Remember back in the day when you could sign up with Columbia House, get 8 CDs mailed to you for a penny, cancel your membership because you were underage, and then repeat the process 6 months later?
Yeah. That was fun. (And highly unethical, huh?)
Well, here are two modern-day record clubs that are worth checking out:
1. Feedbands — offers members “a killer new vinyl record delivered to your door” every single month. They keep the band’s identity secret until you receive the record, as to to not prejudice your listening experience with any hype.
2. Soundsupply — offers members “awesomely curated digital drops of your new favorites bands.” You can get a 10-album bundle for only $15. Each bundle is only available for 10 days.
I’m sure there are a bunch more of these kinds of services out there, so let us know of the good ones and the stinkers in the comments section below.
Mixtapes, playlists, and your own subscription service
The takeaway here is that people love to discover new music according to some weekly or monthly schedule, and they also like to “set in and forget it” when it comes to the WAY in which they discover artists and songs. They don’t want to have to go out searching.
Through services like SoundCloud and Spotify (plus good old fashioned things like email attachments, DropBox, YouSendIt, etc.), it’s easy to create your own playlist and “mixtape” clubs for fellow music-fans. You can share your own music and favorite tunes by other bands — though you should, of course, get permission first before sharing someone else’s music for free.
But you can also set up an Song-of-the-Month club for your own fans. For a fee (or maybe for free!), give certain mega-fans access to a special page on your website where they can download a new song every month and read behind-the-scenes details about that track.
Every month, subscribers get an email with an access code delivered right to their inbox. Every month, they get a great new track to enjoy and share with friends. Every month, you get another chance to interact with your most loyal fans and show your appreciation. Everyone wins.
Have you run a song-of-the-month campaign on your blog or website? Did it help you build your fanbase and email list? Let us know in the comments section below.
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.