The reason I'm making the post, is because the numbers are in, and the album certainly reached new heights of Pennywise fans. I remember listening to Pennywise's release "Unknown Road" in 1994, thinking to myself, why is this band not bigger than what they are? The whole pop-punk generation of early 90's artists on Fat-Wreckchords never reached super-stardom. Why? Was it because they didn't want to reach the heights of MTV? Or was it simply that their approach was too underground to reach that market?
Over 500,000 downloads have come through, and they haven't even released the video for the single, The Western World. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this album release and see what you think. Will Pennywise now be a larger band 20 years after they were formed? Either way, this band deserves everything they've put into the last 2 decades as a band.
4 comments:
Pennywise I always thought was a great punk band. I do believe however this band or the people who put this promotion together are highly insane! if they got 500,000 free downloads, how is that a good business decision? what do they think this freebee will do? I must be missing something but this highly devalues music even more than I thought possible..
I'm not sure I know enough about the previous success of the band (I've heard the name and the few people I've talked to about this post have stated that Pennywise has a pretty devoted following) to be able to say whether the music giveaway will have a major affect on their popular success, but this story DOES bring something new into play, via Textango.
So, I'm assuming that Textango payed the band for this exclusive distribution scheme, and is using "Reason To Believe" as a sort of commercial for the service. They're asking people to essentially bump their popularity in the MySpace circle in order to get a free album. This makes the album more of a commercial for Textango than a free-spirited giveaway.
A question- do you then have to sign up for Textango in order to download the album? I visited their site and didn't quite get it, overall. Then again, I'm not a MySpace user and I rarely use my cell phone for anything but talking to my friends, so this sort of service is not geared toward people like me.
Something about the cross-marketing element in this situation rubs me the wrong way. I don't like being asked to advertise things under the guise of being given a present.
I asked some musicians and music appreciators what they thought about this trend of giving away music, and across the board there is a sort of vibe of "if you place no value on something, it can be seen as worthless". It's hard to argue with that, and I'm not sure that I can. It's something that bands with established bases and heavy touring schedules can afford to do, but something that small indie outfits might find out of the question.
" must be missing something but this highly devalues music even more than I thought possible."
I guess I have to say I disagree, Mike. Reference what Trent Reznor did and consider the implication of Pennywise doing something similar in a 2nd-round release.
Perhaps it's that I'm an indefatigable optimist, but I believe that music and any intellectual property will always hold a currency value. We're just in the process of morphing how that value is defined and maintained.
We're living in a morphologists dream right now; almost every creative profession, from music to design to literature to comics, is going through major changes. The trick it to find the right balance of social optimism and healthy cynicism in regards to all of it.
The idea of giving away music isn't a new idea, it's just getting a lot of high-profile press lately. What works for one artist isn't going to work for another, so it's up to each of us to find the path that gives use the level of success we desire.
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