Scott Porad

Gradon Tripp wrote a post last week about his great experience with the band Quiet Company.  Here’s the story in a nutshell:

Gradon posted on Twitter that he had heard the band and liked their music; the band was listening on Twitter and sent him a message back with a link to a sampler pack of their songs.  In addition, they told Gradon to share the sampler pack with anybody who he wanted.  That led directly a CD sale because Gradon like the music, and to word-of-mouth becasue Gradon told everyone about his wonderful experience.

Brilliant!

To a musician, the name of the game is audience.  Unless you already have a big audience who is buying your music, then you’re better off giving it away in order to build the audience.

With digital music, there’s no incremental cost to providing a copy for free.  Some might say, “well, the musician isn’t getting paid for that copy of the song, so there is a cost.”  But, the people you are giving the music to weren’t going to buy it anyhow.  Effectively, you’re giving away something that cost you nothing, and that nobody was going to pay you money for, in exchange for getting a new potential audience member.  That seems like a pretty good bargain to me.

By giving away the music, the bands are going to create an audience that will buy the music (and other things like concert tickets, merchandise, etc.) in the future.  The famous investor Warren Buffett has an expression for this: long-term greedy.   That is, that is making less money today, so as a result of building an audience, you will make more in the future.