05 July 2009

Does Twitter Have a Better Business Model Than Warner Music?

From Techdirt (http://techdirt.com/articles/20090623/2337095343.shtml):

We keep talking about artists who are connecting with fans, and giving them a reason to buy, and it seems like every day we hear of more and more new and creative ways that artists are doing this — even as the naysayers stop by daily to insist it’s impossible for such things to scale. It’s a blast to see it scale more and more every day and prove them wrong. The latest example comes from Amanda Palmer — who we’ve written about a few times before. She's the singer who has been fighting with her major record label (Warner Music’s Roadrunner) for not just being a pain to deal with, but for making it harder for her to both connect with fans and give them reasons to buy. For example, she got caught in Warner's stubborn decision to fight YouTube over payments, and had all her videos taken down from YouTube against her wishes. So, at a concert, she told fans to upload the video to YouTube as she sang a song begging her label to drop her.

[...]

However, now she’s going much further, much of it using Twitter to closely connect with fans. She recently explained three separate experiments, all done on a whim this month, which allowed her to bring in $19,000,

Oops.

In related news, I recently saw Suffocation and Necrophagist (Suffocation is on Roadrunner). Awesome show. I went with Phil, who had a video on YouTube of himself drumming along to a Suffocation song. He got caught in the Warner jihad, and only after contacting Warner, Roadrunner, the founders of YouTube, and Suffocation did he finally get his video back up. More than 3 million views, and Warner wants to shoot themselves in the foot. So Suffocation put him on the guest list and gave him some all-access badges, and they were his biggest fans! It was an adorable love-fest. Fuck you, Warner!



On the other hand, this story on Techdirt leaves a lot of questions unanswered, as the commenters point out.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous15:09

    The world needs more death metal office dr. umming.

    ReplyDelete