At least, it looks like stealing to me:
[http://andrew-peterson.com/news]For the next two weeks, Andrew is offering The Far Country CDs for $2 each in sets of 5 or 10. That means you can get 5 copies of Andrew’s latest album for only TEN little dollars, or 10 copies for just $20! Buy ‘em up to give away to friends & family…but time is ticking so jump on this deal while you can!
This album was one of the best records released last year, in my opinion. Ben Shive, who has toured with Andy for the last several years playing keyboards, produced it, along with Andrew Osenga’s Right Middle Toe, Esq. acting as Assistant Executive Producer (although I’m not sure how active it was – see here and here).
I don’t know. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the album. But this seems similar to Derek Webb offering his album for ‘free.’ (It isn’t exactly. Check Kat’s blog for more info.) My problem isn’t with the great promotional deals. It’s with the great promotional deals coming so soon after the album release. People who paid full price are going to feel gypped. If you can offer the album for that cheap, then just do it from the beginning and let it spread that way. Or else put a little more time between offers. Or make an offer like this as a lead-in to a new album release to generate publicity for it. But this way just doesn’t sit quite right with me. Am I alone?
Cach, while I agree about Derek’s album, I think this is quite a bit different.
First of all, The Far Country has been out for over a year already, and he’s released one other album since then (Appendix A – Bootlegs & B-Sides). He also is not promoting this much (that I know of), while Derek had some pretty heavy advertising. The notice I posted is from Andy’s website and it announced the start of the deal, which is only for two weeks (as opposed to Mockingbird‘s three months). From what I’ve heard, I think Andy is doing this as a way to have people buy copies for their friends. There is only a $2 shipping charge on top of the sale price, so basically the $2 per album is for shipping and handling. He obviously would not have been able to do that at the start.
I’ve heard that Mockingbird is Derek’s best-selling solo album to date, which is undoubtedly one of the reason’s he is able to give it away now. I don’t know how Far Country has sold, but I would guess it has done okay. I’ll try to ask Andy more about it next week.
Yeah, that does sound a bit different. I didn’t realize it had been out that long. I still wonder how many other artists will try something closer to what Derek did and offend their audience. Or maybe I’m the only one who thinks that way. What do you think? Will the increased availability of music downloads lead other artists to offer deals that may offend their paying audiences?
FYI, here is a message Andy just posted on his message board:
I’m not dumping copies. I order them from the label as I need them. There’s really no trick to this–I just really believe in this record and I want it to be heard. Thank you guys so much for supporting us with this hare-brained idea of mine. The orders have been coming in steady, and financial ambiguity aside, I’m just so excited that there’s a chance that this many more folks will hear the songs.
Can you tell I’m excited?
AP
Very cool.