Last week we wrote about Dan Bull's experiment to release a song, "Sharing is Caring" for free via The Pirate Bay (and other sites) and to see if he could still get it to show up in various charts. As we discussed, it definitely was making its way onto the lists of Amazon UK's top hip hop sales. And, on Sunday, the official UK charts came out -- with Sharing is Caring coming in at number 9 on the Indie singles chart and number 35 on the RnB singles chart.
In both cases, "Sharing is Caring" was the top new entrant on both of those charts. While some will say that not making the pop charts suggests this was a failure, it sure looks like a ton of folks were happy to support Dan's effort. As for the US charts, those have a weighted system that includes radio airplay, meaning that there's simply no way Dan could get listed, because he's not going to play the payola game to get on the air. Either way, it was a great experiment, and a job well done by Dan.
Earlier this week, we wrote about Dan Bull's new song and new experiment: could he release a track via The Pirate Bay for free... and still get it onto the music charts? We talked to Dan to see how the process has been so far, and discussed a few other things as well. Dan also mentioned a new carrot that he's added to the promotion. If you buy all 10 versions of his song he'll put your name into his next song (and try to make it rhyme with something). You can see him talking about that program here:
Onto our interview:
What are you hoping to accomplish/show with "Sharing is Caring"?
I want to show that it's possible for musicians to achieve whatever they set their mind on without the need for the protection / interference of record labels and their lobbyists. The BPI, who already helped to force the Digital Economy Act through Parliament during the scrutiny-free wash-up week, are now trying to have The Pirate Bay censored in the United Kingdom. This is a website that does not host any copyrighted material but merely connects people who want to share their own files. It's also a site that does more for unsigned musicians like myself than the BPI ever have. Of course, on top of this, it'll be a great personal achievement and hopefully give a boost to my musical career.
What is your opinion on the music charts?
As a young lad I used to listen avidly to the charts every Sunday, and I'd promptly go to the record store and buy the top hits the next day. The charts is a powerful force in influencing young people's musical purchases. It's a shame, because the charts are no mark of musicianship or long-term listenability - merely whatever has managed to sell the biggest quantity of copies that week. It's odd that weekly sales is considered the most important measure by which we judge the success of a piece of music.
What do you think the successful music careers of the future will look like?
The long tail of the music business is going to get longer and fatter. Many more unsigned and niche musicians will find their audiences and be able to support themselves thanks to the way the internet allows them to find a sizeable audience around the globe. The top 1% of musicians might see a dip in sales - perhaps they'll only be millionaires rather than multi-millionaires. Why is this such a problem?
What's the reaction to "Sharing is Caring" been so far?
The feedback has been great. People like the idea behind the campaign, and equally importantly they're enjoying the song. There have been detractors too - someone said "you're not getting a free song into the charts, you're selling it. Every other song in the charts is available for free somewhere online." The difference is that I have published the free download myself and am encouraging people to download it - in hope that it'll lead to more engagement later. Major label artists who do this (or are even allowed to do this) are few and far between.
I'm not sure how well the single will do in the "official" charts - whatever "official" is supposed to mean - but it's currently swamping the Amazon hip-hop charts with half of the top selling MP3s being my songs. One of the b-sides is also at number one in the reggae charts - three places above Bob Marley, despite the release of the new documentary film about him.
Are there certain protections you think artists do need? As in, how do you deal with truly bad actors?
I don't see why creators need special legal protections more than anyone else in society. I was asked yesterday "well what if someone uploaded all your music and claimed it was by them - wouldn't you want it taken down?". Well, yes I would want it taken down, but I don't think there needs to be a law enforcing that to happen. It just means that the person was behaving like a dick and I would make that fact known. It's too difficult to draw a line between "fair use" and "unfair use", I believe we'd be better off giving everyone the benefit of the doubt in order to stop mashups and parodies being caught in the crossfire.
Is there still a role for pop stars, or is that going away?
People will always love a pop star to read about and gossip about. They won't go away any time soon, but as I said before - people are listening to a lot more music. You used to buy a new record every couple of weeks perhaps and not listen to much else. With the advent of services like Spotify, a person might spread their listening time over 50 artists rather than 5. This is probably a far bigger reason than piracy as to why the sales of the biggest artists might be reducing. Listening habits have changed and you can't legislate against that.
How important have tools like YouTube (and Megaupload?) been to you
in getting your music out?
They've been absolutely vital. YouTube is how most of my listeners discover me. I also became a YouTube partner last year which means I can earn money from streams of videos I've uploaded. It's a great place to discover and collaborate with other artists.
The Megaupload takedown damaged my musical career. Supposedly done in the interests of artists like me, what it actually did was turn all the links to free downloads of music, on blogs, review sites etc, into deadlinks. Why was this allowed to happen? I'd love to see Megaupload's prosecutors explain to me personally how their actions are helping artists such as me.
Check it out: a rare bonus Sunday post. Dan Bull, the independent UK musician who we've written about quite frequently for his songs about topics near and dear to our hearts, has come out with another awesome new song, Sharing is Caring. However, there is one thing different this time around: he wants to see if he can get his freely available song on the music charts. To that end, he's using the Promo Bay, having The Pirate Bay promote his song to its millions of users, and also posting the fun videos (yes, multiple videos) of the song on YouTube.
Traditionally, the major labels tend to get their hits to chart by "buying" their way onto the list. In some cases, this was a literal situation, where labels would effectively scam the Soundscan system to get their albums/songs listed. That's become more difficult these days, but still a major label release will also include millions of dollars spent on marketing to get it on the charts. Dan, however, is wondering if support from the folks at The Pirate Bay might be enough to get his song to chart and to make a pretty powerful point:
The singles charts are worthless as an indicator of quality, and artists needn't strive for the validation of reaching them.
However, by taking a free song by an unsigned artist to the echelons normally reserved for the industry elite, I want to smash the glass ceiling and show that there is another way of doing things.
There are ten different versions of the song—one each focused on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, several remixes, and a selection of instrumental and acapella tracks for other musicians to build upon. You can download all ten from the Pirate Bay (of course, if you're in the Netherlands, too bad), and you can support Dan's shot at the charts as much or as little as you want by buying some or all of them individually from iTunes, Amazon or Play. There is a convenient list of direct store links on Dan's website.
So check out the video for the first version of Sharing is Caring here, and if you'd like to help show the old guard that it is possible to release music freely on sites like The Pirate Bay, and still have that music "sell" well, purchase the track at your favorite online retailer.
