# While The Cat's Away... - Site: Analog Industries - Author: Chris Randall - Date: 2010-04-07 - URL: https://analogindustries.com/2010/04/while-the-cats-away/ Adam is on his mandatory yearly hajj to Japan, so Audio Damage dev is at a standstill until his return, for obvious reasons. In the meantime, I have lots to do. One of those lots is assembling an EP of Micronaut material. In the past, I've put together these assemblages and put them in TuneCore or sold them via the Posi store. However, this time I'm considering making the leap in to Free territory. On the one hand, the gear I use to make music is expensive and difficult to maintain, and it would be nice to see a direct (rather than indirect, in the case of Audio Damage) payback for the acquisition of same. On the other hand, without steady touring and merch sales, there's very little income to be made from direct music sales at this level, given my ability to promote any release and its limited potential audience due to its quirky nature. Any income I realize from direct music sales these days falls within the noise of my normal income generation efforts, and is thus arguably not worth the trouble. It would be a different case if I decided to do a proper Sister Machine Gun record. A couple of phone calls would secure the full financial backing necessary to realize such a thing, but (a) I don't have the time to properly exploit that occurance, and (b) I don't have the desire or creative impulse necessary to pull it off in the first place. That's outside the scope of this conversation in any event. Anyhow, to return to the subject, another fact to consider is that the income from commercial licensing of Micronaut songs far outstrips the money generated from direct sales of same, by several orders of magnitude. Taking all this in to consideration, I'm fairly convinced that I should just throw my old-school distaste of the concept of "free music" out the window and put the whole package up for download, cover art and all. What I'm wondering and opening up for comment are the following points: 1\. If you've done this, what were your goals other than the obvious "increase my reputation" type things, and did you realize them? 2\. What sort of PR would one do? All the normal shit that one would do with a normal release? I don't see why not, and I have a bully pulpit here to utilize, obviously, but I'm interested to hear about success in this realm other than the normal avenues, if such is to be had. 3\. Obviously, it would be wise to use Tunecore to submit to the streaming subscription services, but would it make sense to also put it in iTunes? If I was a customer and bought something on a whim in iTunes, only to find out it was freely available elsewhere, I'd be a little pissed off. Would I be pissed at the artist or at Apple? Hard to say. 4\. Extras are easy in a situation like this. Are "remix packs" or whatever worth the effort expended in making them? (This would more directly concern the AI audience, obviously.) ## Comments (10) **noisetheorem** (2010-04-07): I have not yet done this, but I am preparing to do so. I dont have nearly the pulpit you have (in fact, I am completely unknown) so my chance of success is greatly diminished. However, I gave up on making a dime off my music a long time ago so its all good. My goal is, basically, to make some music I like and share it with other people who like it, and maybe get a few donations (think of it like a street musician with his guitar case open on the street hoping someone drops in a few coins). As far as PR goes, I am planning to basically use my blog, myspace, and facebook groups and a few other internet communities I run with know about it. if it picks up any momentum, Ill be mightily surprised. If you want to put it into iTunes (I have considered this) then it would be unfair to give the same product away free and charge for it somewhere else. What you might consider, is doing a partial free release with additional tracks available through iTunes as a paid release. That way, you could get some revenue for it, but get people in the door with a few freebies. Remix packs are fun, I am sure, but I am nervous about giving the source material away. I dont know why, but I am deathly afraid I am going to turn on the radio (yes, I occassionaly do that) and hear one of my bits in the background of your latest top 40 shit fest (Actually, that might be highly entertaining). I know that doesnt go with the cultural grain of 'share all your shit or we hate you' but thats how I feel. **noisetheorem** (2010-04-07): Accidentally deleted a sentence in there. After 'Mightily surprised' it should read 'Your reputation would mean you would get more benefit of traditional PR channels, simply because your name is known, but at the same time if any of those channels add cost and your giving it away free then you have to accept that loss will not be recovered' **Heretic_D™** (2010-04-07): 1. N/A in my case. 2. I'd say the exact same. In your particular case as a software developer, I'd say your best method would be to use procedural videos as a bit of marketing. Most of the people you inherently reach are interested in 'the process' of things. 3. They'll be pissed at Apple. Reznor did it, I don't believe I've heard any complaints. If people want to pay to use Apple's draconian terms, then let them. They're accustomed to paying more for less. 4. I don't know if I could use remix packs, but I might toy around with one. I haven't played with Cubase in a while. That said, you should consider Kickstarter. It's almost no real time investment at all. Offer some interesting, personalized extras. Wade did it with Atomica, he hit his goal. While some people are cool with free, some people are cool with paying, and some are interested in paying *more* if they can take a bit of ownership in the project (IE: they like investing in the process.) I just recently did one for an RPG book I'm writing, I am just about to double my goal after two days. I had people giving me $150 for a $30 book, because I offered to name a character after them and kill them. **Chris Randall** (2010-04-07): The Kickstarter thing would be handy if I actually needed money to realize a specific artistic goal. I'd have a hard time justifying it for the "Chris Needs A Macbeth M5 To Make This Album" concept. I'm not broke, and I have all the gear I need to make any number of albums, as I've amply demonstrated in the past 13 years. Wade was a different case, because his albums are expensive to make and he doesn't have the income necessary to support the front-loaded cost of recording a commercial release. I feel like I would be abusing the largess of my fanbase to do something like that, when it isn't necessary to realize the goal. -CR **ungeheier** (2010-04-07): I've been working on some stuff like this for a friend recently. After hearing a lot about people 'making money' off of giving away free content I'm not too sure it's true or not. The base model ive seen is this: 1. Give music away for free and just ask for their email address and/or zipcode. - People will always find a way to get music for free even if you just try to sell it via CD/iTunes/Amazon 2. Sell music on iTunes. - Not in an attempt to actually trick people into buying it when they could get it for free but to give people a chance to give the artist some kind of money. 3. Tour your ass off. This seems to be where the money rolls in through this idea. Give people a taste, and then let them buy tickets/shirts/whatever at the show. With my friend's band they have a little over 1600 facebook fans. They've tried promoting (a little) that they have an older EP available to download for free. They also have posted on myspace and twitter too. Last time I checked they only had roughly 60 downloads. This might be due to the fact that we're trying to get email addresses from these people and some aren't willing to give that away. I'm only guessing for that part. Once everything is set in motion witht this system, when someone downloads a file (whatever it is) they get 2 links, one for themselves and one that's a referal link to give to friends. In doing this, the idea is to be able to track those who promote the most, and possibly give back to that user prizes of some sort. Though, this idea is in the testing phase at this point (and will have to be monitored heavily to try to filter out any people who are trying to 'game the system' it may give the artist an idea of where their own personal street team is). Not sure this helped you any, but this is what i've been working on lately in my 'spare time'. **Chris Randall** (2010-04-07): Just to be clear, the money isn't the overriding concern. I'm not sure what I'm concerned with, exactly, except realizing the best bang for my artistic buck. I've always made far more money off the licensing of Micronaut stuff than selling it, so I feel it's pointless to actually sell it when the effort of doing so outstrips the income. Besides, the main reason for _needing_ the front-loaded money was to pay for the pressing. Without the pressing, there's no need for money, right? -CR **Subliminal Fusion** (2010-04-07): It sounds like you're more concerned with reach than compensation. With that in mind, I'd get in front of people where they are regardless of where that is by using a combination of Tunecore (for users of iTunes/Amazon/Napster/etc.) and Bandcamp (for those of us coming here and to your other sites). Set the name your own price option on Bandcamp with a minimum of free and people like me will be happy to throw some $ your way (for an EP from you, I wouldn't think twice about spending at least $5 for a FLAC copy, even if it is available for free). **shamann** (2010-04-07): I've been giving music away off and on for the past seven years. I actually don't think increasing my reputation was ever really my goal, although I'm sure I've hoped for it along the way. I've only ever approached music from a personal creative perspective rather than a viable commercial perspective, so have given it away to just share with others and because it was a good way to be done with it to move on to the next project. I alternate now between free and pay releases, mostly for posterity's sake I guess. I think the commercial projects are my best work, and the free ones exist just to be interesting. I probably have that backwards, at least according to some "social brand guru" jackass, of which there are so many. I probably should figure out a proper way to promote it, but that sounds like so much work. In my experience, the core audience for free music available on the web is people who make free music available on the web. So it's a good way to connect with others with similar interests. In that sense, remix packs might be a natural component to giving music away. When well-known bands do that sort of thing, I find it interesting, but find I have little interest in listening to any of the umpteen billion remixes that result. Free stuff on the web is a weird thing. My free repository of field recordings generates 5GB of download traffic reliably every month, but I've never once been contacted by anyone who has downloaded anything from it in the 3 years it's been up. I don't mind, but its free-ness alone doesn't actively invite engagement with users. Ultimately, I've found that the active listeners I have are as active when it comes to either free or commercial releases. The free releases get a lot more listens, but then I don't ever hear back from most of the listeners. The people who get in touch about the free stuff are usually the same people who bought the last album. I should add that I make niche, mostly inaccessible electronic music, so there's that to consider. **Chris Randall** (2010-04-07): I like Subliminal's idea, as it imparts intrinsic value to the product while still allowing the end user to determine what that value is. I find this more comfortable than just putting up a download link, which (to me anyways) says "I don't place any value on this at all," which is, I think, a funny way to do business, even for a creative. -CR **ungeheier** (2010-04-07): I tend to think the 'give me your email address' is kind of a 'price' for a fan to pay. Only if you don't abuse the fact that you have their email address, but contact them with news of other downloads or projects you might be working on. That's at least how I felt when I've downloaded free music in the past. I'm giving that artist my eyeballs when their email comes into my inbox.