Album Cover Art

I find this to be very interesting, it may set a precedent that we, who adore album cover art, will not be happy with. See all those race car drivers with ads all over their jackets and cars? Will album covers be treated as 'billboards' for products in the future? Will the greed by the record companies taint album cover art? I can see this coming in the future, God, I hope not, but it will be very interesting to see how this unfolds:

ReverbNation: You download music for free and we’ll pay the band

by Jodie Andrefski

ReverbNation just announced their plan to have 1000 of their artists to start participating in a new Sponsored Songs program. This program will actually pay the bands $0.50 each time one of their songs is downloaded for free by a user. Yup, you get it free and the band gets paid.

Now, of course the question is where does the money to pay the band come from? You guessed it. Ads. A small branded ad will be placed within the album cover art of each download. The value to the advertiser is that it is passed along in the embedded work as the song is passed along by fans via P2P. They want you to share the song with as many people as you like.

Michael Doernberg, CEO of ReverbNation, says “Traditionally the music business has been synonymous with the record business where the lion’s share of revenue came from selling music. With reduced emphasis on music sales, the music business must develop new revenue streams that leverage the artist as a brand.” Thus, their latest idea.

The first campaign will start the middle of June and run for 90 days. ReverbNation’s Band Equity Score and the fan demographic profiles will be used to figure out which artists out of their almost 400,000 will be invited to participate. Those who are accepted will provide songs and use ReverbNation’s marketing tools to help promote the downloads.

Now, is $0.50 per download going to be enough to get over what many may consider a band “selling out?” (Statements I’ve already seen bouncing around in response to the new campaign). Will this give the RIAA a kick in the pants to realize something has to be done and things have to change with how they are now?

Granted, established bands and artists make the vast majority of their money off of concert tickets and sales at shows. And just having their music heard by whatever means, is a good thing for them. It promotes concert ticket sales. It brings in new fans. But, for the indie artist, they don’t have packed stadiums. They don’t have people following them city to city and state to state, paying $80 a ticket to see them. So, something like this just may help to get their music out there and get it known…to give them the boost they need to get them to that next level.

SOURCE: http://www.gadgetell.com