[Dixielandjazz] Re. CD sales

[Nancy Giffin]

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned;
I haven¹t had time to keep up with DJML.
How is this for a marketing strategy:

-- At concerts, give away CD-Rs of every song you've recorded
-- Encourage everyone to pass it around the Internet
-- Make it available at no cost over file-sharing networks.
-- Sell 360,000 of your first album in the first week of commercial sales.

Say what?!  That would be a record-breaking first week of sales.
And so it was!!!

Read all about it in this tongue-in-cheeky article from ZDNet UK:
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39249667,00.htm

DON'T MONKEY AROUND WITH NEW IDEAS
ZDNet UK

January 30, 2006, 15:30 GMT

For proof of how innovation can go badly wrong, just look to Sheffield

It is always sad to report abuses of technology, especially when they
threaten an industry. But this week has seen the true evil of file sharing
laid bare ‹ and the implications for all of us have been made clear.

The Arctic Monkeys, a Yorkshire beat combo, have been the biggest victims of
this sordid business, and it's all been through their own stupidity. They
actually gave away CD-Rs of their music ‹ all of it ‹ at their own concerts.
Then they compounded the madness by encouraging their young, digitally
literate fan base to actually make it all available at no cost over file
sharing networks.

As any big record label will tell you, this is commercial suicide. By the
time the first album was commercially released last week, every note had
been globally available, for free, for months.

Fortunately, the BPI is active in preventing such lunacy. It's taken two
file sharers to court, last week landing them with a £20,000 bill, a move
calculated to show the tens of millions of others just how likely they are
to get caught.

Such measures are very necessary. By industry logic, every file shared is a
sale lost. Those sad Monkeys must be kicking themselves ‹ just think how
much bigger their record-breaking first week sales figures of 360,000 albums
would have been if they had prosecuted their would-be customers too. Every
man, woman and child in the country would by now have bought five copies:
instead, penury and obscurity await. You will never hear of them again.

We are lucky that wiser heads are in charge of the industry, and that these
same heads are planning how to introduce powerful, widespread and legally
mandated restrictions on how all digital equipment can operate. Bitter
disappointment awaits those who think that revolutionary new technologies
can lead to revolutionary new ways of doing business; at all costs, the
current channels of control and distribution must be maintained.

Britain's phonographic industry must be preserved ‹ as must every other
existing and entrenched technology industry. More control, more patents,
more lawyers and fewer freedoms are badly needed to encourage innovation and
ensure the terrible tragedy of the Monkeys is not repeated in any other
sphere where creativity matters.

+++++