How do we market our new album? Part 9

Well, here’s the final post on how we’ve marketed the Barbary Lion album. We’re not stopping, of course, but all the obvious main activity has happened and I’ve written about it.

We’ve gone past 300 downloads from Bandcamp and about 10% of downloaders have chosen to pay. The interest raised by this release has also led to a significant number of additional downloads of our back catalogue – there’s always a trickle but it ramped right up recently. We’ve also had a pleasing amount of plays of tracks from Barbary Lion in podcasts around the world. There seems to be no let up in Russian download sites bootlegging us but I don’t think that will really have made any difference to our own downloads.




I’ve sent marketing blurb and direct download links with friendly covering emails to lots of bass music and electronic music blogs over the last month but we’ve seen little response. I admit to being a little at a loss to explain this. They seem to be writing about, and reviewing, a wide range of related music and should, therefore, be interested in covering ours. I know it’s nothing to do with the quality of the release – we know it’s damned good. In some cases, the blogs are connected with people we know so it’s a little sad that there hasn’t been much interest. However, I’m a firm believer that it’s their call, not ours. We have to respect their decisions. I guess I don’t write about everything they do either.

We’ve learned a lot from this release. I believe the name-your-own-price model works well for us. It might work even better for those working in more mainstream musical genres. We’ve developed several of our musical ideas too and have already started planning the next couple of releases.




How do we market our new album? Part 8
How do we market our new album? Part 7
How do we market our new album? Part 6
How do we market our new album? Part 5
How do we market our new album? Part 4
How do we market our new album? Part 3
How do we market our new album? Part 2
How do we market our new album? Part 1

How do we market our new album? Part 6

Barbary Lion has now been out for about three weeks. Downloads are in triple figures and about one in seven downloaders is choosing to pay. Most seem to be paying about $5, which is roughly what we would have expected to receive from a sale of a CD through a shop back in the days of physical product.



As well as using Bandcamp as our main outlet, we use a company called Tunecore to place the album on the commercial download sites. It takes a variable amount of time to show up on the sites, for example, iTunes was very quick indeed, Spotify and Napster were pretty quick and we're still waiting for it to show up on Amazon US or Amazon UK.

iTunes gets a lot of stick but they do pay one of the best rates back to the artists.

We've not much in the way of reviews yet, just one on the Netlabelism site by well-known podcaster Pete Cogle and one on a Hungarian site. We're starting to have tunes played on podcasts, though, which is great. The podcasters and their listeners are enthusiastic music fans so we know the tunes will be listened to - people don't tend to use podcasts as mere background like they do with broadcast radio.

So, some positive progress!



How do we market our new album? Part 5
How do we market our new album? Part 4
How do we market our new album? Part 3
How do we market our new album? Part 2
How do we market our new album? Part 1

Barbary Lion review - in Hungarian.....

We found this review of Secret Archives of the Vatican's recent release, Barbary Lion, on a Hungarian blog HERE.

A Secret Archives Of The Vatican zenekar valójában London híres-neves Croydon kerületébe való, ráadásul az ezáltal szinte kötelező dubstepes hatást keleti: arab és indiai zenével keveri. Kemény dobok, röfögő basszusok, valamint tabla, szitár, lant, vonósok hallhatók a Barbary Lion című új, innen letölthető lemezükön. A magát "transglobal breakbeat dub science" stílusba soroló zenekar nem is akarja letagadni, hogy hatottak rá a kilencvenes évek keleti+elektronikus zene fúziói, de attól még érdemes meghallgatni, így például kifejezetten szellemes a tabla, a breakbeat és a dubstep-basszus összjátéka. Az album második fele eldowntempósodik és le is ül egy kicsit, de még így is ajánlott, pláne, hogy ingyen is a miénk lehet, ha a mennyit fizetsz? kérdésre 0-t válaszolunk. (A Secret Archives Of Vatican is blogol arról, hogy hogyan próbálják terjeszteni lemezük hírét az interneten.)

The very wonderful Google Translate, translates it thus:

The Vatican Secret Archives Of The London band really famous districts of Croydon, in addition to the must-order effect dubstepes East: Arabic and Indian music mixes. Hard drums, bass and grunt, and tabla, sitar, lute, strings can be heard in the Barbary Lion's new album can be downloaded from here. In his "trans global breakbeat dub science" style classifying band does not want to deny that influenced him in the nineties east + electronic music mergers, but it's worth listening, such as specially wit the tabla, breakbeat and dubstep, bass interplay. The album's second half eldowntempósodik and you can sit a bit, but it is still recommended, especially to ours can be free even if you pay how much? 0-t answer your question. (Secret Archives Of The Vatican is also blogging about how to try to spread word about the album online.)

Our new album!

Veiled Beauty, Dark Magic - video

Here's a video I put together for Secret Archives of the Vatican's tune Veiled Beauty, Dark Magic, which will be on our forthcoming album release, Barbary Lion. Clearly, I've used a whole bunch of other people's copyrighted material, so if any copyright holder objects, we'll remove the video. Watch it while you can!