Cory Doctorow, co-editor of the infamous Boing Boing, is in Australia on a lecture tour and unfortunately I won’t get the chance to see him speak. I love this quote;
“The greatest threat to an artist is obscurity, not piracy.”
How perfectly true. The Arctic Monkeys recently sold 360,000 copies of their debut album in one week after a compaign based around file sharing. From Monkey Bites;
“They started playing shows around Sheffield and passing out free CDs at gigs. They encouraged their fans to trade the tunes online and to post them to websites and P2P networks. Yes, they encouraged file trading. Eventually, more and more people found them on MySpace or on their website via word-of-mouth, and their reach started to widen. Fans started booking them in venues farther and farther away from their hometown. Wherever they played, everyone in the crowd knew the words to the songs.”
Corey understands the power of social networking, and has released four books on the internet thus far. His first book was released online the same day as in print and has been downloaded 650,000 times, and the printed book has reached its sixth edition. Releasing the novel online for free has no doubt given a massive boost to the sales of the printed version, and the strategies used by Corey and the Arctic Monkeys are brilliant applications of guerrilla marketing.
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That’s the power of social networking where a complete exposure is a big deal and same goes to what I’m doing now. Guerrilla marketing is also effective approach if you don’t have enough money for your promotions.
-Jan