A few people asked so…..My thoughts on the whole Free/Pay What You Want thing was to use “free” content (in this case an album) to gain an audience for my music. My music is bloody weird/quite odd but hopefully quite melodic so I was really hoping to connect to an audience but it was a hard sell. Weird guitar instrumentals in odd timings – doesn’t inspire much confidence does it?
To an extent free/PWYW has worked quite well, I now have an email list of around 3000 people and the album has sold well enough to recoup all costs. A massive result (and thanks very much).
Do I believe all music should be free? No. My albums are expensive to make because I pay for skilled people to work on them, I want to make great records. If the audience doesn’t choose to pay for music we are all in trouble, there won’t be the money to pay skilled people to work on records and the overall quality will decrease. Sure there are massive advances in the quality of technology but you still need skilled people to work on them. The skill set of a guitarist is different to that of a recording engineer (although they can be one and the same).
In the case of Ghost it was all about gaining the attention of an audience, by removing all barriers for people to hear the music in the eventual hope that people would be willing to pay for future recordings or go to a concert or tell a friend about it. Also if people do choose not pay for it you can torrent it anyway, a reality whether you like it or not. I have no problem with people sharing my music, it’s free marketing (as long as they are not exploiting it commercially).
I also like the whole DIY thing coming from being a fan of US Hardcore when I was younger.
Personally I’d be more concerned if no one wanted to torrent my music, it often means no one cares. The hard thing is gaining the attention of the audience where there is so much music available.
Now there is an audience I will probably charge for future recordings but also make some content available free, a balance.
Ghost is no longer available free/pay what you want but my new album Relic is:
Cheers 🙂
