8 Reasons Why Bands/Labels Should Offer An MP38 Reasons Why Bands/Labels Should Offer An MP3
It's 2007. The internet is a powerful and extensive way to discover and sell new music. Unfortunately, some bands, record labels, and PR agencies still don't get it. They are old fashioned and feel safe behind the protective (and limiting) walls of Real Audio formats (.ra), Windows Media Audio (.wma, .asx) and Macromedia Flash players. They think that giving away an MP3 will hurt their bottom line. Here are 8 reasons why they are hurting themselves:
8. Reputation: If your band is any good, MP3s of your songs will eventually surface on the internet. Do you want it to be a proper MP3 that you supplied, that you know is compressed decently and has the full song or do you want to leave people's first impressions of your songs to somebody who might post 3/4 of your song from an online radio rip?
7. Repeated Listenings: You can't download and save streaming-only versions. It is much more likely for somebody to download a song to their computer, listen to it often, and go buy the CD than to return to a streaming-only website often enough to fall in love with it and support the artist.
6. Compatibility: 75% of people don't have Real Media Player installed. 10% of people aren't on Windows and thus don't have Windows Media Player. That is millions of people that buy albums and listen to music (just not yours).
5. The Hype Machine: This powerful search engine indexes over 1,000 music blogs who write about and post samples of music they love. This powerful search engine has been described as the future of all media. This powerful search engine only indexes MP3s.
4. In My Car: People listen to a lot of music in their cars, while commuting, while traveling, while going out on Friday night. 30% of MP3 owners burn CDs weekly. If they aren't listening to the radio they are listening to a CD, which won't have any of your music on their Party Mix because you can't burn them.
3. Music Blogs: Music blogs are becoming more influential every day as they become the daily, mostly uncommercial alternative to money drenched taste makers like Clear Channel and MTV. One such influential music blog 3Hive (on The Hype Machine's Top Blog Scores 3hive is ranked #2/1000+) only posts about bands that offer up a free MP3 or two. You'll never get written about if you don't offer any.
2. Podbop: User-powered audio concert listings by matching up legal MP3s (hosted on label/artist sites) with tourdates. You can stream them or download them as a podcast for on-the-go concert discovery. Anybody can add a band, but only if they have 1-2 MP3s. If you don't have any, you're missing out on free, world-wide concert publicity.
1. iPods: iPods have 82.7% of the portable digital music (hard drive) player market and 62.2% of the overall music player market. That's 88.7 MILLION iPODS ever sold (21 million in the last quarter alone). iPods cannot play Real Audio or Windows Media Audio formats. You are missing out on, literally, millions and millions of people being able to listen and fall in love with your music while they are on the go.
Photo by Like The Jetsons
I agree with this so much. Of course I benefit from free MP3s--but if record companies don't recognize that they also benefit, they are being short sighted. It often takes me awhile before I really listen to a song or two and fully appreciate that new artist. However, I eventually will, and if I like the music, I will buy more. Every album that I have purchased (either in CD form, iTunes or eMusic) have been artists who I originally heard about through a blog and was able to download a song or two to listen to first.
I do think that some of the music sharing web sites also have a responsibility though to not post an entire CD from an artist. That seems too much to even me.