How Musician Ellis Paul Got 300 Fans To Give Him $100,000 For His Latest Album

from the how-it's-done dept

Tue, Mar 16th 2010 2:36pm — Mike Masnick

Yet another great blog post by Ariel Hyatt, exploring how musicians are embracing the concept of focusing on the true fans to build a modern business model -- this time looking at how musician Ellis Paul was able to raise $100,000 from just 300 fans. The actual concept appears quite similar to what we've seen elsewhere before, in that he put together a set of "tiers" for support. The Ellis Paul story actually sounds quite similar to the Jill Sobule story -- both musicians who have been around for many years, bouncing around in the old system before realizing that a big label doesn't make much sense, when you have a strong fan base and really aren't selling the amount of albums the big record label really needs to consider you a success. Like Sobule, Paul has focused on really building up a loyal audience, and figuring out ways to communicate with them. What's interesting here, is that it took just 300 fans buying into tiers to get Paul to that $100,000 mark. Not bad.

There are some parts that suggest Paul could have an even stronger model, however. It doesn't appear that he really embraces "free." For example, there's lots of talk focusing on selling albums, even though his manager admits that he makes about 60% of his revenue from live shows, and a key focus for Paul is to build up his audience. In fact, for people who did participate in his tiered offering, they would send them CDs and ask them to pass the CDs along to other potential "true fans." But why not just embrace the more efficient system of offering the music up for free to expand the audience much further, continue to build up that live following, and offer additional alternatives for the business model that might get even more than 300 people to participate?

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Filed Under: connect with fans, ellis paul, jill sobule, music industry

19 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 2:55pm

300 fans, or 300 patrons? One upper-class patron, or 300 middle-class patrons.

It's pretty obvious that patronage can't work in the 21st century and this is why we need multi-national corporations investing in the arts because, otherwise, the arts would up and disappear . . . .
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 2:59pm

Re:
To clarify, the world is large enough for both fan-based investment in the arts and corporate-based investment.

Let's just not delude ourselves into thinking that only the corporate-based path is the correct one.

The world is large enough for both.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:02pm

To answer the last question, people feel special and more connected when they feel like they have been singaled out. Allowing everyone to download music is wonderful, to PUSH that same free music to individuals, creates a sense of connection. To allow people to participate in the process of giving those things away makes THEM feel more important and connect. THEY have helped to create the huge following.
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Tom The Toe, 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:05pm

Ellis Paul is a wonderful artist
I had the chance to hear him play and meet him at the Blue Door in OKC. A very friendly guy who loves what he does. For those of you that haven't heard of him, his song World Ain't Slowin' Down was in the Jim Carey movie Me Myself And Irene.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:06pm

maybe if he can get enough people to participate, maybe they each give him, what $15 for the cd, he can sell, 10,000 copies? no wait that is the old record business and you dont like that business.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:25pm

Re:
maybe if he can get enough people to participate, maybe they each give him, what $15 for the cd, he can sell, 10,000 copies

Sure, if he can, but that's selling stuff that fewer people want. The whole point of what we talk about here is trying to sell what people want, not what they used to want.
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kyle clements (profile), 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:30pm

Re:
It's not a matter of liking or not liking one business or another. It's about what works, and what doesn't work.

sure, he could sell 10,000 copies of an album
(1st: good luck with that. 2nd: that likely won't even cover his advance)
Or, he could use this model, and make a ton of cash with only 300 people.
I would imagine that it's a lot easier to find 300 fans than 10,000

I take some issue with the second paragraph, however. It certainly is possible that sales could be increased by embracing free. However, this example could also be used to argue that leveraging 'free' and using an unlimited resource to advertise a scare good isn't always necessary to connect with fans and give a reason to buy.
'Free' is one tool for building an audience, one very good tool. But it's not the only tool, or the best tool in all cases. This guy's not using it, and he's doing quite well.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:31pm

Re:
The era of the shiny plastic disc is over. Deal with it.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:40pm

Re: Re:
so why doesn't he make one song at a time, that wouldnt cost much. he could connect with fans every month with a new tune and ask for a little more money. if the record world is dead why make records instead of songs? that is an old business way to do things.
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PRMan, 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:46pm

$100,000 from 300 fans?
He's lying...
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PRMan, 16 Mar 2010 @ 3:47pm

Re: $100,000 from 300 fans?
(For those of you with no sense of humor, this is, of course, a reference to today's earlier article...)
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Epsyle, 16 Mar 2010 @ 5:23pm

Re: $100,000 from 300 fans?
He's not lying, he's just using the last shreds of the old business model and spinning some pr to make us think he's using a new business model! :D
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Unliscensed Sow, 17 Mar 2010 @ 2:56am

Re: Re:
"The era of the shiny plastic disc is over. Deal with it."

Only if you're happy with shitty sound quality.
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BBT, 17 Mar 2010 @ 6:41am

You would think that a website so focused on "connecting" with fans would recognize that people feel more connected to physical objects than digital bits, and connect more with music introduced to them by trustworthy friends than randomly discovered.

Giving CDs to fans to then give to their friends would have a far greater chance of making those friends actually become fans than simply putting something on bittorrent.

Not to say he couldn't do both, but the current model he's using sounds pretty good. I know I'm far more likely to listen to a CD someone hands to me and recommends than I am to listen to a band that someone mentions to me "oh hey, check out ______ sometime" and then I have to remember to download it.
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weneedhelp (profile), 17 Mar 2010 @ 10:05am

You mean....Artists...may actually....GASP!!! have to tour.

What is this world coming to?
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weneedhelp (profile), 17 Mar 2010 @ 10:11am

Re: Re: Re:
Shitty sound? You only listen to LP?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2010 @ 11:22am

Re: Re: Re:
Because compact discs are the only way to experience high fidelity. There is no other way. Nope. It has to come on a shiny plastic disc. No other way. Not possible.

FLAC, what?
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Jupiter (profile), 25 Mar 2010 @ 2:19pm

embrace the fans
Giving the music away for free doesn't actually make you want to listen to it. In fact it sounds like a desperate move to be heard.

Encourage the people who have already bought your music - the fans - to give that music to their friends and help turn them into fans. Sounds good to me.

If a friend gives me a copy of a CD and tells me how much they love it, I'm going listen to embrace that musician a lot easier. I've already got so much music that throwing another one onto the ipod doesn't really mean anything.
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