Band pays people to listen to their music

imagesource: myspace






As the old cliché goes, "You have to speculate to accumulate". Yet electro-pop duo The Reclusive Barclay Brothers seem to have taken the adage to the extreme by paying people to listen to their debut single ‘We Could Be Lonely Together'. 




We Could Be Lonely Together



100 randomly selected people who listen to the track will receive £27 each. That's a total of £2,700 they'll have to fork out, and it's not just their bank accounts that may suffer. "We were aware there would be an onslaught of negative comments from the media, music lovers from all denominations and people with an interest in the music business," they say on their website. So, is it a clever marketing strategy? Or, as they proclaim themselves, ‘a new low for music?'

As much as The Reclusive Barclay Brothers may profess that implementing their unique strategy "makes us feel a little bit ill", it's easy to see the benefits for them. Indeed, they won't be reclusive for much longer - their profile has been dramatically increased, and people are bound to listen to their track, whether out of curiosity or the chance to win some cash. £2,700 is a small price to pay for the publicity they've generated. 

But with illegal file-sharing and downloads effectively forcing artists to give away their music for free, what will the reaction be to a band paying people to listen to their work? Figures including Lily Allen have spoken about how hard it is for new bands to make a living, and one only has to remember the furore caused by Radiohead after they allowed people to pay as little as they liked for their ‘In Rainbows' album - something which, according to Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire, "devalued music". 

The Reclusive Barclay Brothers aren't the first to resort to desperate measures to drum up some interest, of course. In 2008, The Infadels gave away £5,000 to fans when they hurled the cash at them from a bus on Oxford Street, yet where are they now? Short-term publicity is no guarantee of long-term success; perhaps that's something The Reclusive Barclay Brothers should have thought of before chucking their money away - literally...




Source: http://new.uk.music.yahoo.com/blogs/behind_the_music/16696/band-pay-people-to-listen-to-their-music/

Band website: http://www.thereclusivebarclaybrothers.com/

I would call it a cheap publicity stunt, but at £2,700. It definitely ain't cheap.




MITNB