What About Free CDs?
Free CD Tagged Bob Lefsetz, Compact Disc, Don Bartlett, iTunes, Joe, Musician, MySpace, Shopping December 9th, 2008
Image via Wikipedia
Don Bartlett, a manager for some musicians, has written in to point out a letter that he wrote to Bob Lefsetz outlining the successful strategy he’s had in promoting one of his acts and asked for the thoughts of folks around here:
We decided to put an offer up on Joe’s website and MySpace. We told any fan that if they knew anyone who might be interested in Joe’s music that they could send us an email and we send them as many copies of a two-song sampler CD as they wanted. Free. We even cover the postage. To keep costs down, we invested in a cd publishing system that burns and prints them robotically. Each CD has two songs, contact info, MySpace, and a reminder that the full cd was at iTunes. If someone lived near a place where a show was scheduled, we printed that show info on there as well. People requested as few as 2 and as many as 50. We sent all of them. Requests continued to pour in, and the more we sent out the faster the new requests came in. We’re at the point now where we get about 15 a day. Joe writes a thank you in each and every one. And almost instantly, sales took off. Attendance jumped noticeably and MySpace/website action began a steady upward arc. More importantly, we built an incredible database of his most hardcore fans. And after receiving a mailbox full of cds for free, they are willing to do anything to help forward the cause. And it is the ultimate in target marketing…. you have people who already like your music passing it on to their friends, whose tastes they presumably know.
The idea is definitely a bit different, but obviously can and does work on a small scale. The problem is that it wouldn’t scale to a really large number very easily. It’s also somewhat costly. Even if they’ve decreased the production costs, there are still costs in terms of resources, time and postage for every free CD they send out. It’s good that it’s allowed them to more closely connect with fans (and turn them into true fan promoters), but it seems risky to spend so much on promotions. So, while it can work on a small scale, and help a musician stand out as being especially fan friendly, it seems like it could be pretty costly if you tried to scale it up.
| Share this post : |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Rate Me on BlogHop.com!
help?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3d66a8ed-6f5b-4a2f-a840-cd9de096b6c6)
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Hi there, and thanks for the thoughts on the email I wrote to Bob. Your point is well taken on the scalability of this particular promotion, but I don’t know that I totally agree. When you hold it up to the typical means of promotion that labels employ, I think you would probably find it holds up pretty well. An average PR firm will cost 3K a month plus postage, materials, etc……a radio promoter will cost thousands more. I would argue that putting $4000 worth of CD’s out there via this program would bring you infinitely more results (not to mention longer lasting results) than a month of PR and radio.
Of course, every artist’s situation is unique and what works for us may not work for others. In the end….a program like this would be foolish unless you were sure you had songs that were instantly connecting with people. (and by that I don’t mean your friends like them….i mean seeing concrete, independent results on a smaller scale) It’s definitely not the first step a band should take, but given the right situation it can ramp things up to the next level quite effectively.
December 28th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Hey! I love your page
If you r looking for Paid Surveys this is the place for u.
Start advancing your paychecks at http://tinyurl.com/7ufpyz