What’s Your #1 Strategy For Converting Music Pirates Into Paying Fans?
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I'm writing a short article that highlights the strategy that artists and marketers alike use to convert music pirates into paying fans. This is an important subject that we're all equally curious about. Leave a comment below to be included in my upcoming post. Please also leave how you'd like to be credited, as in where you work or the group that you're apart of.
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Pay-what-you-want model in exchange for some customer info? Then you can send some information about your concerts, tour dates, promotions, etc. I’m familiar with Misteur Valaire, a group from Montreal. They use this model, and that’s how they got famous! They book their concerts by sending e-mails to their fans, who “paid-what-they-wanted” for the downloads. Thousands of tickets sold with a costumer acquisition cost close to zero. Plus…they own 100% of their copyrights. They keep all the proceeds. In short, it’s a fact: Downloads aren’t worth a penny, but they sell tickets and promotion items. And people, even if they can pay zero, actually give a fair amount of money most of the time with this model!
Give them something worth buying (and selling!) The average purchase price from bundled merch on an artist’s site can be as high as $25. (http://www.slideshare.net/Shamal/topspin-marketing-with-data-at-midem)
Create exclusive music, merch, and ticket bundles that real fans want to own, and let the revenue make up for moderately interested pirates who probably wouldn’t have purchased the music in the first place.
Music will eventually become free. No one will never be able put a price tag on the pure joy and emotions that we all get from music.
— Get over it.
I admit I do not have a great running knowledge on this topic. I am more concerned with playing, creativity and such. Would it be too hard to develop an encoding technology? People are going to steal. Artists are going to be less inclined to produce art, this is bad for music in general, on all levels. It seems to me that the music industry should pair up with developers and create some kind of encoding system. Sure, your going to have that 15 year old computer genius that gets through it, but maybe there is a way we can make piracy less easy?
Define “music pirates” please.
A “music pirate” is someone that creates CDs from popular bands and sells them for a profit.
People who share music with their friends are fans, they always have been.
You will never get a real so-called “music pirate” to give any band any money so your article might end up being a short one.
-Mark
Partners In Rhyme Inc.
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com
^^This!
Remember that without piracy most artist would not be known worldwide.
The problem exists in the very question. Pirates by their very definition will always exist. You do not convert them.
You need to attract and engage the fan base intelligently, stop trying to find high tech solutions to simple relationship creation needs. The other thing is to stop buying into the over simplistic ideas that having a facebook page, or a topspin account is all you need to do. Real bands practiced for hours, toured bars and spent years sometimes getting dumped on before making it through, now folks expect instant success, it did not work then, it won’t work now unless you are a highly mediatized property, those always existed and we know what happens to those on that road.
There is nothing really new happening. Piracy always existed. Fewer records were made of course, but the system and its problems are not new. Cut outs were a huge revenue eroder for bands.
Anyone who wants to make it will now need to learn the business from the bottom up and be prepared to do the work and create human to human relationships.
The real change now is that the model has shifted from the distribution of scarcity to the distribution of plenty, musicians and their staff had better learn to be unique.
Tough topik. My musik has been and is being downloaded for free during my entire digital career. Be it rip torrent, freeshare, free streaming, all w/out my permission. If this is the only livelihood that one has, if this is one’s only “day job”, then how does such an artiste maintain/sustain making musik/art to sustain oneself?
How does such an an artiste protect oneself?
Yeah,yeah, yeah, free is kool but until when? I’m not rich like say, Lars Ulrich, to complain about major ripping off, but I do need to sell my musik to stay alive, invest into my Studio, & to have my own ‘DIY’ product to tour behind as well.
Hope I learn soon on how to work with this situation so everybody’s happy.
I think a lot of the commenters are not taking the right approach.
Try to avoid using the oldschool marketing perspective or paradigm and see things as they are now first, and go from there.
I don’t think one should discriminate and label people pirates and ‘paying fans’, because this clear distinction only exists when you’re doing it wrong.
What you should do as an artist, is create a solid fanbase, or a tribe. This can be done in many ways. This tribe then needs to be connected, to the artist, the artist to the tribe, but also the people that are a fan need a way to express their enthusiasm to one another. Turn the tribe into an ECOSYSTEM.
(Note: an ecosystem follows one of the most important rules of the web… it’s not about one-way, or two-way communication, it’s about PEER-TO-PEER networks)
When you get an ecosystem going, exciting things start happening. The dynamics and interactivity will change so much and the potential possibilities and opportunities multiply fast.
What you then do is simply listen to your ecosystem very carefully, this takes dedication, sincerity and perhaps some practice and skill.
When you listen to the ecosystem, you’ll find out what to do to make money, what business models to apply. Instead of figuring out how to get people to buy your product, you’re figuring out what product to make for and sell to your people! See the difference with the oldschool marketing perspective?
This creates radical opportunities, of which the email for a track, freemium and crowdfunding business models are simply the most basic symptoms. Think about the potential!
I wrote a case-study about this recently, you can check it out here: http://www.basbasbas.com/blog/2010/12/02/thesis-excerpt-how-shpongle-and-twisted-music-are-examples-for-the-music-business-case-study/
I also wrote a post about the music biz and interactivity, which kind of ties into this. You can read that here:
http://www.basbasbas.com/blog/2010/11/21/music-biz-2-0-a-lesson-on-interactivity/
Keep up the great work Hypebot. Happy to be a part of your ecosystem. Hope I add as much value to Hypebot’s ecosystem as Hypebot adds to my daily music biz reads 🙂
A combination of Spotify and Bandcamp
From what I’ve learned, and what I anticipate, artists must change their revenue model. The old one is dead (maybe I’d correct that for “in major decline”). What do you need to do in those situation? Pivot! The industry seems to be fighting to keep their old business models instead of going for the pivot. What kind of pivot? Forget the money from mp3s and don’t rely on CD sales. Consider those a “bonus”. Mp3 must be considered a marketing tool to book your shows. As you book those concerts, marchandise, album collections, etc. must be available. People will pay for experience and emotions, not for an encrypted mp3. Be creative when applying this formula.
True! Piracy has increased music diversity! Back then, who would’ve bought a CD from an unknown artist? Very few. Also, the barriers to fame were pretty high. There was only one way: Labels. They didn’t like you? Forget your star on Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Agreed. Video games, movies, nice clothing, etc all provide joy, how dare they put a price tag on these things! Just because these things, like music, cost money to create and provide joy (and the ability to eat/pay rent) to those making them doesn’t mean that we aren’t entitled to receive them at no cost!
I have a friend who is in a band and she was trying to make an album and all sorts of people had their hands out. Guitar shops, recording studios, producers and a whole bunch of other greedy capitalist types are STILL not getting the message that we are entitled to free music. They actually wanted to receive MONEY for their time, expenses and talents! LMAO!! It’s like they are living in a different century or something! Sometimes I feel like no one will never understand 🙁
License the pirate sites. Then they won’t be pirate sites.
Eliminate any reasonable reason why pirating is better. The most common reason is the ability to “sample” the music before buying. Streaming sites have helped to alleviate this problem, but they are not far enough along to be 100% “better”. People want to sample at home and on the go. This means that there should be ad supported but limited streaming on ALL devices that can connect to the internet. I say limited as in maybe 20 hours per month. Then if people want more and no ads: $5/month. Too many claim that Napster/Rhapsody/MOG, et al will replace buying and owning. They won’t. Owning is still more flexible. That is why $10/month is WAY too high, and has been ineffective thus far in getting widespread adoption.
Illegal downloading will never go away, since a cheapskate is born every day. But perhaps by attrition the new generation coming up will prefer streaming, and enough older “pirates” will decide that the new options beat the seedier route.
Just my opinion from the perspective of someone who uses a lot of these streaming services but still buys albums.
P.S. — I’m all for promotional free mp3s, and can tell you from my own experience that they work. I bought the new Girls EP as a result of getting the first single from it for free.
Well said, Bill.
My plan is to offer all songs for free on bandcamp and for a price on iTunes, etc. In addition, I will create a physical CD that will sell for maybe $5 (thinking about this, might do pay-what-you-want-with- minimum) through bandcamp only. To entice people to oder the CD, it will come with a code for a surprise song. I also plan to join Taxi and to continue with sonicbids in order to have a shot at licensing opportunities. For promotion, I will start with an email list, Facebook and Twitter, but might also try Ariel Publicity. I’d do more, but since I can’t tour (had a pretty bad brain injury a few years back), this is about all I can think of so far. If you would like to be on my email list, please visit my blog at
http://www.cerebellumblues.com
and use the secure form to send me your email.
Think about your “pay-what-you-want-with-minimum” for mp3s very carefully. Psychologicaly very different. With a minimum, people feel like they’re buying your music. No minimum, you are basicaly asking for a encouragement donation. Small details, big difference. With this model, forget the economics, it’s all about psychology. 30cents minimum or 4$ an album can scare a good portion of costumers away. Try to make the most out of the people who download, not out of the download itself.
Also, it’s more about convenience than it is about price. It always has been.
1) Make your music incredibly easy to find, engage, and acquire on your website(s).
2) Price it correctly.
3) Be so awesome that people WANT to support you.
4) Treat everyone who has an interest in your music with respect – the folks who don’t pay for your music today may do so in the future, or help you in other valuable ways.
I have a few ideas:
1) “Leak” loads of crap quality tracks and let them get picked up on the p2p networks. Consumers get peed off with the crap quality recordings and are forced to obtain quality tracks legally. Maybe like Madonna’s “What the f*ck do you think you’re doing”. Boom!
2) Bundling. This will work for emerging artists more though. We have a huge issue right now with the live sector imploding due to supply and demand. The costs of a gig are just too high for a band who will probably be back on tour in 6 months time. Instead of charging $25 dollars a ticket, throw in their new album release with the ticket for $30. Get the band to sign a limited amount of albums for $35 to squeeze out even more sales.
3) Get Sony (other brands are available) to buck up their ideas and partner with Verizon to create a personal streaming player (to take streaming to the obvious next level and not limit it to smart phones) like I suggest in my blog a month or so back…
http://guerrillaandchalk.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/why-spotify-is-being-denied-in-the-us-a-matter-of-pride/
Give players a 90 minute off-line period where playlists “perish” after those 90 minutes to make it appealing for the subway/plane journeys.
4) Accept that the music industry has flipped. 80’s/90’s touring/merch was the promotional tool for selling records. Today, selling records is the promotional tool for touring and merch.
-Shea
http://TheTapMusic.com
Re: SheaTapMusic
I think you’ve got the right idea, and I suppose from the perspective of The Tap, these are the ideas one would suggest to bands, but I would really recommend artists to take it even one step further.
I’ll break it down step by step, let me know if you agree. It might seem a bit harsh sometimes, but it’s not intended as such. I know I can be a bit blunt. My apologies 😉
1) Really? Pissing off your fans on purpose? Such a thing could easily backfire. What if they find out you did such a thing? What if they hear the tracks and decide you made a bad recording, based on the poor quality?
Besides, I suppose you haven’t really been very involved in pirate networks (correct me if I’m wrong), but it’s very easy to identify the good quality leaks from the bad quality leaks. The quantity of bad quality leaks doesn’t matter, because the quantity of people sharing the 1 good quality leak will be much higher anyway.
2) Pretty good idea, but the underlying idea should be part of the whole strategy of the band, not just for marketing their album release. If fans don’t want an album, but just some new tracks every now and then; don’t release an album. Basically, it means listening to your fanbase, instead of making them listen to you.
3) I think for most bands, such deals are quite unattainable and very costly (as in, impossible to profit from). Also, the latter half of what you say isn’t something a band can do, but is something some tech-music startup should do through licensing and all.
I think as an artist it is much more fulfilling for yourself and for your fans to give fans your music and let them have full control over it, instead of limiting it. You can monetize the relation you have with them; therefore I believe in carefully nurturing this relationship, and not risking upsetting them through arbitrary DRM-type of deals.
4) Kind of agree, but I think the perspective is still wrong. Records ARE merchandise now; they’re extra’s. I think everything you do is about the relationship with your fanbase (or ecosystem, see my first comment in this topic). You listen to this fanbase and you release an album, specific types of merch and other cool things to satisfy the needs of your fanbase/ecosystem. You can use your music to grow the ecosystem, but give people means to hear it for free (MySpace, Soundcloud, YouTube, MP3s, whatever).
What do you think?
Hey mate,
Been reading your Blog, interesting stuff! I think you have some excellent points and its great you took time to respond! I think you look at things from your point of view and not the view of the masses. Lots of what you think about is Niche marketing looking for the quick fix, an error the music industry has been doing for a while.
1) I have never been a frequent user of illegal file-sharing so I couldn’t identitfy good quality leaks from poor quality leaks. I’m sure the majority of Michael Buble fans would not be able to tell the difference either.
Also, there is a definite detatchment between labels and artists – especially the bigger ones. If the label looks like the bad guy, it won’t effect the artist – take Sony’s DRM scandal for example, everyone found out about the bugs on the CDs but the music lovers didn’t revolt against the artists themselves?
2) I disagree with this notion. It is all about the Vanguard. You create a loyal fan base and I am pretty sure if they’re willing to spend a lot on a ticket, they won’t mind chucking $5 extra to have the album which that artist is most likely to promote. I really understand the impacts of piracy, but for bands you really care about (hence spending a lot on the ticket) I know most people would do that. As you say, its merchandise! It is meant as part of the bigger picture as all element compliment each other. If fans want individual tracks they can go download them off iTunes. If people aren’t buying the CDs in shops, its not exactly a loss if they are not sold out at a show? Every little help though.
3)The question is how to curb music piracy. If that means new technologies to encourage legal use of music then it tackles this issue. RIAA hopefully knows by now that slapping the law around a music lovers’ face isn’t gonna work. Its about creating awareness of the legal alternatives. A technological break-through likes this which will have players available everywhere including airports would be a great step in that direction.
4) I don’t get your point? I am of the point that music should be cheap/free to promote other areas of revenue. I’m a keen fan of the Chinese music industry and they never had a legitimate physical industry, pretty much a snap shot of where we are now – minus a few variables like mobile. The relationship between a fan and a musician is more important than other but you also need to look at long-term goals too. Portugal The Man, I think, are an excellent example of how bands should do it without looking like a gimmik.
-Shea
TheTapMusic.com
Oops. Before I post a response, are you still tracking the comments?
(That was meant for Shea)