Hugh Cornwell Is Still Not A Taxi Driver; Musician Learns To Embrace Free
from the good-for-him dept
Jean Savoye, a reader here at Techdirt, sent in a submission using the provocative title that "Hugh Cornwell Is Still Not A Taxi Driver," and wrote about how former Stranglers' frontman, Hugh Cornwell, appeared to be embracing some of the concepts we talk about here as a business model. On his official website, he's offering up his latest album as a completely free download. However, he's pairing that with a much more complete business model. Like Trent Reznor, Cornwell is also offering a few different options for those who want tangible (scarce) goods as well -- such as a CD, DVD or vinyl.But Cornwell seems to be going even further in recognizing the power of selling scarcities. The DVD mentioned above is actually a film showing much of the recording process that went into the album. However, the film itself was also shown in some theaters -- with Cornwell attending each of the showings and doing a Q&A session at the end of each one. In other words, he's recognized yet another important "scarcity": access to the artists and (once again) that means much more than touring, as seen here.
As for the title of the post? Well, back in 2001, Cornwell was doing an interview with a website, and the interviewer showed him Napster and explained it to Cornwell. While Cornwell didn't react totally negatively (he seemed to think it was cool for rare or live tracks), he was very much against his studio recorded songs being up there:
I cannot condone the posting of music that I spent money making, being given away for free.... When I see that my new album has been posted, and everyone can get that for free, if that carries on I'm going to go out of business.... Napster is good in some ways, but if maybe just one track was posted from a commercial record, as a taster, because I know a lot of people who go to Napster are real fans who want the original artwork, want the real article, and are not happy having something that's downloaded. But then there are other people who are getting it for free, they are not giving me anything, and there has to be some sort of royalty paid or I'll have to become a cab driver.Well, seven years later, Cornwell is posting his own music, and having it given away for free -- and he hasn't gone out of business or become a cab driver. He's figured out a business model that takes advantage of that free sharing of his music. Always nice to see musicians progressing along that curve.
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Filed Under: business models, free, hugh cornwell, music, stranglers
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i always say Trent Reznor's model would only work for artists that had proven them selfs.
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Unknown?
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Still, I've always felt that the various methods of using the music as a loss leader are a bit risky; a well-established artist with a few albums and a better than even chance of playing to capacity crowds for at least half their tour dates can weather a fizzle, and some bunch of hopefuls with a few demo tapes they recorded in their garden shed have nothing much to lose, but a band or artist caught halfway between those two points stands to be left out of pocket to the tune of a couple thousand dollars at least if the resulting goodwill doesn't drive people towards buying concert tickets and band merchandise.
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Good to see!
Mike, you must be pleased when you see people successfully make this happen, especially considering the amount of people that come on here to tell you otherwise :)
NASA
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somebody
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art for arts sake...nearly
I'm not sure if Hughs idea was 'just' a 'business model'.....sometimes it just has to be done.....to be honest, after I downloaded the album I was very dissapointed that I didn't have the art work to look at, the lyric sheet to read, I didn't have to get hold of the bottle opener to break the cellophane wrap, scraping the cd cove straight away and didn't get the pleasure of taking off that huge ugly sticker......of course I could be wrong and this all was 'just' a huge business plan....I just hope that it wasn't completely that.
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cornwell
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