It’s easy to be swayed by arguments in support of illegal downloading.
Sure, sometimes it’s fun to get one over the big corporations, to fight back against the massive companies who threaten to squash the merest hint of creativity in the music industry. However the reality isn’t always like that…
A band like Johnny Foreigner actually need to sell records. They don’t have shareholders to fall back on, in fact it’s doubtful that the their label – Alcopop! – are even able to issue shares.
So when preparing to release their new album Johnny Foreigner took drastic measures. Asking fans to help them, the band uploaded fake versions of ‘Johnny Foreigner vs Everything’ to prominent file sharing websites. Out-flanking the pirates, the Brum trio were able to let fans hear the music as it was intended to be heard.
Here Johnny Foreigner’s Alexei Berrow gives ClashMusic a hands on guide to keeping their independence…
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1) Overlay finished record with horrible wall of noise & upload to rapidshare – a fair few bands have done this, told twitter, and left it at that. The problem is, search engines (ie, google) and aggregator sites (ie, filestube) trawl for mentions of the link on blogs, boards, chans and so forth, but not the link/actual host page (ie, rapidshare). so the next step is:
2) Ask your awesome fans to reupload it and add a link to their blog/tumblr, thus ensuring the link will be picked up in a search, theoretically ruining search engines and link aggregators.
3) Watch internets in amazement as awesome fans add in and share with each other elements from their own experiences to muddy waters even further. This included, but was not limited to: Adding it to torrent sites, changing the file name each time, making fake leak youtube and twitter sites.
4) Sit back and relax safe in the knowledge that if your album does leak, people are going to have a waaaaaaay tougher time finding a version that doesn’t sound like this: KKKRRSSSWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWOOSH.
Some notes:
I think the reason for this plan’s success is down to involving the people who like our band(s). There are plenty of if-this-leaks-we’re-fucked posts and articles by musicians – and as a fan, the only way you can react and help them is by ignoring the posts and articles that say here-is-the-record-yr-excited-about-for-free. Wheras we’ve shown everyone the tools to be proactive, to involve themselves with the process and use the knowledge they’ve gained through downloading music to help us out. They see it as helping themselves too, because they too want us to be able to afford making the next one, and we’ve offered them a very real and practical and cost free method of going some way to ensure that.
It’s ironic, i think, that those who have helped us out so much with this project are the ones who would ruin us the most by sharing it; cos we’re not in the mainstream, we rely heavily on the buzz created by these kids; literally, the amount of facebook chatter and general social network based hype appearing on our sites as release day draws nearer. Because that’s when the beast will assess us and see how big a bite of the apple we’re allowed this time around.
…and thats what this is all about. We don’t want to remove our music from the free internet, even if we could. This is a measure to buy us the time till release week to put the whole package together and run the campaign on our terms; to ensure that any nice words about what we’ve spent the year creating are aired around release week in public forums, not in dribs and drabs in dank corners of the web.
There’s a huge unprovable theory, that I personally believe in, that bands pick up a chuck of their fanbase from download culture. That people get the record from The Google, and, if they like it, are more inclined to come to shows, buy merch, understand our band, and sit back and take in preachy essays about why we need then to take 10 mins and use their love to save us from their curiosity. When the record goes public, there’ll be nothing we can do to stem the real leaks, the fakes will die out, and we’re more than happy to reap any benefits against potential lost cd sales. Instant media, the internet, downloads, it’s progress. and we’re not luddites.
We’re not Lars Ulrich either; we understand download culture and we’re as much a product of it as those who support us. For all the worldwide shitstorm over the Internet Killing The Industry, it’s made being in a band so much more gratifying an experience, and I’d like to think the same is true for the kids on our tumblr or in the front rows. Because when we were in their shoes, interaction was a fan club mailer, or a sketchy internet 1.0 message board, or 10 awkward minutes fumbling for an autograph.
Even if the first leak springs tomorrow, we’ve still achieved an effective delaying manouvre, put a percentage of people off even trying, made the people who know us more aware of our situation, and made a bunch of kids feel like for once they could use their dubiously accrued internet knowledge for something positive and helpful.
I’ve read some flattering things about our methods, but honestly, it was 2 joints and half an hours typing. I wouldn’t suggest this method would be suitable for every band, and, if it ever catches on, then human nature will find a way around it. We’re not pioneers. We’re just using all available methods to make our community stronger, and thats the oldest punk maxim in the book.
