Why We’re Not Having a Holiday Sale This Year
If you’ve made it to this blog post, we know you really understand the value of supporting artists for their work. You obviously follow us, or a friend of yours sent you this link, or you’re generally interested in why a musician would be talking about holiday sales.
Thanks for being here. Can we share a couple harrowing facts with you?
Did you know…
– The CEO of Spotify is estimated to be worth about $2 BILLION this year. (Yes, billion with a B.)
– Musicians make $.004 per stream on Spotify. Yes, that is 4/10ths of a PENNY every time a song gets played in full. (When it’s played for less than 30 seconds, the rate is something like $.002).
– To make $2000 (one MILLIONTH of what the CEO of Spotify is worth), an artist would need to get 1000 streams per month… for 42 YEARS!!!!!!!!!! FORTY. TWO. YEARS.
Anyway, our point is this:
Music is really, REALLY cheap these days.
We live in a world where we expect music to be widely available, and we expect it to be free. And this shift, frankly, sucks for musicians.
Streaming has totally changed the game. And listen, we love streaming! It’s amazing that you can get access to all of this music all the time!
But artists want to get paid fairly for their work. We’d love to be able to know that we can make a living in this new music economy.
Because if musicians can’t make a reasonable living, then how can we keep making music?
And what the heck happens to the world if people stop making music?
It doesn’t seem like Spotify is going to change their strategy anytime soon. So in the mean time, artists rely on people like you to help us make it work. And while Jeff Bezos, who makes $2500 PER SECOND (that’s another real fact we learned this morning), can afford to put all of his stuff on sale this weekend, we can’t. And you know what? We don’t want to.
Because we think our music is really good. (And we think you do, too.)
And we want people to have it.
But we want to be paid fairly for it.
So, we’re not having a Black Friday or Cyber Monday (or whatever else Wednesday) sale this year.
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Here are some ways you can support musicians this holiday season and share the gift of music with your loved ones.
1. Download or stream music from Bandcamp or iTunes.
Bandcamp and iTunes both pay musicians most of the money for their music. Instead of that $.004 per stream on Spotify, we keep a full $9 when you buy our albums for $10.
PLUS, Bandcamp lets you give music as a gift. Pretty perfect for the holidays, right?
Download and/or stream our full discography on Bandcamp here.
2. Buy merch directly from artists.
When you buy merch from us on our website or in person, we keep 99%. We pay some processing fees, but that’s it.
This holiday season, we’re not doing a sale on merch. HOWEVER, we still want you to know that we appreciate and love you.
So, we are going to sign every CD or vinyl record that leaves our house over the month of December. Every piece of merch will come with a handwritten thank you, and we’ll even personalize the CD/Vinyl if it’s a gift for someone else.
You can buy CDs, Vinyl + T-shirts directly from us here on our website.
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Every Seed Must Die (Black Vinyl LP)$20.00
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Every Seed Must Die (Physical CD)$15.00
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TREE Tee$15.00
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TANDEM Tee$15.00
3. Give the gift of music.
We know a lot of you actually already have our albums and merch, so you aren’t necessarily looking to add to your CD collection.
But what about giving someone else that gift? What better way to show someone that you were really thinking of them than by saying, “I really think you’re going to love this music”.
If you buy merch from our website+ want it personalized for that special someone, just write in the “Order Notes” (during checkout) who you want it made out to. We’ll sign a CD or record to them, and/or write them a handwritten note.
4. Support artists on Patreon
Patreon is the #1 way of keeping artists afloat in this ever-changing music economy, and we are so thankful for our family of patrons. Learn more about Patreon here.
5. Support artists without spending money.
Hey, we know you’re spending a ton of money this month, and we get it. We don’t want to be one more thing making you feel broke over this holiday season. We love ya too much for that. You can still support musicians even without spending any money. Every Facebook like, every Instagram follow, and every shared Youtube videohelp us tremendously. Did you know Word of Mouth is still the best advertising tool? Spread the word about your favorite music, and your friends will appreciate the suggestion!
Have a wonderful holiday season.
We love you a lot and are really grateful for you.
Ash + Eric
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