Helping the artists who lost merch revenue

[frictionfarm]

Lots of us wait until Sunday afternoon to buy CDs and we obviously missed that opportunity! Merch sales are a big part of how touring artists make a living, so if you didn't have a chance to buy something at the fest, visit the artists web sites and pick up something on line. How generous of Janis Ian to donate part of her fee... go buy her CD! I'm going shopping now.

[FyreGoddess]

Heh. I was actually in the Merch tent trying to buy a CD when the storm hit. Going online and actually buying it was one of the first things I did when I got home...

[Notlob]

Idea: Place a CD Baby (and similar) link on the Falcon Ridge website. When someone goes to CD Baby through FRFF, FRFF gets a percentage of the sale.

Amazon does this for public radio stations.

[boyhowdy]

As a blogger, I've always tried to link to purchase sources which offer the best profit to artists themselves -- it just seemed like cutting out the corporate middleman wherever possible was both best for artists, and the folkiest way to do things.

I'm happy to say that many conversations with musicians over this past weekend has only confirmed this sense of the economic playing field, and how we can best support it.

It is true that CD Baby offers artists a higher percentage of sales dollars than, say, amazon (which offers artists much less). But, as at least one artist pointed out to me over this weekend, they still take a decent chunk of change, whereas buying DIRECT from the artist -- via paypal, say, which many artists use on their own website -- sends ALL profit to artists...and over a year's worth of sales, that extra percentage can mean the difference between poverty and "eking out a living" for many small artists.

As such: Notlob's idea is good, but UNLESS we decide that percentage is worth having someone else set up the on-line infrastructure, I see no reason why giving CD baby 40% of all sales dollars (their standard rate) is necessarily the best substitute for the "most to artist, some to festival" model which the merch tent uses.

At heart, I want the artists to call this -- it's their product we're talking about profiting from. If other artists like the CD Baby model of which Notlob speaks, then this is a great idea -- I only know that some artists had other preferences when I spoke with them. But for now, until we have artist "okays" to make some money off their sales outside of the festival grounds themselves, in AFTER fest mode at least, I would continue to encourage direct-from-artist sales in all cases, for EVERYONE reading this forum...it's best for artists, and ultimately, we can't live without them.

If artists want to help us, perhaps we can look at setting up an online store over the next few years -- using paypal, say, but with a commitment that we, not CD Baby, gets the percent for doing the store and marketing, just like at the fest. And there are other ways, too -- if each artist donated a song, we'd have a heck of a benefit CD to raise money with, for example. And, an added bonus, helping musicians make the best bang-for-buck would surely help us encourage them to pitch in with donations, too -- of song, or otherwise.

[Notlob]

Notlob's idea is good, but UNLESS we decide that percentage is worth having someone else set up the on-line infrastructure, I see no reason why giving CD baby 40% of all sales dollars

Ideas grow and change, that was my first thought.

On reflection, create seperate artist portals on FRFF website to the ARTISTS' CD sales sites.

FR gets a % and the rest to the artist.

I don't know if this is possible, will let the web gurus and bean counters figure it out.

[Jude]

Just a quick note of support for picking up some merch - I am one of those "Sunday afternoon I'll wander around and pick up some things" and that never happened this year. Especially the Emerging Artists - this is a big deal for many of them.in terms of costs (getting to fest) and they have a lot of hopes of selling their work.

As a start, I blogged about the emerging artists pre-fest and have a blog post with links to their individual websites here: http://scenicroot.blogspot.com/2008/07/falcon-ridge-showcase-announcement.html

I did find many of the artists on CD-Baby, but I think I will take some time to follow the links to the individual sites - to see if the artists have direct ways to sell merch. But I can see how the artists might not want to be bothered with merchandise and shipping, and let CD Baby do the logistic work.

[sjrash]

I actually was heading up to my camp as the storm clouds were brewing to get my wallet to do my annual Sunday spend & splurge. I usually wait until Sunday to drain my bank account at the merch tent and other vendors. On my way to camp someone warned about the severe t-storm and I decided to wait it out at the camp. Unfortunately, there was no more festival after the storm and I didn't get to go dump my cash anywhere. am definitely donating to frff.