Oct 21
11:31 AM
Dear Drones, Let Us Help You
If you’re one of the ten people who read my blog you already know The Drones are one of my favorite bands in recent years. I originally discovered them through a review in my favorite music magazine, Mojo, of their 2005 release “Wait Long By The River and The Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By”. I think I read someone claim they were a cross between Neil Young and Laughing Hyenas and that’s a description that actually does the incredible songwriting and the fury with which its delivered justice.
The Drones just released a new album in Australia and if you happen to be in Australia, you can buy it from iTunes here. If you’re not in Australia, well, you’re out of luck. In fact, you can’t even get the amazing aforementioned 2005 album digitally in the US, or the great album in-between, Gala Mill. You can buy the CD, if you’re into such things and aren’t in a rush (and I’d actually recommend it because the lyric sheet is worth the price of the disc). The album will come out in the US in 2009, and by then we US Drones fans will probably have already downloaded it from a friend. I don’t know any of the details of The Drones’ record deals, who manages them, or what their strategy is, but from the consumer/fan point of view this seems like a missed opportunity at best and poor execution at worst.
It doesn’t have to be this way. They (or their label, or labels) could have released worldwide on the same day and date both digitally and physically using Topspin. They could have delivered higher quality audio, the lyric sheet, photos, and videos all in one package from their Web site. They could have given an option for digital to be downloaded now and CDs and vinyl to be sent later. They could have repackaged the previous, impossible-to-find-digitally albums similarly and properly served a fans’ Drones fix. And best of all, they’d end up with the email address of every purchaser instead of sending those fans off to iTunes and others. When you send your fans away to iTunes to purchase, iTunes mails them every Tuesday and you don’t even know who they are! Doh!
I’m flying home from Boston right now, my two year-old is asleep on the seat next to me, and I’m listening to this new Drones record for the tenth time in a week. It’s incredible, the best thing ever done by one of my favorite bands, period. Unfortunately I can’t even give my friends a link to buy it for themselves. Drones, management, label, whoever…LET US HELP. Please? It’d be an honor.
Other bands, labels, and managers, please don’t make the same mistake. I understand how territory rights work, but they really don’t serve the fans very well in the age of the tubes of the Interwebs. IMHO, even if you have different owners in different territories, you should always make the music easily available for sale from the artist’s Web site worldwide. Split the money on the backend, don’t deter the fans from buying the product. Hit us up if you want some help.
UPDATE: Alec from The Drones’ US Label wrote a comment correcting me: All of the Drones’ albums *except* the new one are available in the US from iTunes. Click HERE to buy “Wait Long By The River…” now, for starters. It’s incredible. I didn’t realize this because a) I usually do my download purchasing through Amazon and the records aren’t available there, and b) all the links on the Drones’ site take you to AU and UK download stores. Thanks to Alec for the comment (click through to see my response), now lets see what we can do about getting the new album up and running worldwide ASAP and getting all these albums for sale directly from Drones and ATP sites! 
October 21st, 2008 at 2:46 PM
ian,
google reader has listed 565 subscribers to your blog. enough of this “ten people” mumbojumbo.
i hope the drones get your message and realize what they’re missing out on… looking forward to seeing your services become publicly available.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:57 PM
Hey Ian
Great post about a great band. Territorial rights are completely irrelevant today and there would be lots of bands in smaller places like Australia missing out on valuable audiences (and $$) because of restrictive territorial deals.
Did I mention I’m going to see the Drones on Friday night @ The Metro in Sydney? I’m going to see the Drones on Friday night - http://www.metrotheatre.com.au/events/2008/10/24/the-drones.
Love to the family.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 AM
Ian,
It’s very easy to point fingers at how labels that have dedicated themselves for YEARS to help a band build their following “just don’t get” this crazy digital era.
We mean this very gently, but we’re not sure you know how to use iTunes or the iTunes Linkmaker site!
http://www.apple.com/itunes/linkmaker
If you checked either you’d see that all of the Drones albums except the new one Havilah are available digitally in the United States.
What iTunes are you looking at?
We do appreciate your love of this band, however, and would be interested to hear how you’d like to help.
Respectfully,
Alec
ATP/R
http://www.atprecordings.com
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:54 PM
Hi Alec, thanks very much for reading, and for the comment.
First of all, I want to apologize for not doing more research before doing the post. To be honest with you, I neglected the research on purpose. I expected that if I did my homework I’d find a nice label like yourself busting their ass for the band, my frustration as a fan would dissipate, and I’d miss the opportunity to write a post about an issue that I deal with daily in my conversations with artists, managers, and labels. I wanted to take it from a pure fan viewpoint, loving a band, not being able to buy their new album, being sent to an Australian and UK iTunes store from the bands’ site, not finding the album on Amazon, and ultimately being forced to get the MP3s from a friend.
Check out the experience on the (also great) White Denim record we just helped release: http://www.whitedenimmusic.com The “choose your geography” option works ok, but is it really necessary? The real fan-centric approach would be to let them have a great buying experience from anywhere in the world and let the money people settle up on the back end. I am 100% sure this is the way artists will move in the future.
Regardless, I still hear the comment “territory restrictions are going to be very important” to Topspin’s product.
Personally I feel like I’ve seen this movie before, where contracts get in the way of what fans want. I’m not going to ask my engineers to build software that restricts sales by territory any more than I’m going to ask them to build DRM. We’re in the business of making money for artists and I’m not going to turn a sale away for an artist based on geography, ever.
Now I know this has almost nothing at all to do with The Drones, apart from the fact that I wish I could send all my friends to The Drones’ site and they could get a killer experience like the one at http://www.everythingthathappens.com. So I apologize for dragging you into it.
Thanks very much for writing and I sincerely hope there’s some work we can do together. I promise to do my best to keep my foot away from my mouth in our future interactions.
ian
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:15 PM
Just because you’ve put your band on iTunes doesn’t mean you can pat yourself on the back and say you’re done. iTunes happens to be one of the most consumer-hostile ways to purchase a record (and yes, that includes the effort that would be required to build yourself a time machine to go back to the Tower Records on Sunset in July 1985). And I’m not just talking about DRM, which in itself keeps me from ever (ever!) purchasing anything on iTunes. It’s about terrible discoverability, it’s about a brain-dead international “strategy” that prohibits you from buying anything if you live in a country that Apple doesn’t like, it’s about a brain-dead recommendation engine, and it’s about complete crap customer service.
The fact that you’re supposed to use this “linkmaker” tool to find your band on iTunes indicates that something is broken. (But while we’re on that subject, you’re aware that those dumb iTunes Store links don’t actually work in the web browser used by 20%+ of web users, right?)
iTunes is junk. It is the AOL of music. Putting your bands exclusively on iTunes isn’t doing them any favors.
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:27 PM
I cry Uncle! Ok. The White Denim album is very good. Done and bought.
Hopefully soon I can get the Drones album as easily.
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:34 PM
Thanks Jeffrey and Thunderbox for the supportive comments, I have a good dialog going with the ATP folks now, lets be kind to them! But you can have your fun with iTunes…
ian
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:00 PM
Hey Jeffrey-
Note that you can also buy The Drones album at eMusic, where you can buy the music DRM free. (That’s my preferred digital retailer.) By January or so, dozens of other download stores should have the full ATP/R catalog.
-Alec
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:42 PM
Spectacular, Alec, thanks. I do like eMusic (and Amazon) a lot for buying music. I see some Drones records on eMusic but I am not seeing the new one. It also looks like eMusic is conflating your Drones with another band of the same name that was active in the UK in the 70s — ouch.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:11 AM
The Drones played an amazing set at the Echoplex back in September opening for Polvo.
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:56 PM
hey ian,
was good to meet you last week at musexpo. drop me an email, as i’d love to discuss what topspin could do for the drones……
cheers,
bill
November 12th, 2008 at 8:32 PM
Hi, You might be interested in watching the recent Drones show we filmed at The Metro Theatre in Sydney:
http://www.moshcam.com/?#?page=player&type=gig&id=302
It’s a killer gig. Enjoy!
November 15th, 2008 at 12:23 PM
I think its a lil late but Id like to bust in here, too. I worked with both, “dropped” bands from Universal and BMG and felt like I kept throwing the IGing saying: Working on the spoilt. Well it was always successful, for a band who once went thru this “major process” understood, nothing much changes after you get signed plus you have to work even more, not to say your ass off and on top you are in debt… Thru “guerilla” action on the net, we got bands more popular than ever, not even using the print media much anymore. Recently my band Angelika Express made it into the prime time news, coz in 36 hrs they collected 25000 euros on the net, via their own website. We never even gave out a press info, it just happened faster than we could react, The singer even started the shareholding project a day b4 he flew to greece for a week (which was a disaster). The stock market broke down, it was Popkomm in Germany and everyone was talkin death of the music biz…. but the media praised the band and wrote Heading for Indy Wallstreet with Angelika Express. It was innovative, they did it the pure indie way, via direct contact to their fans. The bloggers jumped on the topic and did the rest. And now, that the Ep is out, the airplay starts… what are the next steps? Wiggling out of MySpace, maybe… we got some ideas. Yet, am not supporting the sellaband systems etc, but am supporting the internet ways, coz the internet supports me. Lets say, we did a little Obama flip here, with that. We will not repeat this, but we will repeatively recreate the webways. By the way: The singer of that band is a huge fan of your player, and wonders how he can get it….