Crowdfunded Album Leaps Onto The Charts, Sells More Than Rihanna And Coldplay
from the but-it-can't-possibly-be-done dept
We keep hearing from the neo-luddites of the entertainment industry that new business models can’t possibly work. In my recent debate with Jon Taplin, for example, he insisted that Kickstarter “doesn’t work for most people” — as if the old Hollywood system does. But as we’ve seen, the innovator’s dilemma and the general march of progress are unstoppable. The trend lines keep moving in the right direction with crowdfunding. It seems that a guy named Ginger Wildheart got a massive response to his own crowdfunding campaign — such that his crowdfunded album jumped up the UK charts, surpassing both Rihanna and Coldplay. Considering how much money the labels spend trying to convince the public to buy Rihanna’s music, and the fact that Wildheart barely spent at all, that’s quite a statement. As he notes, things in the industry are changing — and changing for the better:
“This chart entry marks a historic change in the way bands and artists can release music direct to their fans, afford quality production values and actually make a living too.
“For too many years labels have been using musicians as fodder for developing their own marketing techniques, usually at the expense of the players themselves.
“If you have a modest fan base you no longer have to consider quitting a business so obsessed with youth and photogenicity and get down to the task at hand.
“The future of music is in the hands of the people and is finally the responsibility of the musicians.
“It’s the most exciting time in decades, many musicians have earned this freedom.”
It still amazes me that so many people still don’t see what an amazing opportunity this is for musicians.
Filed Under: charts, crowdfunding, ginger wildheart, uk
Comments on “Crowdfunded Album Leaps Onto The Charts, Sells More Than Rihanna And Coldplay”
Failure to monetize
Its becoming increasingly clear that the major labels are actually not very good at tapping into potential revenue streams.
Re: Failure to monetize
Reminds me of the fable about a dog who was eating meat on a dock, he saw his reflection in the water and thought it was another dog with another piece of meat. In an attempt to take the “other” dog’s piece, the real one dropped into the water.
And then he had none.
This sums up their behavior, they bleed billions in greed because they make stupid decisions trying to “make it big”.
Re: Re: Failure to monetize
Are you comparing studio execs to dogs? You owe dogs everywhere an apology.
Re: Re: Failure to monetize
I’d take it even farther actually.
In this case, the ‘dog’ in question keeps being handed pieces of meat, keeps seeing the reflection, and keeps making the same mistake and losing the meat, over and over. It then looks at the people who keep handing it the meat and does it’s best to bite them, blaming them for the inevitable consequence of it’s repeated stupidity.
Re: Failure to monetize
how does this prove that kickstarter works for “most people”?
Re: Re: Failure to monetize
Please show proof that the ‘major labels’ work for ‘most people’ first before you build your strawman….
And by ‘most people’ we are referring to the artists actually out there producing art, not just the ones that have been ‘signed’ by a label.
If you seriously think the ‘Music Industry’ works for ‘most people’, I’ve got ocean front property to sell you in Kansas (Brooklyn Bridge included at no additional cost…)
Re: Re: Failure to monetize
It proves that Kickstarter works on someone you didn’t otherwise know; i.e. an average person. Unless most people aren’t average, I’d say it proves it quite well.
Re: Re: Re: Failure to monetize
Average person? His original band, The Wildhearts charted at #6 in the UK back in the ’90s (That would be the ‘for real’ charts, not this “midweek” nonsense being reported on here). That album, P.H.U.Q., was released by EastWest Records, an imprint of Atlantic, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
He’s hardly an “average person.” He’s more like another example of someone who built their name in the ’90s label system who now handles his own career.
Re: Re: Re:2 Failure to monetize
Oh yes, the “it doesn’t count because he had a record contract at one point”. I wondered which excuse you’d trot out.
Of course, he hasn’t had anything like such success since then, be it with either his band or as a solo artist; with either independent releases or major labels. He’s not a household name, and many don’t even remember the band. The last top 40 album they had was released in 1996, they left major labels a long time ago and his last solo album only got to #189 in the UK in 2008.
But, now we have to reject his recent success because he had some association with a major label? Yet another pathetic excuse to reject another successful artist who dares to undermine your beloved majors. Get a new playbook, this one doesn’t work.
Wont someone please think of the starving artist
“This chart entry marks a historic change in the way bands and artists can release music direct to their fans, afford quality production values and actually make a living too.”
If they actually get to make a living we wont be able to call them starving. We need to keep them starving, so I can have my third car and second boat. Oh the humanity of it all.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
I know it shouldn’t but it always amazes me how the RIAA/BPI can ignore success stories like this in their never ending war on the Internet.
Re: Re:
They aren’t ignoring these successes.
Their war on the internet is increasing because these successes are a threat to their business model – and they would rather try to shut down artists that are routing around them than to change those precious money faucets they’ve spent the last century perfecting.
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They are when they claim that alternate models don’t work or that they are bad for musicians and the public.
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In order to keep a blinder you have to maintain it.
The more delusional it is the more denial it takes to maintain it.
People who don’t wear the blinder are either crazy or a threat which needs to be dealt with.
And it takes ALOT of denial, lying, bribing and cheating to deal with them. Hence all the claims.
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Actually, they are not ignoring these successes, and they are not wrong that these business models do not work.
These successes can not be bought with a large advertising budget, they require work on the part of the artist. It can not be faked by a team of press agents posting to twitter, G+, and Facebook. So the business model doesn’t work for the labels.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Partially disagree with you there, Heph.
I can see an artist who is not good at dealing with the public hiring a good PR agent to post on their behalf working well. The artist accepts that they “suck at twitter” and tells their fans that, and gets a partner to do that well.
As long as everyone is upfront and honest about what it is and why – so the artist really can spend time on their art – most fans (and the kind of fans you really want anyway) would have no trouble with it. As long as the agent isn’t posting fake stuff, or being lame (in whatever definition the fans of that artist think), it’d be great.
It may not work for the labels, but it could work for an artist who doesn’t want to put the work into PR themselves.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Josh, think you’re not disagreeing with Heph as much as you might think. We know that not everyone wants to (or can) work the web to maximise their connection with fans, and if someone wants to hire someone to do that for them (or help with production, or distribution, or publishing, or anything else), that’s absolutely fine.
There’s a really good blog here about it: http://www.bemuso.com/?p=373
(For those who don’t like clicking unsolicited links, it’s title DIY doesn’t mean “do everything”.)
That’s, for me, what’s so frustrating about this. There is plainly value that can be added by all these legacy players, and people WILL pay for value!
If they’d just pull their heads out of the sand and stop trying to litigate their way back to 1982.
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It isn’t just them. It’s the whole traditional advertising industry, too.
Already their supply of captive-audience eyeballs is dwindling, between online ad-blocking and DVR ad-skipping and changing entertainment choices and other causes.
Now, the demand side of their operation is under threat too, as huge successes emerge with relatively little in the way of traditional forms of marketing, employing the crowd and social media.
And this is a good thing. After the umpteenth time of my eardrums rupturing because of that annoyingly awful screechy guy in that *@#! Juicy Fruit commercial, I’d dearly love to see the advertising industry dry up and blow away like a tumbleweed.
Re: Re:
It’s called wearing blinders; they see only what they want to see.
Adapt or die
In a free market a business must adapt or die so why does it seem like they always choose death? Death looks a lot more painful than adapting.
Re: Adapt or die
Free markets are a myth as realistic as a large scale communistic utopia.
Re: Re: Adapt or die
Maybe so, but you get the point.
Re: Adapt or die
For businesses as with individual humans there are those who will resist change no matter how clear it is that the change will or already has happened and it can’t be undone.
Yes, a boatload of buggy companies closed with the arrival of the automobile because they couldn’t fathom that these smoke burping, ungainly things could ever replace them, and the horse, as the main means of road transportation. It wasn’t a hard conclusion to come to in the early days of the auto industry either.
Some didn’t and the became the coach designers and makers for car companies. Remember the old GM ads with the tag line “body by Fisher”? They got started as buggy makers who bet on the car and survived even if only a small portion of the larger auto industry.
The major failure is that they can’t see any other way for things to work. Be it an individual or a company. That’s just how things are supposed to work.
On a bit of a tangent myth surrounding both the recording industry and motion picture industry got their start by infringing on patents held by others and neither bothered much about whether or not their product infringed on copyright. Could be a delayed guilty conscience?
Both industries have responded with near panic when confronted by home recording — reel to reel and cassette for audio and VHS for video then the various recording and copying applications available for computers — and even something remotely related like player piano rolls. It’s like they have no confidence in their business models or their products.
Re: Adapt or die
Because the risk of their company dying isn’t as real to them as the risk of stepping out into the unknown.
All of these executives obtained their jobs by being good in a known and proven environment just like the one they learned about in school. None – or very few – of them have experienced the terrifying world of entrepreneurship where every day can present new and undiscovered risks (and opportunities). It’s a terrifying thing for them to face compared with the vague theoretical possibility of their companies death.
Imagine you are driving down a nice highway and everything is going smoothly. Then the road starts getting a bit rough and you see people by the roadside waving hand painted signs declaring the bridge is out ahead and shouting at you to turn off the road and start exploring one of the dirt tracks or open fields. Would you take their word for it, or would you keep driving until you could clearly see that the bridge was out? And if some of those people were carrying hammers and pickaxes or other paving tools you might even start believing they were responsible for the rough road you were currently on. Thousands of executives would not only believe that, they would even try to run down those people in the belief this will somehow make the road smooth again (which it would if they were right about the cause).
Besides, ‘everyone’ knows that big corporations never die. They just spray out a bunch of pretty gold parachutes before hitting the ground and bouncing back up again.
There are many people who can’t see alot of things.
They are getting left behind, their fight is just the struggle of someone drowning at sea.
Sooner or later their strength will run out.
Ginger setup a good parallel for Hollywood.
Instead of deciding what his fans should like, he let them speak up for the song they thought should be on the commercial album.
Participant print marketing at it’s finest.
Musicians?
Everyone.
if the entertainment industries weren’t so blinkered they would see the writing on the wall. with new artists managing to look ahead without the need for rose coloured glasses, they are checking the spelling!
Now for the obligatory if he hadn’t been in a band no one remembers he would not have had the success he had with this album.
Also I would have expected the sort of drivel I just spouted way before the 18th comment.
Re: Re:
The Wildhearts were pretty popular. You sure that maybe a lot of his current fanbase isn’t holdovers from his stint with major labels in the ’90s? Citations appreciated.
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If the success is due to old fans buying everything, then why did his last solo album only get to #189 and The Wildhearts’ last band album only get to #53? Why has no album since 1996 had as much success as that album did if they have such regular fans that its them and them alone getting the album to #9 this time around? What could possibly have happened in the meantime to generate more attention, more sales and more money?
If only you weren’t so intent on rejecting every successful artist using these methods…
This would never work for a real artist.
Re: Re:
…because only real artists have record label contracts!
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It’s too bad that none of the regulars with accounts seem to get that. I think Masnick is killing off registered accounts for anyone with dissenting opinions.
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One of you is being sarcastic, possibly both…. it’s hard to tell. Currently my money’s on the AC
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Just because you can’t stand to see people agree with anything that isn’t the freetard way doesn’t mean you’re in the majority and anyone saying otherwise is ‘being sarcastic’.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
I’m not sure about anyone else though I can’t seem to make any sense out of what you are blabbering about which stops me from seeing if you actually have a point or are just being a dickhead
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Read his user name backwards…
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Ha! I almost responded with a “not sure if serious…” comment before you pointed that out for me. Thanks!
Erm, guys, can people stop mock trolling these threads? It’s hard enough to address real points among all the genuine trolls without everyone else jumping in to parody them. Poe’s law is always in effect here at the best of times, no need to make it worse…
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
No. Just because I admit that I’m a troll doesn’t make me any less of a troll. I’m not mocking anyone. I’m trying to get a rise out of people who start blasting crap without paying attention to what is going on. Watching guys like The eejit tell me that this dude is a real artist without reading my name makes me laugh. Why don’t you want me to be happy?
I enjoy it a lot. Do you come here strictly to read, or to comment? When you comment, do you expect replies and discourse? When I comment I expect people to tell me how wrong I am and why. I do it here because I like the community here, but some of the people can get a wee bit overzealous (DH catches it almost every time, some others not so much). While I agree with a lot of the analysis posted on this site, it’s fun to see who agrees just because Mike proclaimed it vs who has thought things through.
Fun side story: I work with a guy who also reads and comments here. He’s a big supporter of Chubby Masnick. We try not to post comments on the same stories because I troll and he doesn’t. We’re both usually pretty good about it (neither of us posts a ton) but it has happened. So every once in a while if you watch closely you’ll see the same snowflake supporting and trolling the same story.
Re: Re: Re:7 Re:
A trolling that is subtle and sneaks up on you from a flanking position and makes you *facepalm* after you understand that you have been trolled especially if you have been a troll yourself in many numerous forms since early 1980’s starting on BBS’s + helping run one of the biggest troll enabled chatsites on planet in late 90’s (Bianca Troll Productions) is in my opinion
A freakin Awesome troll!!!
I doff my hat and lower my ban hammer to you Sir. May you be Trolled one day when you least expect it too and then know that *with a tear of pride in your eye* the art and skill of trolling has not died but lives on, and on, and on.
Re: Re: Re:8 Re:
Thank you, sir! I have been well trolled in the past and I always love it when someone can pull one over on me. Considering your background, you may have gotten me a time or two.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
You said “This would never work for a real artist.”
This is a real artist. And you’ve just been proven wrong. By the very article you’re commenting on.
I’m honestly not sure if you’re being an idiot here or just trolling.
Re: Re:
Masnick’s Law!
It’s been so long, thanks for bringing back the nostalgia.
Re: Re: Defining Masnick's Law
Isn’t it about time we actually had a go at defining Masnick’s law?
How about this?
Masnick’s Law stipulates that no matter how many examples are provided of successful non-copyright based business models, copyright supporters will always marginalise each success as available only to a peculiar minority of artists, and thus not viable for the majority – for which the traditional copyright based business model will forever remain the only effective means of being paid for one’s work.
Re: Re: Re: Defining Masnick's Law
It was defined by the person who suggested it, although he does invite people to refine it for him:
http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20080617/2333571437#c440
Re: Re: Re:2 Defining Masnick's Law
Consider it as just another definition added to the pot of candidate refinements.
Thanks for linking to the original.
Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Dream Country was the first and only comic book to win a World Fantasy Award. Afterward the people behind the World Fantasy Convention banned comic books so it couldn’t happen again.
If ‘unsigned’ musicians are topping signed acts, then it most likely wouldn’t be a stretch for the Entertainment Industry to change the rules of their own rankings.
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This, give it a few days and the rules will be changed so that this can’t happen again… Probably along the lines of “the charts will only track “Professional” acts”, where the definition of Professional is dictated by *IAA members.
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Have a ‘sad but true’ vote.
Isn't there...
Isn’t there a mechanism out there for crowdfunding to act like agent for investing in an artist? For example, Band A raises cash from resources of the fans but the fans get money from the revenue of the sale of music. Kind of like being paid to be a fan of Band A. Forget about the RIAA or Record Labels.
How can you call this a success? Not one middleman got paid! Truly, the middleman industry is in grave danger! Pfft, selfish artists.
Fill in the blank!
“Sure, it worked for _____________, but it would never work for ______________.”
Hey I’m good with this. I long ago quit buying music when sue’em all started. I’ve also said before I would love to see these dinosaurs go belly up and be sold of in bankruptcy proceedings. If you’re an artist signed with them, being chained in the rowing bench, know you will go down with the sinking.
Can’t wait for this to pick up and become the popular way for new music to be released without involvement by major labels. Couldn’t happen to a more slimy group nor a more deserving group. All the court cases and the misinformation has gained them nothing but disapproval in the eyes of the internet users; who just happened to at one time been among their best customers.
Quote:
I hate to agree with the man, but he is right, it will never work for most people, because most people will never reach that point, just like the actual system doesn’t work for most people either.
The thing is, it does work well when it works and it is potentially a better model than the old one, so Taplin is just full of it.
Any system that enables more than 2% of the people trying is better than the old system which see a failure rate in the range of 98% according to industry insiders.
Further, money is not the best measure of success right now, but how much well people can live, does it matter if you you make 20K a year and live as well as someone making 100K?
The music industry used to expend millions of dollars, then tech came along that made it possible to anyone to distribute the same crap for pennies, suddenly you didn’t need millions to make it happen.
That should be our go, make things happen without making it expensive and out of reach of everyone.
I think the next phase inside society will be a revolution in home production of goods enabling everyone to be a producer of goods, services will be very important and IP will be just another bug in the windshield.
Jon Taplin … insisted that Kickstarter “doesn’t work for most people”
Umm… neither do the labels…
Sorry if I’m repeating old rhetoric. For some reason that line just jumped out at me and I had to comment.
Touch base with us again in about 14 days, and let us know how it is working out. What you are seeing is likely the ENTIRE bubble of the promotion playing out in a single week, rather than any long term trend.
With twitter and such, you can make almost anything a trend for a few minutes. The question isn’t the ability to get the public to react for a second, but rather to get them to react for a long period of time.
You might also want to look at total album sales for Rihanna or Coldplay for their current releases, and then you might grasp why an internet flash in the pan really is just social engineering, not a movement.
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So, “I don’t like it so it won’t work”, huh?
I’ll take a wild guess and presume that you won’t bother coming back here in 14 days if you’re proven wrong, or even admit that there’s something here even if you don’t get instant billionaires overnight, right?
Nah, you guys seem to think you’re making a point, but you move the goalposts and attack independent artists so often it’s hard to take you seriously.
Prove me wrong if you want, but I bet you won’t bring facts to the table.
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Oh, and check out the chart I believe this will be referring to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/update/albums
At the time of posting, this shows Ginger Wildheart’s album at #9. Other new releases this week include The Offspring at #27 and (usually strangely popular in the UK) boy band Jedward at #33. Both of those releases are on major record labels, from established artists with bigger names than Wildheart. But, they’re both significantly less successful, at this moment in time at least.
I’ll take a guess that you wouldn’t use the relative failure of these albums as ammunition against the major labels, but you’ll be happy to shoot down every independent attempt at breaking their stranglehold on the market. It’s always excuses with you people – “oh that won’t work for everyone” or “I don’t like the product so it won’t work” or “that won’t create overnight millionaires so it doesn’t count”. In the mean time, artists are making money, have more creative freedom and their fans are happy. Who cares if some middleman isn’t happy?
Again, prove me wrong if you want, but you have to bring more to the table than assumptions based on your own biases.
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You appear to be missing the fact that his fans started paying for this ages ago. Or you might call it investing.
If you visit some of the forums where this is discussed you’ll probably see that they’re generally very happy with the return on their investment.
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“Touch base with us again in about 14 days, and let us know how it is working out. What you are seeing is likely the ENTIRE bubble of the promotion playing out in a single week, rather than any long term trend.
With twitter and such, you can make almost anything a trend for a few minutes. The question isn’t the ability to get the public to react for a second, but rather to get them to react for a long period of time.
You might also want to look at total album sales for Rihanna or Coldplay for their current releases, and then you might grasp why an internet flash in the pan really is just social engineering, not a movement.
Flash in the pan, huh? I take it you’re involved with the major labels, hence the disparaging comments, reigning in on an independet artists’ success. Nobody’s allowed to succeed in music except for major label artists, right?
The very fact that an independent artist is high up on the charts is proof-positive that substantial market penetration is possible with corwdfunded projects. True, this is an exception and not the norm but then crowdfunding is in its infancy and will only grow over time. So don’t act surprised when situations like this occur with greater frequency in the near-future.
And the best part is, there’s ABOLSUTELY NOTHING you can do to prevent it from happening.
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“ABOLSUTELY NOTHING”
I made myself laugh with that typo.
the album in question
ginger wildheart – 100%
http://open.spotify.com/album/73xDb3btCJreR24fPbavTs
I don’t see it mentioned, so I’ll just point out that the UK charts make these kinds of moves very interesting for a simply reason – the UK charts have always been based on sales alone and don’t include radio airplay, etc. That is, they consist of what people are *actually buying*, not whatever ClearChannel or whatever are pumping out.
We’ve seen a few trends in recent years that show how digital sales are allowing trends that wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago. For example, there’s often a spike in sales of particular older songs after an X Factor contestant covers it – a dynamic sales increase that would not have been possible pre-digital due to manufacturing lead times. There’s the Facebook campaign that led to a Rage Against The Machine number 1 Christmas single as a backlash against The X Factor itself, and so on.
Here, we see that people are willing to support an artist with pre-sales – meaning he’s already “recouped” before the album’s release, unlike most major label artists. I’ll presume this is one artist who won’t be bitching about not being paid enough money when I check the album out on Spotify, nor whine about piracy if he see that some people are pirating the album.
Is he going to outsell all the major label artists in the long term? Perhaps not, but why does that matter if both the artist and his fans are happy and he’s in profit in the first week?
Why does he look like Data?
such a shame gingers music is so tired. i mean how long can guitar bands chug along, driveling lyrics that dont fit with their image?