Hello, everyone! Thank you for finding a few minutes in your schedule to spend with us. This post was created after learning of a fantastic new service made available from a company that would have been considered an industry pariah a decade ago. It’s a little crazy in theory, but it’s working to connect artists with their fans in a more direct way than ever before.
This blog exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
Sitting at my desk this morning following a brief brainstorming session for the coming month of editorial content, I could not help thinking that a decade ago it would have been considering craze for someone to suggest promoting new music through BitTorrent. The service, which rose to fame/infamy because of its ties to illegal file sharing, has worked extremely hard to build a legitimate business out of questioning beginning in recent years. One of the biggest components of this positive resurgence has been the company’s ability to partner with innovative and influential members of pop culture to share content in a way that artists and other content creators are able to control from beginning to end. Their ‘Bundle’ series has partnered with everyone from G-Eazy to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke in recent months, each offering a different variety of media and promotional materials, and every campaign has widely been considered a massive success. We’re not talking about thousands of engaged listeners, but millions, and they’re receiving content curated by the people who created it with little to no voice from the middle man (BitTorrent) bringing them together.
This week, roughly 18 months after launching in beta, BitTorrent has opened its digital magnetization platform BitTorrent Bundles to all musicians and other creators of digital content. I know there is a lot of skepticism around the idea of embracing a company once known as the knife slicing the achilles heel of the music industry, but a lot has changed in the last decade and BitTorrent are doing their best to leverage their massive user base in a way that promotes the continued support of creative people. You may have used services in the past that allowed for sharing of free media and other promotional materials, but none of them had the built-in audience, nor the transparency, that this service offers. For further explanation, we put together a list of three reasons artists, labels, and other industry folk should seriously consider using BitTorrent Bundles as part of their next promotional push. You can read those reasons, below. Those interested in signing up for access to the BitTorrent Bundles program can do so here.
1. The cost and distribution fees are so low it makes Apple look like a school yard bully.
Signing up for BitTorrent Bundles is absolutely free, as is choosing to share your material without a paywall, but if you choose to charge fans for access to your material BitTorrent will charge you for using their service. The company charges 10% of the purchase price of each Bundle plus about 5% in transaction fees. This is almost the exact same right as Bandcamp, not to mention being only a fraction of the $40+ distribution fees that are deducted from iTunes sales. And let’s not even get into how this compares to the average per stream payout offered by services like Spotify or Rdio.
2. The access to information you receive may be worth more than your financial gain
iTunes and Amazon Music are two of the biggest digital music stores in the world, and they’re recognized by almost anyone with an internet connection. Those are two facts that cannot be denied, and it’s completely understandable why artists choose to have their music on those sites even though the fees and costs associated may often be viewed as unfair. Something else these companies fail to do very well when working with artists is provide any information relating to the types of consumers who purchase their product. BitTorrent shares the email and other purchase data of every transaction with artists. That’s something almost no commercial competitor can offer.
When BitTorrent Bundles went public this week, Straith Schreder, director of content strategy for BitTorrent, spoke about how this lack of transparency hurts artists in the long run. “Platforms like iTunes take up to 40% of sales revenue – without disclosing fan contact information or data. Which means that, as an artist, you have no idea who’s buying your work, and how to reach them. To deprive artists of this data is to deprive them of the ability to build a viable business.”
3. In a world of tired ideas, BitTorrent Bundles are still considered ‘cool’
Though every John Hughes movie would like you to believe there is nothing wrong with staying far away from emerging trends and whatever it is the quote/unquote ‘cool’ kids are up to, a big component in digital marketing today is the ability to adapt the latest trending topic/craze to suit your needs. BitTorrent Bundles offer a low cost method of engaging fans with new and unreleased material that otherwise may never get to them without first cutting through miles and miles of industry nonsense. In a time where it’s harder than ever to forge lasting connections between two regular people, let alone a person and a brand, this service has found a way of reaching passionate music fans that has proven results for a large variety of talent. Anyone choosing to not try and further connect with their own fan base out of fear of being thought a sell out or something equally ridiculous need to realize their ego will forever hold them back from achieving their dreams. Embrace the now, embrace what’s popular, and find a way to make it your own.