Members richardmac Posted October 8, 2009 Members Share Posted October 8, 2009 For about a week I tried a new strategy on Bandcamp, and then asked for and received some feedback. A week is not a real long time to test, but the comments were interesting so I'm sharing. I originally put my CD's up on Bandcamp for free streaming, and I let users name their own price, with a minimum of 25 cents. Which generated a little bit of interest. Not a ton of sales, but a few. Average price - 25 cents. For the weekly experiment I set the minimum price to 0, so users could name their own price from free on up. The catch was that if they put 0 in, they were required to enter their e-mail address to be added to my mailing list, which they could unsubscribe from whenever they wanted to. The results were an instant drying up of what little sales I had. Making the songs available for free did not work, and hurt existing sales. The feedback I got was interesting. A few people thought that I was asking for the e-mail address because I wanted to know who paid nothing for my music. And some folks would rather stream for free or drop a quarter for a song than give me their e-mail address because they're sick of band spam. So I set things back up the way they were. The hope is that some of the people who are returning to the site to hear a song again will think "Well geez, I can just BUY the song for a quarter." Every little bit helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members flatfinger Posted October 8, 2009 Members Share Posted October 8, 2009 Micro-payments are supposed to be the big fix , but it needs to be made easier... I'm not typing in all my info to spend .025 cents. Guess your going to have to sell allot of those !!!! As far as the e-mail thing goes , These days you really have to have a good anti V and firewall set up . It's not so hard to get a spam filter set up and then add to the list . I think some of those folks are paranoid and/or just throwing up a red herring to cover the fact that here just being cheapskates.THats got to be the ultimate cheapskate ... not wanting to even spend a fing quarter ... now thats devaluation!! I give my e-mail out if I WANT the product .... Did you put in the (large print) notice about how you will never sell those e-mail addresses??? Hang in there Richard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Pomerlaw Posted October 8, 2009 Members Share Posted October 8, 2009 I think the best strategy will be to give away 2 or 3 songs, then sell the whole album for a fixed price. You give some to promote, but not all of it. You keep some songs exclusively on the album. Some people who hear your free songs and like them will want more, and they will be able to get the album to get those songs that are not available. I would be more interested to buy an album for 5 or 10$ than singles at 0.25c... If I take the time to enter the info and my credit card number, I would go for the whole package. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dthraco Posted October 8, 2009 Members Share Posted October 8, 2009 Interesting. I have a completely different use for bandcamp. I am using it to post rehearsals for the band to listen to/download. Each date we rehearse get's it's own "album". We just don't publish the site name, so only we know about it. Free storage! This would be an example of using the known fact that nobody looks for unsigned bands anymore to our advantage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted October 8, 2009 Author Members Share Posted October 8, 2009 I think the best strategy will be to give away 2 or 3 songs, then sell the whole album for a fixed price.You give some to promote, but not all of it. You keep some songs exclusively on the album. Some people who hear your free songs and like them will want more, and they will be able to get the album to get those songs that are not available. I would be more interested to buy an album for 5 or 10$ than singles at 0.25c... If I take the time to enter the info and my credit card number, I would go for the whole package. You can buy the whole album on Bandcamp. Or you can buy singles. The ironic thing is that I'll sell more singles on iTunes at 99 cents each than at Bandcamp at 25 cents each, just because it's iTunes. Weird but probably true. I like the idea of open streaming access to the whole thing and cheap downloads as opposed to giving away a few tracks. I do not believe that people will like 2 or 3 songs and then decide to buy the album anymore... they don't know if the 2 or 3 free songs are the only good ones. That's why I think being totally open and allowing streaming access is the way to go. People want to know exactly what you do and want some time to decide if they like you or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted October 8, 2009 Author Members Share Posted October 8, 2009 Interesting. I have a completely different use for bandcamp. I am using it to post rehearsals for the band to listen to/download. Each date we rehearse get's it's own "album". We just don't publish the site name, so only we know about it. Free storage! This would be an example of using the known fact that nobody looks for unsigned bands anymore to our advantage. So if you were to tell us the name of your band, we could go check out your rehearsals? Cool! What's the name of... oh, you're not going to tell us, are you? You can pull up a list of every artist on the site, actually. But it's a crazy huge list. It's fun to just click on someone at random and check them out, actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dthraco Posted October 8, 2009 Members Share Posted October 8, 2009 So if you were to tell us the name of your band, we could go check out your rehearsals? Cool! What's the name of... oh, you're not going to tell us, are you? You can pull up a list of every artist on the site, actually. But it's a crazy huge list. It's fun to just click on someone at random and check them out, actually. Haha...exactly...very hard to find when it's not "published". This is actually an experiment. It's a brand new band, and this is the first time I have used bandcamp for this. I did something similar for my last band, but we had a regular website with an un-linked page we would go directly to. The Bandcamp one is nicer because it takes no programming on my part, and it's quick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Pomerlaw Posted October 8, 2009 Members Share Posted October 8, 2009 You can buy the whole album on Bandcamp. Or you can buy singles. The ironic thing is that I'll sell more singles on iTunes at 99 cents each than at Bandcamp at 25 cents each, just because it's iTunes. Weird but probably true. I like the idea of open streaming access to the whole thing and cheap downloads as opposed to giving away a few tracks. I do not believe that people will like 2 or 3 songs and then decide to buy the album anymore... they don't know if the 2 or 3 free songs are the only good ones. That's why I think being totally open and allowing streaming access is the way to go. People want to know exactly what you do and want some time to decide if they like you or not. Well, I see your point... But remember, if you open everything to streaming, its really easy for people to rip your songs with Firefox or another soft... I think 2 or 3 songs can at least give people the idea of your style, sound, and if they like what you do or not. I will think about it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted October 9, 2009 Author Members Share Posted October 9, 2009 Well, I see your point... But remember, if you open everything to streaming, its really easy for people to rip your songs with Firefox or another soft... I think 2 or 3 songs can at least give people the idea of your style, sound, and if they like what you do or not. I will think about it... Well, this is just my opinion, based on personal experience, reading a whole lot, etc. Giving people an idea of what you do, as an unknown artist, isn't good enough, in my opinion. They need to hear it all, and not just 30 second samples. The legit concern of fans is that there are two or three songs on a CD that are good and the rest are filler. By allowing the whole thing to be streamed, by allowing people to hear in unlimited fashion for free, you have a chance of gaining more fans. Some of those people may potentially like the music enough to want to rip it illegally, and you just have to write that off as a cost of doing business. Some genres are going to have a much bigger percentage of people who rip than others. I write music for adults, meaning my demographic is probably 35 to 65. If I wrote stuff that sounded like Fallout Boy, I'm sure there'd be a lot more theft. But I'd still approach it the same way. I think if you offer up a couple of downloads and give 30 second previews of the other songs, there's not enough exposure. People don't buy CD's based on 2 or 3 songs any more. IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members backtoblue Posted October 9, 2009 Members Share Posted October 9, 2009 Haha...exactly...very hard to find when it's not "published".This is actually an experiment. It's a brand new band, and this is the first time I have used bandcamp for this. I did something similar for my last band, but we had a regular website with an un-linked page we would go directly to. The Bandcamp one is nicer because it takes no programming on my part, and it's quick. Not to derail the thread or anything, but why not use mediafire.com or similar storage site to post your rehearsals? On bandcamp they require you to upload WAV files, which takes a heck of a lot longer than uploading MP3's to mediafire. And it's a free site with unlimited storage (up to 100 mb per file anyway). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members struddi Posted October 9, 2009 Members Share Posted October 9, 2009 Not to derail the thread or anything, but why not use mediafire.com or similar storage site to post your rehearsals? On bandcamp they require you to upload WAV files, which takes a heck of a lot longer than uploading MP3's to mediafire. And it's a free site with unlimited storage (up to 100 mb per file anyway). I have the same idea with you. Great! Glad to hear you're using this: I plan to keep it much more aggressively up-to-date than has been the case in the past, but don't hesitate to let me know if you find errors or need clarifications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Pomerlaw Posted October 9, 2009 Members Share Posted October 9, 2009 The legit concern of fans is that there are two or three songs on a CD that are good and the rest are filler. By allowing the whole thing to be streamed, by allowing people to hear in unlimited fashion for free, you have a chance of gaining more fans. You have a point... I will put all the songs available for streaming, but I will still give a few downloads so they can get off my site and get moving on the network. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted October 9, 2009 Author Members Share Posted October 9, 2009 You have a point... I will put all the songs available for streaming, but I will still give a few downloads so they can get off my site and get moving on the network. I think that's a good way to go. Maybe it's the best way to go. If you look at the psychology of selling, it's about removing roadblocks and excuses. ----- "I don't want to pay for music I've never heard." You can hear it online for free. "I don't want to have to sit at my computer to hear it." You can download a few of the songs and keep them. If you want to hear more, you can hear them online. "How do I know the three free songs aren't the only good songs on the CD?" You can stream the rest for free. "I like the three free songs, which made me listen to the other songs online, which I like. But why should I buy the whole CD now when I got three of the songs for free already?" The price of the CD as a whole is cheaper than buying the remaining 7 songs individually. ----- So the remaining step would be to price the CD so that it's the same price as buying 6 songs individually, for this approach. OR you make the minimum price for downloading your CD so cheap that people wouldn't complain. Yeah, I think that will be my next experiment. Giving 3 songs away in addition to all the other stuff does remove more sales barriers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dthraco Posted October 9, 2009 Members Share Posted October 9, 2009 Not to derail the thread or anything, but why not use mediafire.com or similar storage site to post your rehearsals? On bandcamp they require you to upload WAV files, which takes a heck of a lot longer than uploading MP3's to mediafire. And it's a free site with unlimited storage (up to 100 mb per file anyway). Didn't know that exited. Thanks for the tip!!! It does take a while for the wav files to upload. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted October 9, 2009 Author Members Share Posted October 9, 2009 Didn't know that exited. Thanks for the tip!!! It does take a while for the wav files to upload. I hate WAV files. A lot of people mistakenly think that WAV files are the native audio file format of the CD, but they're not - WAV is a Microsoft invention. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted October 10, 2009 Members Share Posted October 10, 2009 I hate WAV files. A lot of people mistakenly think that WAV files are the native audio file format of the CD, but they're not - WAV is a Microsoft invention. Flac is coming along nicely. What do yo think about flac files? I have an iRiver Media Player that plays flacs natively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted October 10, 2009 Members Share Posted October 10, 2009 Oh and 1 more thing... CDs are obsolete. Spending too much effort, time or $ on CD distribution,other than as legacy option for people who haven't caughtup with the times yet, doesn't make much sense in this day and age. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted October 10, 2009 Members Share Posted October 10, 2009 I hate WAV files. A lot of people mistakenly think that WAV files are the native audio file format of the CD, but they're not - WAV is a Microsoft invention. LOL Why do you hate wav files? Have they mistreated you in the past? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted October 10, 2009 Author Members Share Posted October 10, 2009 Oh and 1 more thing...CDs are obsolete.Spending too much effort, time or $ on CD distribution,other than as legacy option for people who haven't caughtup with the times yet, doesn't make much sense in this day and age. Couldn't disagree more. CD's are what sell at gigs. No one wants to buy mp3's or download cards. If you gig, you'd better have a CD to sell. If you don't gig, you still need them because some people still prefer the physical product. However, I DO think that the local musicians I know who print up 1,000 CD's are nuts. No point in sitting on inventory that devalues every year. But you can have discmakers print up 100 good looking shrink wrapped CD's and mail them to you, then sell them for $10 each. Sell them all for $700, order more. If I can make a CD for $3 and sell it for $10 and make $7 and a new fan, why wouldn't I want to do that? At 1,000 copies the price goes down to about a buck each to make, but it only makes sense if you can move them. Some people can, with no problem. I wish I were one of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted October 10, 2009 Author Members Share Posted October 10, 2009 LOL Why do you hate wav files? Have they mistreated you in the past? I hate WAV files because they are an inconvenience to me. I work in AIFF file format in Logic, and when I drag a file from a CD onto my desktop it copies over in AIFF. Some sites require you to use WAV, which means I have to translate from AIFF to WAV first, then keep yet another copy of the song hanging out for the next time someone wants a WAV file. Audacity is free and does a great job of converting AIFF to WAV, but it's an extra step. As far as the sound quality, WAV files sound identical to AIFF to my ears. Can't tell the difference. Maybe hate is a strong word. FLAC is a cool format, by the way, but no one ever wants me to send them a FLAC file. Bandcamp lets people choose it, though, as an option, which I think is very cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Poker99 Posted November 9, 2009 Members Share Posted November 9, 2009 Hey Richard, How is your bandcamp experiment doing? Any new data to share? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted November 10, 2009 Author Members Share Posted November 10, 2009 Nothing new on the bandcamp front, but I am learning a thing or two about playing live. I'm experimenting with the "new model" of gigs for singer/songwriters, which is find a venue and then throw your own concert. Did a show at a recording studio with another local artist and sold like 15 CD's. There were about 50 people there. Small gig by most people's standards, but I played for 40 minutes and made $150 and got some new fans. Contrast that with my gig last night - they paid me (barely) to play, but I was playing for 2 hours to a very small number of people and practically no one paid attention, and I sold no CD's. Walked away with like $40. Next month I'm playing a show at a public library. They've got a dedicated room with a PA, they've got a following of people who come to listen, and I will hopefully sell some CD's and gain some fans and make some money. Unlike the people at the gig last night, these people are coming to hear music. Man, I have freaking HAD IT with playing places where no one is listening. It IS possible to give actual concerts. There ARE still people out there who will go someplace to actually listen to music. And it is so rewarding to play for those people, as opposed to people sipping overpriced coffee or drinking highly marked up beer and trying unsuccessfully to get laid. I am also learning that local media coverage can be good but is not the magic bullet. A friend and I went on a popular local radio show that features original music in Tampa - they pull like 10,000 or so listeners. After the show a guy called and wanted to book us. That was cool! But a few days later I checked my web stats - after all, I'd given out my web address and it's easy to remember - there was literally no traffic resulting from that show. Same as when I was on local TV. One time exposure doesn't mean {censored}. You have to have almost constant exposure for it to work. I've sold a few of my new CD's online through CDBaby, but I haven't done crap lately due to bandcamp. But I'm leaving it up because it's a good place to send people when they say "What do you sound like?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members CarvinAbuser Posted December 16, 2009 Members Share Posted December 16, 2009 I disagree with BC's policy of having to stream the entire song. If I heard a portion of a song and liked it, I would buy the whole thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dthraco Posted December 16, 2009 Members Share Posted December 16, 2009 Cool to read an update after being away for a bit. I find that nobody remembers a website name when it's told to them. Unless they write it down, it goes in one ear, and comes out with a smile or nothing at all. Then it's gone. I make sure to have business cards or fliers that people can take with them. Fliers usually have the upcoming gigs and my website url, sometimes a coupon for the cover of the next show if there is one. Then during the gig, I jsut say "If you like what you hear, be sure to visit my booth over there and pick up a flier." I keep fliers and CD's in one of those CD Seller plexi deals. It's a great way to sell people stuff without actually selling it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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