Cory Doctorow Joins The CwF+RtB Experimental Crew

from the good-for-him dept

Writer Cory Doctorow has long been a leading thinker/experimenter when it comes to issues of copyright and content creation -- having long put his works under very permissive Creative Commons license, and making sure that his books were available in all sorts of different formats. However, for the most part, he kept using the same basic business model. However, it looks like he's jumping on board our favored "tiered" CwF+RtB model. Reader Russell sends in the news that Doctorow will not just be self-publishing his next book, but is also offering various "tiers" for support. The ebook and the audiobook will be free, but the physical book will cost money. On top of that, there will be a limit of 250 specially bound limited edition hardcover versions for $250. He also sold a $10,000 commissioned story, which was already sold before he announced this (he thinks he priced it too low). Finally, he may experiment with ads in the book as well. It will be interesting to see how well this works, though I think the tiers could include some more options/creativity, as most people don't have many options outside of the basic book. Still, it's great to see these tiered direct-to-fan CwF+RtB offerings getting closer and closer to being mainstream.

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Authors Take Up The Tiered Support Models Also

from the good-for-them dept

Another day, another example of content creators embracing the business models we've been talking about -- and once again, this one is outside of the music industry. Recently we wrote about movie makers picking up on tiered funding offerings, similar to what Jill Sobule has done, and now we've got a budding author as well. To be clear: I'm absolutely sure there are others doing this as well, but I just heard about this particular example. Elinor Mills has the story of an author, Robin Sloan, who has apparently put some popular short stories that he's written online for free. But now he's trying to write a whole book. But rather than go the standard route, he's self-funding and then self-publishing the project, and like Sobule, Josh Freese, and many others (um, including us!), he's offering various tiers of benefits that you get for support:

Pledge $3 or more
DIGITAL PACK. Get a PDF copy of the book and follow along with behind-the-scenes updates.

Pledge $11 or more
PHYSICAL PACK. All of the above, plus get a physical copy of the book. (The more people who choose this level or higher, the better the book is for everybody!)

Pledge $19 or more
SINCERITY PACK. All of the above, plus your book is signed, and it comes with a little surprise.

Pledge $29 or more
PATRON PACK. All of the above, plus your name (or secret code-name) is listed in the acknowledgments.

Pledge $39 or more
SUPER OCCULT VALUE PACK. All of the above, plus get three more copies of the book (for a total of four), so you can give one to a friend, donate one to the library, leave one in a coffee shop with a line of hexadecimal code scribbled across the title page...

The cool thing? At the time I'm writing this, the last one had the highest number of buyers, and the cheapest one had the lowest number of buyers. And yet the Hollywood lawyers of the world insist that people just want to get stuff for free. Not true. Provide them real scarce value and people will buy.

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Filmmakers Using Tiered Support Levels And Fan Support As Well

from the and-on-it-goes dept

I have to admit, these days, we're getting overwhelmed with people submitting really cool, unique and fun business models being done by various creative folks. I simply can't post all of them, but will try to dip in and post a few examples here and there. Scott Walker points us to some info on a "crowd-sourced" film called Artemis Eternal, where they're offering various tiers of support -- similar to what we've seen with Josh Freese, Jill Sobule and others. But, since this is a movie, rather than music, the things you can get are even more integrated into the movie -- such as the ability to appear in the movie itself, including the marketing of the movie (being on a billboard for a month in LA) among other things. Of course, with something like this, you'd have to imagine there's a risk that the movie never actually gets completed, so it's a bit more difficult to pull it off. But, still, should be a model worth watching to see what happens.

Also in the movie space, Joshua Jones sent in (a while back now, sorry) the fact that the folks behind the movie Visioneers took a different sort of approach as well. Rather than freaking out about "piracy" or people watching the movie in their homes, they realized that obscurity was a much bigger problem than "piracy." So they asked people to host their own screenings -- and even said it was fine for you to charge people to attend. Oh, and if you sent in photos of the screening, you had a chance to win a contest. Again, this isn't a huge step, but it is a neat little promotion, showing that there are unique ways to get some additional attention for your creative efforts, and have the fans help you in the process.

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Jack White The Latest Musician To Experiment With Smart New Business Models

from the another-exception? dept

Every time we discuss musicians or smaller labels that seem to be figuring out how to embrace modern business models by connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, we're told that the model doesn't really work beyond a few small "exceptions." Yet, pretty much every day we keep getting sent more and more examples of these "exceptions." At some point we have to wonder what it will take for the disbelievers to recognize that it's not the exception at all. It is the rule.

The latest comes to us care of GrindEFX, who notes that Jack White (of The White Strpies and the Raconteurs) and his own label, Third Man Records, is offering a nice two tiered subscription service, where fans get extra benefits for being members. To be honest, this sounds an awful lot like the business model that we discussed way back in 2003 (and were told it would never work). It's interesting to see this done at the "label" level, where you get benefits from multiple bands on the label. That could definitely work for a label with a lot of bands that have similar sounds that fans are likely to enjoy across the board.

Anyway, we await the explanations in the comments for why this, too, is an exception and why this business model will never work for others.

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Trent Reznor Using His Fans And Tiers Model To Save A Life

from the using-it-for-good... dept

We've certainly talked a lot about the various ways that Trent Reznor has been exploring creative new business models that center around connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, but he's now using the same concepts to try to help save a life. On Wednesday, he announced a program to get people to donate money to help Eric De La Cruz get a heart transplant, whereby people who donate certain amounts to the cause will get to hang out/meet with Reznor and other band members during his ongoing tour involving both Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction (which, by the way, hits Silicon Valley tonight, for those in the area -- though, they're not accepting any more donations for people going to tonight's show). As with the Ghosts I-IV model, there are different "tiers" of support available. In just two days, he's been able to raise nearly half a million dollars, once again showing the power of having a strong community and trying to do something good with it. It will be fascinating to see if there's more that can be done along these lines in the future as well -- turning some of these business models into helping out those in need.

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No Evidence To Support The Need For Broadband Tiers Or Caps

from the oops dept

Just as the various broadband providers are ramping up their bogus astroturf attempts to convince the world that broadband caps are necessary and good for customers, Saul Hansell has been digging deep into the numbers and can't find any justification at all for the caps. All those stories about overwhelmed networks and exponential traffic growth? Not happening. If anything, the evidence is that the opposite is happening: advances in technology means that it's become cheaper for broadband providers to meet the needs of their customers. And those needs are growing, but that growth rate has been slowing, and is quite manageable. So, basically, the broadband companies are hyping up a problem that just isn't there. There is no crunch. There aren't bandwidth shortages that require cutting off heavy users. The only reason to set up such tiers is to squeeze more money out of customers without providing any improvements in service (actually, while providing less service). And it's all possible thanks to the lack of competition in the marketplace.

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Yet Another Example Of A Band Doing Better By Ignoring The 'Old Ways'

from the ok,-ok,-I'll-post-it... dept

A few folks had sent in the LA Times story on the band Metric last week, as yet another example of a band that had ignored the "old ways" of doing things and found they did much better on their own, but I'd thought that maybe we'd seen enough examples of this sort of thing already. However, judging from the fact that more people kept submitting it all weekend and into this week, I figured perhaps it is worth pointing out, as well. Perhaps one of these days we won't find it so surprising that a band tends to do much better by embracing some reasonable choices and ignoring some of the bad old ways of doing things.

In this case, the band decided to ignore the label route and go on its own -- and while the sales numbers don't seem all that exciting based on traditional metrics, in terms of the metric that counts the most to the band (money made), it's already made much more than its last record label album. And it did this in just a few weeks, compared to four years of sales on the old album. Not surprisingly, the band focused on a tiered solution that we've seen work so successfully for so many bands -- selling direct off its own site, including a $65 "deluxe" package. In this case, the band had hoped to sell 500, but sold out all 500 in 48 hours, and is now making another batch. While the band didn't make the music available for free (I'd argue they could have done even better if they had), they did allow people to put a widget on a website that would stream the whole album.

One other interesting aspect: in order to pay for the production of the album, the band took out a loan, which they note they'll be easily able to pay off. That seems like a much better deal than the record label contract where it provides what's effectively a loan (an "advance") and then takes pretty much all of the profits from the album itself. While this particular loan was offered by a specific music foundation, you would think that it might make sense for a new business to specialize in these types of loans, helping bands that are likely to be able to repay the loan based on innovative business models.

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Josh Freese's $250 Option Sells Out In Less Than 48 Hours

from the not-bad dept

Last month, we wrote about how Josh Freese was using rather hilarious tiers to sell his latest album. In my keynote at the Leadership Music Digital Summit earlier this week, I used Freese as an example of a less well known artist doing something similar (and yes, we're working to get the video of the keynote online, but it may take a little while). Now Ian Rogers from Topspin alerts us to the fact that Josh's $250 tier has sold out in less than 48 hours (there were a total of 25 available). At that tier you got a signed CD/DVD (and the music as a download), a t-shirt, a signed drumhead and drumstick and lunch with Josh at PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (he's apparently a big fan). That's a gross of $6,250 for just that option alone. That's no $750,000, but it's a pretty damn good start for a musician that is a lot less well known. Looks like Josh is going to become pretty well known at the local PF Changs... and I'm sure some folks will still claim that these models can't work for less well known musicians.

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Drummer Takes Tiered Buying Options To Extreme (And Hilarious) Levels

from the connecting-with-fans-and-giving-them-a-reason-to-buy dept

Over the past year or so, we've chronicled multiple different musicians adopting a "tiered" approach to selling things. It makes a lot of sense: give people different options, and added value for paying more, and they'll often take you up on it. Two of the more impressive examples of this were Jill Sobule and Trent Reznor (two very different artists, obviously). Now it appears that Josh Freese, who has played drums for Reznor's Nine Inch Nails in the past (as well as spending time in Devo, Guns N Roses, the Vandals, and backing a bunch of others... including Sting, Katy Perry, Clay Aitken and various others), is releasing his latest new album with a rather hilarious (if hopefully tongue in cheek) take on the tiers (thanks Brian).

The tiers start out normally enough, though, there doesn't seem to be a free tier (boo!) and the prices even seem slightly higher than Reznor's successful tiers. But then, he starts adding a ton of higher end tiers with various (often extremely funny) options -- all involving access to him or other musicians he's played with (access is a scarce good, of course). It starts at the $50 level, where you can get:

"Thank you" phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like "Is Maynard really THAT weird?" or "Which one of Sting's mansions has the comfiest beds?" or "Are Devo really suburban robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of dads from Ohio?" or "Why don't the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?" It's your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

And then gets more involved ("lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you're into)") the more you pay. At $1,000, there's: "Get drunk and cut each other's hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on YouTube, of course)." And, of course, all the way up at $75,000 you get the following:

$75,000 (limited edition of 1)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• Go on tour with Josh for a few days
• Have Josh write, record and release a 5-song EP about you and your life story
• Take home any of his drum sets (only one, but you can choose which one)
• Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from Tool's Lamborghini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while
• Josh will join your band for a month ... play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.
• If you don't have a band he'll be your personal assistant for a month (4-day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
• Take a limo down to Tijuana and he'll show you how it's done (what that means exactly we can't legally get into here)
• If you don't live in Southern California (but are a U.S. resident) he'll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks
• Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robins place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna

He may just be mocking the concept, but it's pretty amusing, and I'm sure plenty of fans will take him up on the lower level offerings, at least. Though, he may want to watch out. As Jill Sobule learned, even if she thought no one would take her up on the $10,000 option, someone did. For Josh, at $10,000, that would mean that someone gets to spend some time at Disneyland with Josh -- and then get to keep his Volvo station wagon (yup, that's what it says).

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Yet Another Musician Offers Tiers... Including A Backyard Concert

from the awesome dept

Way back in 2003, I put forth a potential business model for the music industry that encouraged free file sharing. If I believed in the old saw that "ownership" is everything -- perhaps I could have tried to patent it as a business method patent (I'm joking, people). Of course, I'm much more excited about seeing it put to use -- and we've definitely seen various musicians over the past few years adopt variations on this business model put into place. But I find it especially amusing that one throwaway idea I mentioned in that post seems to actually be getting some use: the backyard concert. Specifically, the business model I put forth was that the musicians could give away the music for free, but could offer various (scarce) goods to sell: with a big one being access to the artist. And, I thought, what better form of access than a personal concert? You could do backstage passes, but why not also have some sort of option for the musicians to actually play at your house. If you're a major fan, how awesome would that be?

Last year, Jill Sobule was the first well-known artist we saw who actually offered that. And, now, Boing Boing is reporting that John Wesley Harding is doing something similar. Like Sobule, Trent Reznor, Kristin Hersh, the Beastie Boys and many others, Harding is offering a variety of options for ways to support him -- starting with a download plus CD with bonus live disc for $16 (a bit high, honestly). But at the top of the list is a $5,000 option for... a backyard concert. Sure, perhaps no one will actually take him up on it, but I have to admit I'm thrilled that multiple musicians have now "stolen" this idea and at least are testing it out (though, my original idea was to make it more of a raffle: if you buy into something else, you get a random chance to win a backyard concert).

That said, I'm not all that impressed with the overall offering. It doesn't include a free component, which makes all of the paid options a lot less valuable. If you get more people into the music, they're more willing to buy all those other scarcities you're offering. And, the basic prices seem a bit high. When Reznor did his experiment, the "basic" two disc CD was $10 for 36 songs and there was a $5 option and a free option as well. Starting at $16 (not including S&H) seems a bit high. Still.... great to see that backyard concert option gaining traction.

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Another Band With Another Unique Business Model

from the turning-your-fans-into-promoters dept

Often, when we describe a certain business model put in place by one band that embraces the basic economics of the music industry, someone shows up in the comments to claim "while this might work for musician X, that's an exception... it'll never work for big/small/mainstream/niche/whatever artists." This sort of comment misses the larger point. We are not suggesting a single "business model" for the entire industry. In fact, we're just explaining the economic forces at play, and showing a variety of different business models that embrace those economics. It's those different business models that makes the market so interesting and dynamic and allows bands to stand out from the crowd.

For the latest example, reader James Saunders points us to the band Umphrey's McGee, who implemented a business model for their latest album that helped turn their fans into promoters. Saunders explains the band's "unique plan":

As more people pre-ordered, the band would add more "extras" to the release. There were eight tiers of potential content, each unlocked once a predetermined number of albums were purchased. The result was a massive effort by fans to promote the album for the band; if they got more people to buy it, their own purchase would have more value. I bought my copy over 2 months ago, and I convinced two friends to get it as well. Eventually, all eight tiers were unlocked, so a good number of albums must have been sold. The whole experience offered more to fans than just "music tracks" which could be pirated. Instead they were given a chance to help a band they love reach a wider audience, while at the same time "earning" more for what they were already willing to pay."

This is a neat variation on a similar model we've seen from musicians like Marillion and Jill Sobule to get fans to agree to pay up early in exchange for some benefit. The addition of having different beneficial levels "open up" just adds to the appeal, and it helps turn fans into promoters as well. Again, this is not "the" business model for all bands -- but yet another example of a band recognizing one way to implement a business model that really does focus on connecting with fans and giving them a real reason to buy.

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