Giving away some music, it's a good idea and you may as well anyway - have nothing to lose

There's lots of choices on what to give away - lo-fi, (spurious) out-take version, acoustic.

The objective is to give away enough to sell the full version or sell other songs in your catalogue.

Old model - people hear a song on the radio, some of those people will got to the effort of buying it.

New Model - people hear a song their friend "shared" with them, some of those people will go to the effort of visiting the band's website.

If that person buys another song you're in the same place as you were with the Old model, person heard a song, person bought a song.

The fact they have 2 songs on their iPod doesn't mean you've lost out any more than two people in the room listening to one CD means you've lost out.

If they don't buy any more of your music the first place to look is at the quality of the other songs and website design - the things you can control and avoid getting bogged down with things beyond your control.

Giving music away gives people the opportunity to hear your music, some of those who hear it will buy it and it was ever thus.

I don't think promotion (in whichever form) will work in the future like it did in the past (generate sales).

For most people music will no longer be a product, but a service. A service for which the consumer will pay (subscription to streams etc.) or more likely a service financed by advertising.

Difficult point to answer as we can't guess the future but we can go along the lines of "If this is true then..." - IF being the problem.

Old styles of promotion won't work with the emerging new model but that's not to say no promotion will work.

People still buy music, the numbers are down but how can we determine if that's a general thing or specific to the quality of music on offer and the place music has in people's lives.

Music is not as important as it was, there are other things in competition. Especially for the younger generation music is not the one thing they have to escape their parents world as it once was.

If music is a service than bands can simply promote that service. Revenue streams may be altering but they're not going away.

My main point is about the changing revenue streams.

What is quite clear about the future is that there will be (for the casual hearer/fan/buyer as known today) no need to buy a copy (physical/digital) of a song/album because there will be more than enough ways to hear the music without owning it.

So the problem for the musicians/labels & writers/publishers is to monetize all the ways people use music.

For example to get by websites like MySpace.

DJones wrote:
My main point is about the changing revenue streams.

What is quite clear about the future is that there will be (for the casual hearer/fan/buyer as known today) no need to buy a copy (physical/digital) of a song/album because there will be more than enough ways to hear the music without owning it.

So the problem for the musicians/labels & writers/publishers is to monetize all the ways people use music.

For example to get by websites like MySpace.

People still pay for music - copies leaking out is easier than it used to be but that is more sharing than stealing.

People will pay for downloads. Convenience is the factor effecting the purchase of songs. Make it easy to buy your songs. Use MySpace to drive traffic to your website.

For CDs, better packaging will encourage the fan/gift purchase and people who like design/packaging. The physical may sell fewer but it won't necessarily go away.

Musicians can eliminate many of the middle-men and reduce costs so they can earn as much as they would if they'd signed to a label (Probably more for most people).

If the revenue is down that's countered by the costs coming down. Only in comparison to the rare "mega-earning star" does the prospect for musicians look gloomy.

For more musicians the changes are good news, they will prosper more than they would have done under the Old Model.

We are selling more downloads than any other form of product we have put out.
Granted, we are making arguably better quality stuff than we used to, but we wouldn`t be selling anything at all without the use of free plays/previews on sites.

This of course is how to take advantage of Myspace etc pimping, which a lot of acts are doing.
The drip of download sales is great but everybody supporting a track and buying it on mass is better.

Interesting that the majors are employing the same tactics as the bedroom bands.

the major labels can't survive on selling single downloads (and digital album sales will stay a very minor market)

It's from memory so unreliable, but...

...did the Majors ever make money from singles? Weren't they effectively a loss leader for album sales?

Album sales will suffer because nobody is going to buy the filler tracks. We've all bought an album where the single really is it, the other songs are just third rate.

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- just had a thought, how about offering a package of bits, like songs, video clips, desktop wallpaper for computers, ringtones, pictures and anything else you can download.

Rather than just "a song" a bunch of things - for under, say,