When not marketing your product is your marketing plan.

April 1, 2008 3:57 PM

Walking down 7th Avenue in Park Slope this weekend, I passed a local CD store. I caught something out of the corner of my eyes. It was a white board, with sloppy hand writing, announcing "New this week."

Wait.

Did...that...sign...say...the...Raconteurs?

Hell and yes.

I turned around and walked in. This is notable for several reasons, including the fact that in the three years I've lived literally 200 feet from this store, I've never been inside. Never. In that time I've downloaded an awful lot of music. I've picked up the occasional CD at some corporate giant or another. I've installed software on my computer that allows me to rip audio out of YouTube videos, convert that file to MP4, and throw it on my iPod. I've driven 400 miles to see The White Stripes, driven home that night, waited two nights, and taken the subway four stops to see them again.

In other words, I listen to my share of music, and am not afraid to make an effort to do so.

I have not, however, walked 200 feet and supported my local indie music shop by exchanging cash for merchandise.

So, walking through the door, it felt sort of like 1995. I was back in college. There was no advanced press on one of my favorite bands. There was no "leaked" single available online. There was no badly recorded video on YouTube. All I needed was a t-shirt that hadn't been laundered in 3 weeks, an unread text book, and four minutes to get to class.

So there I stood. Just me and the owner of the store.

"Did I read your sign right? I thought the Raconteurs' album was scheduled to come out this summer?"

"Dude, you're the 500th person to say that this weekend. I didn't know it was coming out either. But it's really, really good."

Can't. Control. Impulses. Don't. Care. About. Technology. Must. Have. CD. Now.

As it turns out, that was sort of the point of the sneaky release. A trip to their MySpace page revealed this:

"With this release, The Raconteurs are forgoing the usual months of lead time for press and radio set up, as well as forgoing the all important "first week sales". We wanted to explore the idea of releasing an album everywhere at once and THEN marketing and promoting it thereafter. The Raconteurs would rather this release not be defined by it's first weeks sales, pre-release promotion, or by someone defining it FOR YOU before you get to hear it.

Another purpose was to also allow people to have their own choice as to exactly which format they would like to hear the album in IMMEDIATELY, rather than having to wait for their favorite format to become available. The band are also not releasing any version of this record that contains bonus tracks. Musically this album will be the same as the band created it no matter what format it is purchased in."

And you know what? I haven't been this excited by a music purchase since before I had an iPod.

(By the way: the store owner was roght. The album is great. I strongly encourage you to skip downloading the single, bypass the huge neon sign of the corporate retailer near you, and go hand your locally owned CD store an extra $2 above chain store prices for the disc. I think the whole process actually made the CD sound even better.)

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