Paid Cannibalizing Free
I was lying in bed last night and I had this vision of my website. And the vision was that the first thing you saw when you arrived, the splash page, was a little login window where you had to enter your username and password (or maybe even just your username or your email or something) and, unless you did that, you couldn’t enter the site. And then once you got into the site, you could have whatever you wanted. You could download any song or entire album for free, you could read the blog, you could watch any video. And then. Well.
You see where this is going?
Conventional wisdom on the subject would dictate that splash pages are bad things, that all recorded music is marketing, and that putting up any kind of barrier at all to people entering the site will only have the effect of eliminating anyone from visiting the site.
But as much of an Internet aficionado as I am and as much as I love the web and as much as I agree that recorded music is a commodity and marketing, the idea of having a black screen with a simple innocuous pop-up floating in the ether, and the mystery that it implied, and then the idea that maybe there’s some way somehow to get someone to care enough to create a username or password for just one band, that idea still had some resonance.
Not to say it would actually work. I don’t think it would. At this point.
But I do think that maybe in a few years there’s an opportunity to go black to a certain degree and try and remove all content from anyone that only wants to graze and provide everything to people that actually care. Which is back to the 1,000 true fans idea that many people have discussed and commented on. Right now though, the concept of paying for access to this website would have the kind of interesting effect of cannibalizing all the free people that come and that would be bad indeed. Because I haven’t yet won 20 in the show. So right now, fungus on my shower shoes means I’m a slob. Not colorful.
Most people’s answer to this dilemma would be the freemium model which is, give some stuff away for free and keep the best stuff behind some kind of wall and make people pay for it. And maybe that works. But for an artist that doesn’t generate enough content, that’s probably not enough of an experience to segment like that. Wouldn’t it be weird if you got the music for free but paid to read the blog? That wouldn’t happen. And wouldn’t it be far far weirder if you read the blog for free but paid for the music? Also, wouldn’t happen.
Regardless, the other issue I think is relevant here is that I don’t one artist has enough stuff to warrant that kind of firewall. I don’t think it’s interesting enough. So then you know what happens? I find myself agreeing with Mr. Bruce Warila.
Maybe one possible future for artists is banding together in collectives and creating a Godin-like tribe that people paid to be part of and they wanted to be a part of it because the artists themselves really dug being a part of it and then you had something (like Scarlet Shame mayhaps or Annex or whatever) that was a website and you didn’t get anything unless you paid an annual subscription and then within that subscription you got access to literally everything those artists had ever done for free. What if Sub Pop charged an annual membership for $100? Would you join? And when you went to subpop.com you got every release they were going to put out and every release they ever did put out and everything they ever did digitally. And if you wanted hard copies you paid for them?
Just an idea.
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sammysoul
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Derek
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theflyingchange
