19th
#1 - That’s One Music Marketing Tip in the Bank…Next Tip
by Dan Willis
Give away your music for… FREE! WHAT?!?!?
So you’ve been playing around town for a while and you’ve saved up enough money to drop it all on a studio session. You spend the next couple of weeks in and out of the studio recording your standard 13 song album. So now, after months of playing shows to save up for studio time and spending all that money and time recording your album… you’re broke. In this same-old destitute situation, some of your fans have the balls to say to you, “hook me up with a free copy of the album.”
You might be tempted to say, “eff no!” But hold on, you don’t have to give the whole album away to get something out of it. So choose 4 of your best songs from your album. These are going to be your free preview to the world.
EPs:
One way to approach it is to put out an EP, which stands for Extended Play, and is essentially a 3 to 5 song album, one step up from single, but a step down from a full length album (LP: Long Play). Take your 4 song preview and get them pressed for as cheap as you can with a cardboard sleeve packaging. Now brace yourself, give them away…give away the heck out of them. You don’t have to give them away to just anyone though. In fact, using them as an incentive can be the best option: give them to the first 5 people that sign up for your email list; give them away for free with purchase of a t-shirt; or buy a full length album and get an EP free to pass on to friends… get creative. The idea was explained really well by John Perry Barlow (lyricist for The Grateful Dead): “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away …we couldn’t regulate [taping at] our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.”
The bottom line is, give some of your music away for free to build demand for your music, and use that momentum to sell music, show tickets, and other merchandise afterward.
