JPF Home Page Forums Southeast US Chapter Message Boards Tampa Chapter Message Board DiscRevolt - the new way to buy music directly from the artist

Say Hey -

I was exposing Goody (settle down Mike, read the rest of the sentence) to a new distribution tool I've acquired and she has encouraged me to tell all of you about it too. Should have thought of that myself.

At Folk Alliance back in February I met some folks from a company called DiscRevolt. They provide musicians a way to sell digital downloads of their music without the purchaser having to sign up for a membership to iTunes, Napster, etc. The musician uploads their music, as much as they want, to the DiscRevolt site along with art used to create a "card design." A download card is designed that will contain a code on the back enabling the holder of the card to access the DiscRevolt site and download 15 songs. Each artist who is part of DiscRevolt designates one of their songs as a "feature" song which all buyers accessing the site have access to.

So, to illustrate, let's say you buy one of my cards from me ($10 by the way, so about .67 per song). With that card you can download 15 of my songs OR some lesser number of my songs and the balance of your 15 can come from the "feature songs" of other artists. The downloads are mp3 format and iPod compatible.

The artist buys the cards from DiscRevolt in quantity (say 100 at a time) and then sells them through their website and at their live performances. No accounting, no middleman. What do you think? Under the Folk genre there are already some great artists (besides me of course) including Kerrville New Folk finalists Dave Potts, Will Maring and The Dalzeils. Check it out. There are links on my webpages and the home page for DiscRevolt is at http://www.discrevolt.com/.

This could be the wave of the future but questions and perhaps objections that come to mind are:

1. Are people willing to pay the same price for mp3 quality rather than CD quality sound?

2. Are customers willing to part with $10 - $15 for a card that does not play in their CD or mp3 player forcing them to go home and download before they to hear anything?

3. They may want the artist's autograph on a CD following a concert.....not on a throwaway card.

4. Presumably the artist buys the cards at a low price to resell at the $10 - $15, thereby making a profit?

5. This concept might work better for the Ipod crowd who are likely to be 15 years old and are unlikely to listen to folk or other geezer music.

Those are my reactions but don't pay any attention because the marketing folks always do the opposite of what I think.

Colin

Colin -

Valid points, all. As far as the mp3 quality, I've played both the original CD and these downloads on a home Bose system and can't tell the difference. Some probably have better ears for that than I. Yes, the artist does make a profit on the card sale, typically better than on a download through the digital distributors. And, don't count us out on the iPod market - I've got one now and can't believe I waited so long. Its loaded with all my favorite geezer tunes!

I'm in the "test" phase of this and will let you know how it comes out. So far it has been handiest for folks who want a CD with some of my newer unreleased material on it that they hear me play live. They buy the card and wait for the next CD to get uploaded since they might not see me live again for a few months.

I think it is a very good idea to discuss and share stuff like this here in the forum.

I think it might be possible to sell a download card at a live show if you pitched it really well... something like, "If you'd like to listen to my music on your iPod, let me tell you the easiest way. If you buy one of these download cards here for $15, you can download my entire new CD AND get five bonus tracks to explore other great artists from DiscRevolt. Best of all, you don't need to open an account or supply a credit card or anything! So these cards also make great gifts. I also have regular old fashioned CDs for anyone who'd like to purchase one."

In response to what Colin said - Lots of people don't care about the difference in quality between mp3 and CD. This is hard for me to understand but it seems to be true. And in most circumstances where the crowd is huge, the audience members will not expect an autograph. Most people don't have huge crowds, though. The iPod crowd is not the 15 year olds... I see an iPod on almost every adult at my gym, male and female. Many many adults have them. HOWEVER, I agree with Colin 100% that people would rather buy a CD than a card, unless you trick them with a savvy sales pitch, and even then it might not work. I sure as hell wouldn't buy one and I'd be slightly annoyed that the artist was telling me the CD I wanted to buy was "old fashioned." Way to insult me for purchasing your work!

In the end, would this approach work? I dunno. Again, it depends on how you pitch it. I guess it could be one more thing to put on your sales table at a gig. I doubt you'd sell a lot of these, but I could be wrong.

When it comes to selling this card off of your website, the only way it'd make sense is as a "gift" to someone else. Why in the hell would I buy a card which I have to wait a week for in the mail, when I can zip over to iTunes and buy it right now? The only reason might be if I'm a kid with no credit card. And even then, you can buy iTunes gift cards pretty much everywhere now, so kids with no credit cards are still buying music from iTunes.

Would I buy a bunch of these and try to sell them? No. The last thing I need is more physical inventory that I then have to try to sell. If I don't sell those cards I'm stuck with them. Right now if no one buys my music on iTunes it will just sit there but it won't cost me any money, other than a part of the upfront cash I paid CDBaby initially.

Pound for pound, it just seems to me like I can't make a case for this product. I tried really hard, but in the end it still doesn't make sense to me.

Doug,
That's a great use, actually... you can use it to "pre-sell" your next CD. I would not have thought of that. That's probably the best use for something like this.

I was considering this too, until I read ALL the way through the terms and conditions.
It seems, in #3, you may be giving up more rights to your music than receiving.
this may be on the up and up, but i hope some music law pro would check it out and advise us on it.
just being careful.

Well, the card makes a great souvenier after you've downloaded all the songs. Can you picture another wall (?) in my house covered with framed cards... I'll have to build another wall or add another room. LOL

For physical inventory, a box of cards is easy to carry I'm assuming not as expensive as CD's, right? Young people seem to like that sort of convenience and some of us older ones are happy to have it too.
It's another marketing tool. Remember when people though CD's was a crazy idea...not so long ago...

I have a ?... Who in our chapter is or knows of an intellectual rights/property atty. I think once we know that all is on the up & up.. This is a boon to traveling musicians. Thank you Jak for looking out for the artist.

JMO