Indie Label That Gets It: Sell Things People Want, Not Just What They Hear
from the creative-destruction dept
Bruce Houghton, over at Hypebot, now has a great interview with the indie label Asthmatic Kitty, where they explain "what is working" today, and it hits on a bunch of the points we often highlight around here:
I operate under the conviction that people buy records because they want to own them, not because they want to hear them. It is too easy these days to hear a record without having to buy it. I don't resent that fact, rather I feel we at Asthmatic Kitty embrace it through streaming albums and offering several free mp3s (even whole free albums). And why do they want to own it? They want it to illustrate to others their taste and identify who they are as a person. I also believe they want to be part of something bigger than themselves, they want to belong.And meanwhile, we still have the major record labels whining about how there are no business models because of "piracy"?
Our job is no longer to sell folks things they want to hear. They want an experience and to identify themselves as part of a community. Ownership then becomes a way of them supporting your community through investing in that community. Fostering that in an honest, transparent and "non-gross" way takes a combination of gracefulness, creativity and not taking oneself too seriously, while still taking art and music seriously.