is your band magic?.
Last week, Warren Ellis decided to feature bands on his blog for a few days. Thanks to some of our friends, Plink got an early mention.
The day we appeared, rainlikely.com served about 25 times as much bandwidth as a usual day. The next day it was probably 20 times an ordinary day. From there, usage decreased pretty linearly. All told, about 3000 Plink mp3's got downloaded in those few days. Those downloads converted into, if I remember right, 8 CD sales. Which is awesome, but not the dozens of sales you might expect.
So why didn't we sell 500 Plink CDs? It could be a few things.
- our mp3's don't win people over in one listen
- people aren't used to buying CDs anymore
- most of the downloaders were bored people, passing time at work, as opposed to "music fans"
It's probably some combination of the above. The lesson is: when you're a little indie, every single CD that you sell is an accomplishment. If your band is magic, that's one thing. But if you're merely "good" to "really good", well, there's lots of good bands. Best of luck.
We saw the Dresden Dolls the other night. The show was... man. Just awesome. Had a real impact on me. So it was cool to see a line of people waiting to buy CDs on the way out. But not surprising; the Dresden Dolls are magic. One viewing of their "girl anachronism" video and I said to myself fuck, I gotta get this record. How many times has that happened to you?
Better yet, does your band incite that reponse in listeners? Or your software? Or your paintings or your short stories?