More Evidence That If You Give People A Reason To Buy, They'll Spend More

from the no-more-analog-dollars-into-digital-dimes dept

For years, when we hear old media execs complain about new media, they talk about turning "analog dollars into digital dimes." But, of course, as we've seen, that ignores the reality, which is that the overall market continues to grow, not shrink. We saw this a few years ago when TopSpin -- a provider of a direct-to-consumer platform for content providers to market and sell -- provided some numbers on the artists they worked with and found that the average transaction price for people buying from musicians was much higher than the price of a CD. At the time, across all their musicians, the average transaction was $22 -- and some artists were seeing $50 or higher, with one having an average of over $100.

It appears that this is not limited solely to TopSpin, but other such platforms are seeing the same thing. Bandzoogle, a platform that provides a similar website/marketing platform for artists, has just announced that artists have made over $5 million via its platform, and noted that the average transaction price is $28.02:

• The average sale amount by Bandzoogle members is $28.02. That's an impressive number, and means that usually folks will by more than one album, or a CD and a t-shirt, etc. Those who think they are now in the business of selling 99¢ downloads can revise their assumptions.
  
  
• A bit less than half our members use our store features. Some don't have a store, or they integrate another store into their site, or outside of it. On average, Bandzoogle members that use the store feature make more revenue from it than they pay us in membership fees. This is wonderful.
  
  
• Digital sales (albums or tracks) amount to about 17% of sales. This means that physical items (CDs or merch) still sell a lot more than digital downloads. At least from a band's website. Maybe iTunes and other digital stores are where fans buy more of the digital goodies.
  
  
• There have been close to 200,000 transactions on Bandzoogle powered stores. Two hundred thousand times, fans have clicked on that "buy" button, and gone through the Paypal checkout. That's a nice number that proves that there are still fans out there that are willing to pay for good music and contribute to their favorite artists' careers.

It's not analog dollars into digital dimes if you do it right.

Filed Under: business models, reason to buy
Companies: bandzoogle