Arcade Fire is taking a nostalgic approach to marketing their upcoming album, “The Suburbs”, out August 2nd 2010. With the heavy downloading and leaking of albums, bands need to find ways to offer something of value to their listeners. RIP-V, a Vinyl Record manufacturer in Montreal is pressing the songs to plastic. Fans of Arcade Fire will have a collectable piece of music, nicely packaged and an option to download the high quality mp3s for free.
The strategy is certainly interesting here to offer a very unique album package for the fans, however, I am not sure whether anyone would want to buy the album to listen to it, or merely to have. I know that I don’t have a record player at home and it would be useless for me to pick it up. At the same time, I pre-ordered “Define the Great Line” by UnderOath and it came with a Vinyl Record that had a couple singles on it. I remember throwing that vinyl into my mother’s record player and listening to each song twice before putting the record back into the sleeve and on the shelf.
There is always going to be some creative marketing and a stretch to pull something unique out for your fans. There are bands that I search record stores for and other bands who I merely keep tabs on through the years. I don’t want to be that band that has a million Myspace friends and leaked albums every year. I want people to search for my music and want to dig deeper into the art of the music, whether that means buying a vinyl or a “making of” DVD.
Read More: The Rich Sound of a Vinyl Revival
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