Yet Another Example Of A Band Doing Better By Ignoring The 'Old Ways'

from the ok,-ok,-I'll-post-it... dept

A few folks had sent in the LA Times story on the band Metric last week, as yet another example of a band that had ignored the "old ways" of doing things and found they did much better on their own, but I'd thought that maybe we'd seen enough examples of this sort of thing already. However, judging from the fact that more people kept submitting it all weekend and into this week, I figured perhaps it is worth pointing out, as well. Perhaps one of these days we won't find it so surprising that a band tends to do much better by embracing some reasonable choices and ignoring some of the bad old ways of doing things.

In this case, the band decided to ignore the label route and go on its own -- and while the sales numbers don't seem all that exciting based on traditional metrics, in terms of the metric that counts the most to the band (money made), it's already made much more than its last record label album. And it did this in just a few weeks, compared to four years of sales on the old album. Not surprisingly, the band focused on a tiered solution that we've seen work so successfully for so many bands -- selling direct off its own site, including a $65 "deluxe" package. In this case, the band had hoped to sell 500, but sold out all 500 in 48 hours, and is now making another batch. While the band didn't make the music available for free (I'd argue they could have done even better if they had), they did allow people to put a widget on a website that would stream the whole album.

One other interesting aspect: in order to pay for the production of the album, the band took out a loan, which they note they'll be easily able to pay off. That seems like a much better deal than the record label contract where it provides what's effectively a loan (an "advance") and then takes pretty much all of the profits from the album itself. While this particular loan was offered by a specific music foundation, you would think that it might make sense for a new business to specialize in these types of loans, helping bands that are likely to be able to repay the loan based on innovative business models.

Filed Under: business models, metric, music, tiers