HW: Promo Single (on E-Bay)

[Jeff Perkins]

Surely the whole point of the promo-cd is to raise awareness about the
imminent new releases about to appear.

The band are sending them out to passport holders and people who emailed
asking for them. These would largely seem to be the people who would be
most aware that the first new studio releases in a long time are about to
appear.

People giving away copies OR selling them on Ebay or out the back of a
truck or anything like that are surely going to reach more people who are
unaware and this is all good publicity.

Someone willing to shell out 25 quid for a promo cd just might be willing
to shell out 11 for a new album even without a bonus dvd included. They
might even decide to catch a show if they live in a part of the world
blessed with such events. Getting these cd's to people willing to pay for
them is actually identifying the segment of the market that promo is going
to be most effective with.

Personally I think the band itself should be flooding Ebay with cheap
copies of the promo and should have sent out 5 copies to everyone on their
list asking them to hand them on to lost fans, potential converts, radio
stations and if a small percentage of the people providing publicity to
the band managed to make a little bit of beer money in the process good
for them.

For the rest of us we'll listen to it a couple of times then shelve it
when the real thing emerges shortly after. I don't seem to recall people
being questioned about their loyalty to the band for selling genuine
rarities that they owned on these lists. If someone were willing to part
with their only copy of Warrior, ASAM or 25 Years they'd be very popular
(for a while) rather than pilloried.