Monday, September 28, 2009

Thrice fans still show support after early leak of new album...

I have been following this story for the past couple months just to see how it plays out and have just recently found some results.  Albums being leaked has been a problem way before internet downloading, I can remember buying a Bad Religion album off ebay a month before it came out because someone got a copy, burned it, and was selling it online.  Now, with internet downloading, this process of getting leaked music is faster, more available, and most importantly... free (unlike the album i had to purchase off of someone when I was 15).  This recently became a problem for a band that I like called Thrice.  In early August I saw a posting that their album was leaked online over 2 months before the release.  Most of the time when I see an album is leaked, it's usually only a couple of weeks prior to the release date and the band or musician continues on as planned.  However, with this leak happening two and a half months early, Thrice had a major problem as to how to handle this situation with affecting album sales.  The album was leaked around late July and had an intended release date of October 13th.  The band scrambled to find a solution since they obviously did not want to have people steal their music but also because the copy that was released was stolen through Vagrant Records computers which had a voice over on every track, stating something along the lines of how the album hasn't been released yet.  As most of us know, there are many things that go on in those remaining months between the actual album being finished and the physical release date.  This situation threw off all the plans they had on how to market this album and we're faced with a new challenge of how to get people to still purchase their record and when.  To settle, they ended up releasing a digital copy of the album on August 11th available for purchase and also had it streaming on their myspace.  The physical release date was bumped up to September 15h and in an attempt to encourage fans to purchase the album, it came with a free digital download card that contained 5 B-side tracks that were not on the original release which included unreleased songs along with covers.  The interesting thing about this is that despite the leak and free streaming, the band still managed to come in at 47 on the billboards top 100.  This was the main reason I was following this story, mainly because I wanted to see how loyal fans can be in situations like this.  With the rapidly changing music industry it is interesting to see how fans and bands respond to situations like this.  Thrice had to market their album in a whole new direction to encourage fans to purchase their album and in this case I believe was still a success.  Below are several articles on the story you can read dating from their responses to finding out about the release, to the billboards report just recently.



http://www.punknews.org/article/34508

http://www.punknews.org/article/34688

http://acharts.us/album/48865


Trevor Kay

3 comments:

  1. This really is quite an interesting situation. I enjoy the fact that the band and their management team were able to deal with the situation so well.

    This is a great example of having to deal with unexpected challenges related to marketing. The fact that they came out strong despite this potential setback is very impressive. The solid first week sales reflect not only the loyalty of Thrice fans, but the efficiency of the band's ability to roll with the punches of today's technology.

    Hooray for Thrice!



    -Bill Ross

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've always had a theory that with the right promotional push, good music will always sell. I think this is another example of such. Thrice was handed a problematic situation & they made the best of it & still came out alright.

    -Marcus Hall

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thrice is amazing and deserves the recognition. Most Thrice fan will support anything the band does, so it does not surprise me that they were still able to sell a decent amount of records. I also think they dealt with the situation well.

    - Val South

    ReplyDelete