EP Release

Royale with Cheese

My band have just finished recording our debut EP. We're very happy with it and can't wait to get it out there. What's the best way to go about this?

We're a bit divided on this issue. Some of us want to give it away for free, others (including myself) think to have is streaming from our myspace/website is cool, but for actual downloads we should charge something. Was thinking €3 for this, where's the best place to sell them digitally? I know it's possible through itunes, and it would be the best bet as they're the biggest player, but do they not have set rates for their tracks? Like 99c each?

Will be getting cd's proffesionaly pressed and have a nice idea that ties the artwork, and name together with a little gimmick novelty item thing. Thinking we'll sell these at gigs, through our website, and hopefully get them into some shops. Was thinking €5 for the actual cd.

We're getting press packs together, got an idea for that sorted too. Getting together a list of people we can send these too.

Apart from that just going to gig a hell of a lot more often than we have been doing, and hope for the best.

Anything else we should be thinking of? I think other guys in the band are looking into imro and stuff like that. Have posted it to myself so it's copyrighted now.

What are people's opinions on charging for your music/giving it away for free? Personally I think we put a lot of time, effort, and money into this and that I feel we deserve something back. Couldn't care less about the money really (we're never going to come close to making back what we spent on it), just that we're getting something in return for our music. Also think the release will be taken more seriously by press etc. if we're not just throwing it at people free of charge. We don't really have a fanbase outside of mates, but I think myspace/website streaming will be good enough to get people interested in the music. Though I've seen unsigned Irish bands stick up 30 second samples on their myspace which I think is unbelievably stupid.

yevveh

I was thinking about what I'd do for when our EP is done and all that, and whatever you might think about the Arctic Monkeys your man Alex has his head screwed on. They gave their first EP away free cos they thought 'who the **** are we to charge people for our music!?' - if you're an unknown band it's best to keep it small. I'd go for free or else something like €1-2, best to get yourselves out there. In the long run it's a much better option, in my opinion. To give a balanced argument, my old history teacher always said "sell yourself cheap and you'll be treated cheap" so I think the healthy balance of not free and not €5 is a wise one!

As for online I'd say give it away free. It's a different story than holding the physical CD in your hands, and you do want people to listen to your tunes. I know how many times I've got pissed off with some stuck-up band with good tunes that didn't make them available for download on Myspace, and I can't be ****ing bothered going back to their page every time I want to listen to a tune. I don't use iTunes either. I'd rather DL it on Myspace and have it in my WMP for easy access. To encourage people to buy the CD if they also want to download the tunes off your Myspace you could limit the quality to, say, 128kpbs. That way if people want it at a higher quality they'd go for the CD. Just don't forget to mention the songs are higher quality on the CD

niallk

Yeah I think you're on the right track. Make it available free online. But I would charge around ten euro for a CD assuming you think it's worth it and you can prove it at gigs.

yevveh

Tenner for an EP is waaaaaaayyyyy too much! Tenner for an album would be reasonable enough though.

Royale with Cheese

Yeah I know what you're saying.

The thing is the cd's will work well (I think the idea we have for them is quite good), and it'd be nice for people to have them and see them in shops etc. However I really don't see the point in that if people can download it for free. Honestly people aren't going to bother buying a cd just to get a slightly higher quality sound.

Plus the cd's are going to cost us €2.50+ to print. I'm not spending a fortune producing them and then give them away for free, so we'd have to charge something. At least cost price. I think people would be as likely to pay €2.50 as they would €5 though. Either way it's nothing. You wouldn't even get lunch for €5.

niallk

Pointless making CDs TBH unless they are nicely designed /packaged which would be the main reason people still buy them. If you do have them nicely produced it is costly and you will have to charge as such.

yevveh

Fair enough. €3 is a perfectly reasonable price. My opinion will always be not to charge for tracks online though, at least at this stage.
What do you think about other bands in your position charging for music etc.? Would you buy an EP at a gig if it was €5 or €6 when you're not 100% sure if you could dig this band? I reckon if you charge less now, get people interested, you could possibly get more people into gigs in future and thus recuperate money that way, especially if you're running the gigs.

Royale with Cheese

Honestly if I saw a band at a gig I liked, I wouldn't have a problem paying €5 for an EP (assuming it was of similar quality to what I reckon ours is, not just something recorded on a 4 track in a bedroom). It's really not much. So instead of getting 4 pints at a gig, I could get 3 pints and a cd.

Timans

Give it away free.

A person will have to really be blown away to buy an EP of a relatively unknown band and it is very hard to blow someone away on a first listen unless it is something really special, and even then, it's still not guarenteed.

I think you should give it away for free and see the reaction. It's better to get more listeners than get a small pay reward which in reality, won't even be substantial as the price of the EP is small to be shared between a few members.

Just my opinion, my band is hoping to record this week as well, on an unrelated note.

Best of luck, hope it works out. I'd love to hear some of your bands stuff, so PM me with details of download or myspace or send me an EP

yevveh

I'd be willing to pay €3 definitely, but for €5 I'd want to hear the quality beforehand. It's not a big difference but it can matter for on the spot decisions. I'm too cynical to expect a CD from a local band to be good quality

And yeah, do let us know the myspace address when you have it up, whether it's for download or not.

Royale with Cheese

Yeah I think we'll go with the free download, €5 cd idea. But just get a small amount of cd's done up. Like 100 to begin with. The cd's are really just to make us look proffesional. The only place I expect to sell them would be hopefully 1 or 2 per gigs.

Suppose there are still people who don't like downloads, but I personally haven't bought a cd in years.

I'll stick a post in the pimp your band section when it's all done.

Timans

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

Yeah I think we'll go with the free download, €5 cd idea. But just get a small amount of cd's done up. Like 100 to begin with. The cd's are really just to make us look proffesional. The only place I expect to sell them would be hopefully 1 or 2 per gigs.

Suppose there are still people who don't like downloads, but I personally haven't bought a cd in years.

I'll stick a post in the pimp your band section when it's all done.

The only problem with that is, that if you only expect to sell 1 or 2 per gig, there won't be many listening to your music, which I would have thought is your main aim?

If you give them away for free, the chances are you'll get many more than 1 or 2 per gig.

Anyway, best of luck in whatever you decide to do.

niallk

Timans wrote: »

Give it away free.

A person will have to really be blown away to buy an EP of a relatively unknown band and it is very hard to blow someone away on a first listen unless it is something really special, and even then, it's still not guarenteed.

This is what gigs are for. You have to blow them away or at least try otherwise what's the point? If you can reach one person...

Royale with Cheese

Timans wrote: »

The only problem with that is, that if you only expect to sell 1 or 2 per gig, there won't be many listening to your music, which I would have thought is your main aim?

If you give them away for free, the chances are you'll get many more than 1 or 2 per gig.

Anyway, best of luck in whatever you decide to do.

I'm not giving away the cd's for free. They cost too much to produce. If we sell 1 or 2 per gig, but people go home and check out our site and download the music then I'll be just as happy.

Timans

Yeah, that's fair enough. I was thinking of a Demo, not a full recorded EP. Sorry.

Best of luck.

Royale with Cheese

For anyone who was interested, we've stuck one of the tracks up on our myspace. Think we're gonna put a different song each up week or something. The full thing will be up for download in September after we sort out artwork, cd pressing etc.

Dord

What I would do is give it away online for free....but..... only to your myspace friends. Sell the CD at the gigs nicely packaged for a reasonable amount, 5 euro sounds good (not too much, not too little).

People add your band as a friend, check out the music, get the EP and then they'll be able to get bulletins with updates on your gigs and upcoming album(;)). It's a clever ploy.

You could also say at gigs, check out our myspace page for more info and future gigs..... and if you add us as a friend we'll give you our EP free to download. Or you can buy it on a nicely packaged CD tonight for only a 5'er (or whatever).

The way you could do it is to have a blog on the myspace that's only visible to friends, just put the link to the download in there.