Matt Mason serves as Vice President of Marketing for BitTorrent, Inc. a creator of advanced, innovative technologies designed to efficiently deliver large files across the Internet. BitTorrent currently boasts over 170 million active monthly users. Mason is also the bestselling author of The Pirate’s Dilemma, and a board member at PopTech, a global community of innovators, working together to expand the edge of change.
Info on Panel: “Making Money for Artists: DIY Social Online Tools” – 9:45AM – 10:35AM
A few days ago, Dave Grohl’s SXSW keynote reminded us why we believe in music. Why we’re ridiculously lucky to be alive here and now, at a time when it’s “easier than ever to start our own bands, make our own records, book our own shows, and publish our own zines”. We can grow up to be anything. We might not have maps to guide us. We might not have the same hard-and-fast rules to hold on to. But we don’t have anything holding us back, either.
Success within this landscape requires a little bravery, and a lot of little experiments. For over a year now, BitTorrent has been partnering with creators and fans to test new monetization models, and DIY growth tactics. Along the way, we’ve created a legitimate content ecosystem 85-petabytes-big, driving 152 million downloads of partner content. Counting Crows, a featured content partner, described BitTorrent as the new radio. Reaching 170 million users, like radio, it’s indisputably powerful as an awareness tool. It’s also an incredibly powerful monetization tool.
Which brings us to DIY pop star Alex Day. In 2006, Alex started posting his music videos on YouTube. Today, he has over 500,000 YouTube subscribers, and 100 million video views. With over 600,000 paid downloads, he’s one of the recording industry’s brightest young stars. He has never worked with a record label.
There’s a rule about how labels = charts. This week, we were reminded again that, in fact, they don’t. Alex Day’s Epigrams And Interludescollection outcharted Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience in the UK, and debuted at #22 in the US. A kid with a YouTube channel who makes music on his terms is more powerful than the industry machine.
How’s that possible? To get there, Day broke another rule. He worked with BitTorrent. Day’s objective was to get his songs to people. We partnered with him to distribute ten tracks and stems through BitTorrent to 170 million fans. Within seven days, he had 1 million downloads – a viewcount that would require several weeks – if not months or years – to build on YouTube. 38 thousand people checked out the remixes he posted on SoShare. And as a result, Day received 60 thousand additional visits to iTunes. All from BitTorrent users.
By releasing downloads first via BitTorrent, Day was able to reach the critical mass of fans necessary to drive up album sales. The old rules don’t apply, anymore. We congratulate Alex for breaking them.
Tomorrow, I’ll be participating in the panel “Making Money for Artists: DIY Social Online Tools”, where we’ll talk Alex Day, and other stories of success in the post-digital landscape. I look forward to hearing and discussing insights with the panelists; we’re really excited to talk about what we’ve learned.