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.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: free, music, officer roseland, paid

6 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

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

Wow
That's really awesome lol.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Peter Thomas, 19 Feb 2009 @ 9:24am

I wouldn't listen to that if you paid me...
...oh, hang on, I might, actually.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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
[ link to this | view in thread ]