“Keep One Share One” – Selling CDs in Pairs.

This is just a quick post to throw an idea out there that we’ve been chatting about on Twitter this evening. I mentioned a short while ago something I’ve been thinking about for a while – the idea of only selling CDs in pairs – “keep one share one” – thinking of it as a way of making ‘promo copies’ count…

I know SO many artists who gave away considerably more than half of their first pressing of any given album as ‘promo’ – a lot of them just go to friends, colleagues, other musicians, but also magazines, radio, TV, bloggers, etc. I know VERY few people who’ve ever reported a more than 1:1 ratio of promo copies to sales generated.

So, why not put those promo copies in the hands of people who’ve already demonstrated that they care enough about what you do to pay for it? Think of it as a Creative Commons-style sharing license for physical product (of course, with the CC license that is on all my music now, you could burn as many copies for your friends as you like, but there’s something more tangible about a properly pressed and released CD…)

So, on the eve of my new album coming out, I’m going to make my last two solo albums – Grace And Gratitude and Behind Every Word available ‘Keep One Share One‘ – if you order either of them from Bandcamp, I’ll send you two copies… for now the offer’s only open til Tuesday evening, as we’re off to the States then, but I’ll reinstate it when we get back in a coupla months!

…if you want to chat about this on twitter, please use the #K1S1 tag so we can all follow it! 🙂

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