I’ve been trying to get this post from Derek Sivers on here for a few days, various technical conspiracies have intervened.
Call it the McBride/Sivers principal if you must; it started with uber-manager Terry McBride and Derek has breathed more life into it. Wherever it started, whatever you call it, the importance of the principal as a fundamental tenet of Music 3.0 cannot be overstated.
Because every person left each show with a CD, they were more likely to remember who they saw, tell friends about it, listen to it later, and become an even bigger fan afterwards.
Then, when the band came back to a town where they had insisted that everyone take a CD, attendance at those shows doubled! The people that took a CD became long-term fans and brought their friends to future shows.
Music 3.0 — aka the era of the Celestial Jukebox — is about getting people to show up for the experience. If “giving away” the “product” (actually, selling MORE of it…) makes that happen, then it’s entirely worth the price of the exchange.
Also important to note that the artist that McBride first tried this with is Griffin House, one of the artist on the 2008 “10 out of Tenn” tour that demonstrates another important aspect of the shifting paradigm.