Hi, Arcade Fire! I’m Max Bernstein, an independent blogger and programmer. I was listening to your music (Sprawl II) in Aspen, Colorado, and I suddenly realized that it would be SUPER interesting to see firsthand how BitTorrent could affect profits.
I propose the following experiment:
- Write a few songs (or an album).
- Release half of it on BitTorrent for free, with a donate button
- Release the other half in an online store without DRM (like Bandcamp)
- Collect stats on the downloads and income generated from each half
- Publish results
I predict a surge of popularity from the BitTorrent release, and a good amount of donations. The other half of the album, the songs in the DRM-free store, will probably sell as normal, if not a bit higher.
If your popularity and profits rise from this experiment, then we can roughly conclude that publishing music on BitTorrent is viable, at least for the audience you have. If not, then you will have most likely still made money (just not as much), and need not repeat this.
You can contact me here if you’d like to partake in this experiment — I think it will be awesome.