for R.E.M. Further, in addition to the non-interchangeable nature of audiences and albums, the music retail environment itself is changing on a daily basis.

Yet music is art, not science, and even if these different business tests aren't controlled, repeatable experiments, there does seem to be a few obvious takeaways. One thing that seems certain is that for acts of a certain stature, deviations from the standard sales approach will result in increased attention, perhaps enough to generate additional sales. Offering free music certainly seems to have helped Trent Reznor SELL a lot of music, music that is readily available for no charge. And maybe AC-DC's new album wouldn't be selling as well without the promotional push behind the Wal-Mart exclusive.

1. Keep It To Yourself - free mp3
2. Where The Conversation Ends - free mp3
3. All Around The World - free mp3
4. On Any Given Saturday - free mp3
5. January - free mp3
6. Come Back Home - free mp3
7. Note On The Door - free mp3
8. Too Little Too Late - free mp3
9. The Space Between I - free mp3
10. The Space Between II - free mp3

November 03, 2008

Keep It To Yourself -- free mp3

All Around The World -- free mp3

January -- free mp3

October 30, 2008

- If your track is played on our free radio service you will accrue a 10% of the Share of Last.fm's Net Revenue (see the definition of "Share" and "Net Revenue" in the terms and conditions) from the free radio service.

- If your track is played on our personalised premium radio service, you will accrue the greater of either 10% of the Share of Last.fm's Net Revenue from the personalised radio service, or US $0.0005 for each complete transmission on the personalised radio service.

- If your track is played on our free on-demand service, you will accrue 30% of the Share of Last.fm's Net Revenue from the on-demand radio service.

- If your track is played on our premium on-demand service, you will accrue the greater of either 30% of the Share of Last.fm's Net Revenue from the premium on-demand service, or US $0.005 for each complete transmission on the prepaid or subscription on-demand service.

October 28, 2008

October 17, 2008

We usually only accept one CD per title, i.e. we do NOT accept a dozen unsold, shrink wrapped CDs of a local bar band.

October 15, 2008