The Halcyon Days of Napster
Written on May 13, 2008, by Jeff Nordstedt. Category: Opinions.
We were just getting going during the heyday of Napster, but we definitely experienced an uptick in notoriety due to the file sharing service. I am sure that our album, shared among other known bands gave us cred. It got us high-paying college gigs and a cult following that we still benefit from.
Truth is, this band misses Napster.
That is part of the reason that we’ve gone to a free music model for American Anthems vol. 1. I’m hoping to get back some of that peer-to-peer word of mouth that we enjoyed in the Napster days. Truth be told, I have no idea if it will work. I suspect that it won’t work anything like the Napster phenomenon. It lacks the illicit nature of it. I think it feels less like a discovery.
It is easy to see that a band like Radiohead or NIN can give away their album and cash in on the financial benefits of free distribution. However, it remains to be seen if that works as well for band like ours with more of a cult following. Our success really depends on you guys forwarding a link to the album to your friends.
I haven’t really dabbled in the whole BitTorrent thing. If anyone is hip to that whole world, chime in and let us know how it works. And be sure to share American Anthems vol. 1 there.
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Hey Jeff,
I combined the .mp3 files, the album art, and an .m3u playlist and put together a .torrent file so the BitTorrent trackers can start distributing the music.
I am the only seeder right now, so encourage anyone who uses bit torrent to download the .torrent file and seed the album with me. The more seeders, the better (and faster) the distribution will be.
I have the .torrent file hosted at http://www.NorthJerseyMusic.com/torrents/The_Milwaukees-American_Anthems_Volume_1.torrent
You can link directly to that, or download it and host it on your server.
Later,
Jon Berry