Camper Van Beethoven Funds Their SXSW Trip By Letting Fans Sponsor Songs At Their Performance
from the that's-a-nice-rtb dept
American rock band Camper Van Beethoven is traveling to South by SouthWest this year without the support of a record label, so in order to raise funds, they're selling off the right to choose the songs that go on to their setlist for the 2 shows that they're going to play. The first 35 fans to pony up $102 get:Sounds like an excellent leveraging of a few of the scarcities that we've mentioned here before, in this case, attention, exclusivity and patronage. With the "Santa Cruz Roller Derby Girl," CVB's personality definitely shines through in this unique offer that should resonate nicely with their fans (in fact, I learned of this promotion via a friend sharing it through Google Buzz). So, once again, it's great to see yet another label-free band (who once was on Virgin, years ago, actually), explore new and creative ways to give their fans a reason to buy.
- A Santa Cruz Roller Derby Girl will walk/skate across the stage carrying a placard announcing your sponsorship of the song, within full view of the audience or cameras, to have the moment captured on film or video for all of eternity!
- You can have up to 4 names or one business on each placard.
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: business models, camper van beethoven, cwf + rtb, sxsw
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Fantastic idea
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sold!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Copyleft.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/RSS_2.0
yah I know I will miss a lot of things, but the license is actually what I care about.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Copyleft.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Copyleft.
The webseries Riese got a lot of attention and now the guys who produce it made some deals with some entertaiment industry guy's and they told them to take the original episodes out from the web.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
CVB
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
existence
plus there's even new cds out!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Read this interview to better understand today's music environments
Some excerpts from the interview
___________
I think we've all heard many pro and con argument regarding the vast potentials of digital distribution of music, or even that music is information and it should be free!* ...but the real outcome for musicians and most music-based business has been lowered income. ...
Most of the musicians I read about who are in favor of "freedom of information" are either already wealthy due to hard-copy sales or never made a dollar ever. That's sort of classic supply-and-demand. Once again, capitalism rears it growth-oriented head: there is no such thing as sustenance level capitalism, it can only exist in a growth oriented market.
To say that merchandising or concert ticket sales should pay for the creation and distribution of music is asinine. Take a quick look at the actual money made from these things -- it virtually precludes anybody from making money unless they are assured of having 300+ people per night for extended tour (and that the club is paying them!) How many bands can do that and how long can they do that? Rock music is ghettoized the same way jazz was. Imagine jazz musicians trying to monetize the music by means of merchandise. How could an act playing at nightclubs where ~50 people listen support a tour, much less further CD recording. The financial breakdown of time, equipment, musicians, travel, merchandise manufacturing, etc. means that almost all "professional" musicians you see, have seen or will see are basically hobbyists; their time and materials are almost never paid for by listeners. like 98% of them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]