Uploading music on torrents

[Ze4th0x]

So I've heard some bands giving their music, or parts of albums away on torrents, has anyone here done that, and if so, have you seen any benefits or drawbacks of doing such a thing? Besides the obvious loss in CD sales.

I had a couple of friends wanting to upload their CD to the pirate bay and promote it for free, and I was curious about the effects.

 

[timislegend]

trent reznor has been doing it for years.

 

[Chainsaw Calligraphy]

Most signed bands make very little money from album sales. It's getting more and more common for small bands to just give away thier music as a way to increase sales of their merchandise. A lot of people seem to have faith in this business model, although I don't have any experience with it personally.

 

[Vinny]

Give away music on line with a donation option but still have physical CDs for sale by mail order, bigcartel.com, and at shows. Also include a free instant download when someone orders a physical CD. You can also put your music up on itunes too if you wish (having your music on itunes seems to make your band look more "legit" to the typical uneducated fan)

 

[Kazrog]

One time a friend of mine lit some dollar bills on fire, on purpose, to impress chicks. Epic fail. It's kind of similar to that.

 

[updog]

One time a friend of mine lit some dollar bills on fire, on purpose, to impress chicks. Epic fail. It's kind of similar to that.

if he got laid by doing that, then maybe.

 

[Donovan S.]

I would support doing it. Might as well get your music into as many hands as possible if you are a small band.

 

[The Unavoidable]

^I agree, and let's not fool ourselves it will end up there anyway.

 

[ratsapprentice]

Tbh you might aswell put it up on bandcamp with a "pay what you feel it's worth" option.
Just leaving it lying around on a torrent site isn't really effective promotion though, it'll just sit next to literally millions of other downloads.
If you actually want to promote it by giving it away, upload it to a filehost, and send that link around to as many blogs (law obiding and otherwise) as you can.

 

[DanLights]

I'd have it on any possible medium, the more the merrier. Bandcamp, Itunes, Spotify, CdBaby, and THEN I would anonymously put it up on torrent sites for people who will never pay for it

 

[TotalSatan]

We hosted our album on our official web page with a donation option. I thought it was a good idea for an unknown band. The album found its way to blogs and torrents sites ''by itself''.

See www.morningless.net

 

[Virgil.]

Tbh you might aswell put it up on bandcamp with a "pay what you feel it's worth" option.
Just leaving it lying around on a torrent site isn't really effective promotion though, it'll just sit next to literally millions of other downloads.
If you actually want to promote it by giving it away, upload it to a filehost, and send that link around to as many blogs (law obiding and otherwise) as you can.

+1. Even just uploading it to Grooveshark, Spotify or Soundcloud would be good too. That way people can listen to the full album first to see if they like it or not, and then download on your bandcamp or make a donation, or you can just charge something cheap like $5. I don't think that's asking a lot, especially if you like the music.

 

[tempe]

What my band does is we don't even press CD's anymore everything goes on vinyl for the people that actually want to purchase it, we have it up for free on our bandcamp / facebook and as many blogs as we can get to host it. We like sharing our links because at least that way we can tell who's downloading it! People are just going to steal it anyway so may as well give them a better physical product to buy (in my opinion) and have good quality downloads available for the people that don't want a record.