>43,000 music downloads about rum

Thanks to Music Ally (Bacardi talks music and branding) from March 26 we have a follow-up of the Bacardi-Groove Armada Pyramid Scheme that I had written about previously.

Despite some things to be desired, such as presentation skills and its length (38 minutes) I recommend checking it out - it is from the marketing perspective. I'll give you some of the stats that showed up 27 minutes into it (so you don't need to wade through the first 27 minutes). Bacardi managed more than 43,000 downloads of GA's new album (of which, we find out that 4 songs were "coached" by Bacardi as branding their product) and made Number 1 on a few charts including Hypemachine's. We do not ever find out how deep the free downloads got (recall that if you were able to get a certain number of your friends to download track 1, you were allowed to download track 2). I can venture a guess that those first four Bacardi brand songs were the free ones that were downloaded (for the record, I've not heard any part of GA's Bacardi album).
I mentioned that the presentation was from a marketing perspective, and portrayed as successful, with lots of free media attention that would have otherwise, they estimate, cost them many millions of dollars. However, we never find out how much money it cost them to do the deal, or how much it will cost them to do another deal. They also claim that it was very difficult to make the artist do what they wanted, but get them to think it was their idea (in the question/answer part of the video). Lovely.

Your thoughts on this?

Free air time is great, no doubt about it. Was this free air time best for Bacardi or best for GA? Not sure, but Bacardi seemed to come away with an estimated >$7M in free advertising. GA? Well, GA recorded four songs about something that they thought was their idea and these brainwashing songs were downloaded for free. I'm most interested, however, in the downloading pyramid scheme. At the end of the day, 43,000 downloads in 40 days is pretty good...even if each song is about how great rum is; too bad there was no value to each download...to GA, I mean.

Groove Armada and Bacardi Pyramid Scheme

I recently read that Bacardi and Groove Armada (GA) partnered in a social networking experiment to, "embrace free music while giving it value", according to a GA band member. Music Ally, a blog I try to follow, is fond of the experiment.
Here's the dirt: one may download Track One of GA's new album entirely free. In order to download subsequent tracks, one must pass Track One on to other people via any number of methods including widgets on Facebook. To get Track Two reach must be 20 people. Track Three requires reach from Track One to be 200. Track Four is 2,000; presumably track five is 20,000. Oh, and there is a time limit - forty days - after which I presume you can just buy the entire album (but I don't know). Music Ally loves the idea and is working hard to build up its reach (see update).

Let's do some math:
I have a lot of friends on Facebook with friend densities of 35-100. I also have a few friends who are in the 300-5,000 density range. Let's be generous and say that the average is about 200 Friends. Let's also assume that one in every four friends likes GA or Bacardi rum and thus wants to try to get some tracks off the new album. Then these 50 people send it to their network, which consists of 200 people. Let's assume that everyone that receives track one tries it (big assumption). Let's also assume that the networks do not overlap (also a big assumption).
10,000 people get Track One free.
50 people get Track Two and Track Three free.
Then, if each of those 10,000 send Track One to 50 friends who try it, we're at 500,000 free downloads of Track One.
10,000 friends get to try Track Two.
All in forty days...like Lent.

If this is going to work, Track One and Track Two better be spectacular! There is a big difference between getting something for free and choosing to buy it without a sample - even if it is less than a dollar.
I bet this is the longest forty days of Bacardi's and GA's life!

There are a few reasons I like this:

• It's a new approach to giving value to free downloads; it's sort of creative and it's a start.
• If done properly (partnered with sponsors (Baccardi) holding lots of cash) it can really build a buzz.
• This could work really well with an entire catalogue - either artist's catalogue or label catalogue, but that would require a music search engine that bases searches on something relevant, like...music (like Hounds to the Music is creating).
  

And more reasons that I don't:

• Pyramid Scheme. GA is the Amway of music.
  
• If you're going to have a timeline for such a promotion, you've got to have a lot of launch momentum to get the word out - the first fans to download Track One are key and there better be a lot of them. This is tough for budget-conscious independent, emerging musicians trying to make a buzz.
• What if you don't like Track One or Track Two? If you don't you won't spend much time trying to get Track Three for free.
• A better idea is to have your choice of next tracks to download after track one, provided you meet the "reach goals". I'm not sure why this was not an option - maybe it was too challenging logistically.
  
• GA can put all the great tracks at the top of the album and leave the let's-just-finish-quickly-songs after track four. Did they do that?
  
• Is coaxing your 2,000 best friends to download music so that you can benefit with another track really the best use of your time? Or would you rather spend the $3 for the first four tracks? If you really dig GA, you'll probably spend much more than that to get your choice of songs from the album.

And your thoughts?