livingbrands

Free Prince

Actually the previous post reminded me of Prince giving away his new album for free in the UK with the Mail on Sunday. Which worked very well for him.

His previous album sold circa 80,000 copies, and he made about £150k.

Going this route, he got his product into the hands of millions of people (without the need for promotional costs or expensive packaging - just a cardboard slip sleeve). And the Mail got a huge spike in sales as all the Prince fans, and those (like me) just interested in getting his album for £1.40 steamed in.

Which is probably why they were happy to pay north of £300k for the privilege...doubling cash in the back pocket for his Royal Purpleness.

Everyone leaves the party with a balloon basically.

I think all these new models in the music industry are really interesting. And you just wonder what would happen if they were adopted elsewhere.

Secrets of the Witching Hour

A bit of music downloading you might be interested in.

The Crimea are a UK indie band who, when dropped by their record label, decided to go their own way, producing the latest album (Secrets of the Witching Hour) themselves.

More than that, they then decided to give it away as a free download.

The business rationale? PR (see article in this months Q), fast track interest, boosted revenues from live performance…and increased sales of the 'hard copy' CD - cos you can still buy it on Amazon.

And all indications are it's working: 59,948 downloads and counting. When they hit 60,000 a new version of the album is going up apparently, so get in quick.

And I won't do the usual 'sounds like a cross between X & Y', as it''s free. So you can download it and decide for yourself!

10 things we didn't know before the 35th week of 2007

1. The Islamic revolution in Iran was equivocal about the role of music, and to this day, music can be heard on state television but instruments are not shown.
2. The French word for their new Arab middle class is beurgeoisie, deriving from the French "beur" meaning child of Arab immigrants.
3. Prison officers are on average assaulted eight times a day.
4. The average failed marriage will have lasted 11.5 years.
5. A woman will own an average of 111 handbags in her lifetime.
6. It's an imprisonable offence to keep money you notice has been wrongfully deposited in your bank account.
7. Orchids are as old as the dinosaurs.
8. The chances of a woman having two sets of triplets naturally are one in 64 million
9. Sniffer dogs are used in the fight against pirate DVDs. They cannot smell the difference between fake and genuine though.
10. Police speed guns can be jammed by devices used to control electronic gates and garage doors.

(Source: BBC)