Forget Free, Indie Band Offers To Pay People $1 To Download Album

from the could-get...-costly dept

Thu, Feb 19th 2009 8:31am — Mike Masnick

For all the talk about the benefits of giving away music for free as opposed to charging for it, it appears that one indie bands is going even further: it will pay you $1 to download its songs. The band, Officer Roseland, has set up a website called MyStimulusPackage.org, where it offers to pay people $1 to download its new album. You actually have the option of having the $1 sent to you via PayPal... or donated to charity (I chose to donate). It's obviously a gimmick (and, I'm guessing the band will shut down the offer if it reaches a certain budgeted amount), but as we hear all sorts of bands whining about not getting "paid" it's quite interesting to see a band go in the opposite direction.

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Filed Under: free, music, officer roseland, paid

6 Comments

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Xyro TR1 (profile), 19 Feb 2009 @ 8:35am

Wow
That's really awesome lol.
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- Michael Whitetail, 19 Feb 2009 @ 10:10am
  
  Re: Wow
  Indeed it is, and I donated the $1. I do hope that they wont turn around and sell off the email lists to cover the costs though...
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Peter Thomas, 19 Feb 2009 @ 9:24am

I wouldn't listen to that if you paid me...
...oh, hang on, I might, actually.
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pinakidion, 19 Feb 2009 @ 10:39am

Album
It's actually pretty good. Cracked Harmonies is my current favorite.

Like Mike usually says taht even if they are paying folks to download the album, they will not profit later if the music is poor. Great gimmick, but they have to eventually gives people a reason to buy. Look forward to seeing what comes next.
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PaulT (profile), 19 Feb 2009 @ 11:40am

Clever. The money goes to charity. Who wouldn't want to download a free album - even if it sucks - if $1 goes to charity afterwards. If the charity option is chosen, the money comes from sponsors rather than the band itself. They're obviously hoping that most people won't be selfish enough to take $1, but rather take the music and donate the $1.

The only flaw in this plan is if the word gets too widespread, and they get millions of personal cash requests with no way to pay the promised money. Then again, that's still probably safer than the average major label advance,a dn they could always discontinue the offer after a certain amount of time...

It's gimmicky, but yet another example of a band using a no cost offer to raise the awareness of their music.
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bowerbird, 19 Feb 2009 @ 1:33pm

i predicted this some time back.
("the best way to get people to
buy your paper-book would be
to _pay_ people to download the
e-book and start reading that.")

viewed from a certain perspective,
it's simply a budget for marketing.

-bowerbird
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