Filmmaker Giving Away Movie Soundtrack For Free To Promote The Movie

from the yet-another-use-of-free-in-a-business-model dept

About a year ago, Mark Cuban had excellent suggestion for helping to promote movies: give away the soundtrack to the movie to everyone who attended the show in the theater. That would help give everyone another reason to pay to go see the movie and provide them something extra. At the same time, it would help promote the musicians involved in the soundtrack. It was such a good idea that, of course, most moviemakers have completely ignored it. But not all. Parker Mason writes in to let us know about Ryan Gielen, an executive producer of a new indie film that's been getting some buzz at various film festivals, called The Graduates. Gielen read Cuban's post too -- and was so inspired by it that he decided to try to use the suggestion, in a slightly modified fashion. Rather than making you go see the movie first, he's releasing one free track a week leading up to the release of the movie. Or, if you want to speed things up, you can buy the entire collection of songs... for $0.99... total.

They're not giving away all the tracks, but at least half of the soundtrack. They worked with a bunch of indie bands for the movie -- and most jumped on the idea pretty quickly, recognizing that the more successful the movie was, the more attention they were likely to get. He admits that bigger bands almost certainly wouldn't go for such a thing (nor would bigger movie studios), but they might be missing out on a lot in fearing the free promotion.

One of the key points Gielen makes is that to get The Graduates attention, they had to do something different because:

We don't compete exclusively with low-budget films. We compete with everyone. So what do we have to offer our potential audience to set us apart? A great film and a great soundtrack isn't enough, we need people to know about it.

Of course, it also helps to have good music, which is why the team working on the movie went out to find indie bands that they actually liked, which they felt would really mesh well with the movie and match well with the tastes of the target audience. But, of course, someone will stop by in the comments to explain why such a thing could never work on a bigger scale.

Filed Under: business models, free, movies, promotion, ryan gielen, soundtrack, the graduates

Go To The Movie, Get The Soundtrack For Free

from the yet-another-idea dept

It always amazes me when movie industry execs complain that the models we discuss wouldn't work for the movie industry. That's ridiculous, because in many ways, it's already working for the industry. As Marcus Loew once famously said: "We sell tickets to theaters, not movies." The movie has never been the "product." The experience of seeing the movie is the product, and so the focus shouldn't be freaking out about "pirates" while making the movie-going experience worse. It should be the opposite. It should be about enticing people to want to go out to the movies by giving them something extra that makes it worthwhile. Going to the movies is a social experience. It's much cheaper to eat dinner at home, but plenty of people go out to eat at restaurants because those restaurants (while more expensive) give people a reason to go (better food quality, better service, a chance for a night out, no need to cook or wash the dishes, etc.). There's no reason why the movie industry can't do the same.

While we've talked about a number of different ideas for enticing more people to go to the theaters (beyond making the experience better, why not let people buy a discounted DVD of the movie they just saw as they exit the theater -- if they really liked it, many will want to own it to see again, and to see the extras). Mark Cuban, who has actually been at the forefront of many of these ideas (and, also happens to be very involved in the industry, though more on the independent side) has an interesting new suggestion. He points out that only a small number of people actually buy the soundtracks associated with movies -- but if you want to attract more people to go to the movie, why not give them the ability to download the soundtrack of any movie they go see in the theaters. Put a special code on the ticket stub that takes them to a download store -- and on that store include the soundtrack as well as extras, such as the script from the film. Obviously, this content will be spread around and can be accessed by others, but many will value the fact that by seeing the actual movie they get access to the official content. As Cuban notes, this can also be a win for the music industry, as a portion of the movie ticket sales can be used to compensate them as well. It's yet another example of the model we've discussed repeatedly: using infinite goods (music, script) to make the scarce good (seats in a theater for a show) appear to be more valuable.

Filed Under: free, mark cuban, movies, music, soundtrack