Marillion are widely considered within the industry to have been one of the first mainstream acts to have fully recognised and tapped the potential for commercial musicians to interact with their fans via the Internet circa 1996, and are nowadays often characterised as a rock & roll ‘Web Cottage Industry’.
The band have always been renowned for having an extremely dedicated following with some fans regularly travelling significant distances to attend single gigs, when a bunch of American fans clubbed together to finance a tour of USA, somewhere that the band had not visited for some years, they realised maybe there was a lot more they could achieve with fan power.
The band unhappy with their record label situation, decided to try a radical experiment by asking their fans if they would help fund the recording of the next album by pre-ordering it before recording even started. They result was over 12,000 pre-orders which raised enough money to record and release Anoraknophobia in 2001. The band licensed the album to EMI on terms that gave them more input over areas such as promotion.
The success of Anoraknophobia allowed the band to start recording their next album, but they decided to leverage their fanbase once again to help raise money towards marketing and promotion of a new album. The band put up the album for pre-order in mid-production. This time fans responded by pre-ordering 18,000 copies. This time Marillion set up their own label to release the album. They have since released two more successful albums in this way showing a sustained revitalisation of the bands fortunes.
On 9th September 2008, Marillion pre-released their own album via P2P networks themselves. Upon attempting to play the downloaded files, users were shown a video from the band explaining why they had taken this route. Downloaders were then able to opt to purchase the album at a user-defined price or select to receive DRM-free files for free, in exchange for an email address. The band explained that although they did not support piracy, they realised their music would inevitably be shared in this manner anyway, and wanted to attempt to engage with p2p users and make the best of a bad situation.
The band unhappy with their record label situation, decided to try a radical experiment by asking their fans if they would help fund the recording of the next album by pre-ordering it before recording even started. They result was over 12,000 pre-orders which raised enough money to record and release Anoraknophobia in 2001. The band licensed the album to EMI on terms that gave them more input over areas such as promotion.The success of Anoraknophobia allowed the band to start recording their next album, but they decided to leverage their fanbase once again to help raise money towards marketing and promotion of a new album. The band put up the album for pre-order in mid-production. This time fans responded by pre-ordering 18,000 copies. This time Marillion set up their own label to release the album. They have since released two more successful albums in this way showing a sustained revitalisation of the bands fortunes.On 9th September 2008, Marillion pre-released their own album via P2P networks themselves. Upon attempting to play the downloaded files, users were shown a video from the band explaining why they had taken this route. Downloaders were then able to opt to purchase the album at a user-defined price or select to receive DRM-free files for free, in exchange for an email address. The band explained that although they did not support piracy, they realised their music would inevitably be shared in this manner anyway, and wanted to attempt to engage with p2p users and make the best of a bad situation
www.marillion.com
Marillion are widely considered within the industry to have been one of the first mainstream acts to have fully recognised and tapped the potential for commercial musicians to interact with their fans via the Internet circa 1996, and are nowadays often characterised as a rock & roll ‘Web Cottage Industry’.
The band have always been renowned for having an extremely dedicated following with some fans regularly travelling significant distances to attend single gigs, when a bunch of American fans clubbed together to finance a tour of USA, somewhere that the band had not visited for some years, they realised maybe there was a lot more they could achieve with fan power.
The band unhappy with their record label situation, decided to try a radical experiment by asking their fans if they would help fund the recording of the next album by pre-ordering it before recording even started. They result was over 12,000 pre-orders which raised enough money to record and release Anoraknophobia in 2001. The band licensed the album to EMI on terms that gave them more input over areas such as promotion.
The success of Anoraknophobia allowed the band to start recording their next album, but they decided to leverage their fanbase once again to help raise money towards marketing and promotion of a new album. The band put up the album for pre-order in mid-production. This time fans responded by pre-ordering 18,000 copies. This time Marillion set up their own label to release the album. They have since released two more successful albums in this way showing a sustained revitalisation of the bands fortunes.
On 9th September 2008, Marillion pre-released their own album via P2P networks themselves. Upon attempting to play the downloaded files, users were shown a video from the band explaining why they had taken this route. Downloaders were then able to opt to purchase the album at a user-defined price or select to receive DRM-free files for free, in exchange for an email address. The band explained that although they did not support piracy, they realised their music would inevitably be shared in this manner anyway, and wanted to attempt to engage with p2p users and make the best of a bad situation.
www.marillion.com
