With the death of MTV, print magazines, and CD sales, indie bands are forced to come up with newer and more creative avenues of promotion. Songs featured in advertisements, innovative YouTube videos, and promotions on blogs and social networking websites are a few examples of promotion. While many of these avenues seem like economical decisions, it seems that more increasingly bands are just giving it away for free.
The most obvious example is that of everyone's favorite band, Radiohead. The band allowed users to essentially "name their own price" on their album In Rainbows. But this trend is not just exclusive to well-established bands like Radiohead. Noise-pop newcomers Sleigh Bells released their first single of their first album, Tell 'Em, for free before their album was even released. This past year, Target released a free Christmas album called The Christmas Gig with songs recorded exclusively for the album, which featured indie favorites like Best Coast, Wavves, and Bishop Allen.
While ten years ago, this might have been seen as ridiculous marketing idea for a band, economically, it's now one of the smartest ways of promotion, especially on the internet. Pirating and downloading music illegally have become almost accepted practices- so why shouldn't bands embrace free music in their business practices? Not only do free tracks create buzz amongst fans, but they also make tracks available to music bloggers, who can in turn expose bands to a larger audience.
But is this a smart idea for indie bands, who often make little enough money as it is? Maybe.
What do you think?
It's ridiculous how easy it is to download music these days; that has to contribute a ton to the fact that artists are more and more often deciding to release music for free (since they're not going to make money off it ANYWAY, right?). Honestly it's a wonder anybody makes any money off music making these days. I couldn't imagine being an artist and nothing else, and I don't think indie bands have much of a choice, really.
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