Why buy the cow?
For those who doubt the effectiveness of free art, here’s an example of getting something for giving something away.
Escape Key is a filk trio that plays science fiction conventions. They have one album available, and few people ever heard of them despite the fact that they’re really quite good.
But a lot more people have heard of them thanks to threads online like this one on Fireflyfans.Net.
It seems that Escape Key wrote, performed, and recorded a song based on the well-written and wonderfully-acted but short-lived Joss Whedon series, “Firefly” and used part of the show’s theme song as the chorus. As we all know, science fiction fans are a loyal bunch – but it helps that the song sounds all right, and that there’s buzz around the new movie.
With no real promotion on their part, the fan community picked up on the song and overnight Escape Key found their website bombarded – as evidenced by this message posted to the above message board theme.
Oh holy cow!
I had no idea people were listening to our music until I had the following conversation:
My husband (wearing a huge grin): Dear, I figured out why our net connection is so slow.
bq. Me: Why?
bq. Him: A link to Mal’s Song has been posted on a Firefly fan site.
bq. Me: You mean…
bq. Him: ...yep. We’re being slashdotted.
Thank you all so much for your kind response. I hoped people would like the song, but I never expected so many people to hear it. This is wonderful!
It’ll be unavailable for an hour or so while my husband (the guitar player) creates a torrent for it, so that people can still download it without breaking our poor little server’s head. So if you’re still trying to get it, bear with us; it’ll be back up very soon and I’ll post a new link for it to this thread.
Oh, and I hope to have a better recording of it on our next CD. (Yeah… I even have fantasies of sending it to Joss. I’m too chicken, though.)
Wow. Just… wow!
Michelle Dockrey (the singer)
Give it away for free, and people notice you.
Then you hit them with the outrageous charges! Mu-hu-ha-ha!
Wait. Did I say that last part out loud?
On a similar note, nerdcore rapper MC Chris is giving away his entire first album as a free download from his website. My backpack’s got jets.