Here’s a Better Version For Free – How One Band Responded To Their Song Getting Leaked
These days songs leak out. And if you have rabid enough fans, they'll start listening to, downloading, and postings such songs before you intended. But how do you respond?
Threaten to sue. Say damning things. Maybe even quit music – forever. This band, not so much. Once Eisley found out that their new song "Smarter" had leaked – after having debuted on a podcast – they were excited.
Fans had cut their song out of the podcast recording and started to post it everywhere. Rather than condemn the behavior, the group had a quick talk with their label and decided to post a better quality version on their Facebook page. Then they went as far as offering a free downloadable MP3 for fans to just have.
They didn't set up a tow road and demand payment. They let fans take the song.
Eisley didn't intend for this to happen. They no doubt worked hard on that song and paid good money to get it recorded. Rather than overreact and declare war against their fans, they remained humbled that people loved their music enough to share it and encouraged the behavior. An entry from their TwitLonger page:
"Hey Twitties. So, Sunday night Dallas radio station KDGE played "Smarter". The song was apparently ripped from @AdvClub podcast and by yesterday it was everywhere as if we'd made available a new free track for download.
haHa:@observerdallas http://bit.ly/hpU84h, @ABSOLUTEPUNK http://bit.ly/hpU84h, @altpress http://bit.ly/hnarVS and others including our fan site:http://bit.ly/gvZNA1, who said, "sorry, we were too excited. We had to post it". We laughed.
We never intended that to happen but honestly don't care. It's sorta awesome actually. We appreciate any social site who loves us so… yeah.
Anyway, our label was like, "oh well when you get a lemon, make lemon juice; so should we, at least, stream the quality version on your fb page?".
(us: "Yup").
So it's up. (Sound Cloud player, sorry iPhones. Blame Steve Jobs for hating the guts of flash). Hope you enjoy. http://on.fb.me/fwaLFz"
Awesome, and extra awesome for “sorry iPhones. Blame Steve Jobs for hating the guts of flash”.
This reeks to me of a pub stunt. Warner at its finest. The fact that the song is already out there and then just stream it on SoundCloud is pretty backward thinking. They should have gone the Topspin route and given it away for e-mails to buffer their database.
What’s the label? Smart guys…
I agree 100% with Some Guy in L.A.
Very useful thanks for sharing.
I agree.
Blatant publicity stunt. Offering a free download is nothing outrageous. The PR obviously it’s working though.
Looks like an interesting way to reposition “free” content – whether it was a PR stunt or not. Free always sounds more exciting when it is seems like it wasn’t intended to be free, it seems to have more value. We posted a blog about it a while back:
http://www.liveunsigned.com/blog/2010/10/how-to-use-free-music-to-grow-your-fanbase/
Whatever happens free isn’t going away and anything you can do to make free content more interesting has to be a good thing.
They aren’t on Warner Bros anymore.
soundcloud works fine on iphone safari, not to mention they have a dedicated app as well.
easy on the overkeen apple bashing