Buy 1, Get 12 Free: How to save the Album

Remember 5-10 years ago when most people used to buy CDs? Remember when you would get flyers in the mail from Columbia House or BMG offering you “12 CDs for the Price of 1?” Those offers were, and still are available, so clearly the model is a profitable one. Perhaps the collection of music isn’t as thorough as the one that is offered by iTunes, but a lot of the popular albums that people disired are going to live there because the record companies still want the volume.

If we look at the statistics, people buy MP3s in snack format much more often than full albums (to the dismay of Apple, The Labels, and the Artists). In order to change this reality, there needs to be a bigger incentive to download albums vs. piecemeal songs. Right now there is a much greater incentive to pay for individual music because you’re getting the highest musical enjoyment per dollar. By following the model of Buy 1, get X free, you will condition people to see album purchases as the best value.

As I alluded to earlier, the collection of music available for purchase with these discount plans wasn’t exactly comprehensive. They would usually focus on the top 40 and then a lot of B-List artists that people would buy to cushion their 12 other albums. The availability of music and tastes have expanded and this model would have to accommodate that reality. So instead of buy 1 get 12, perhaps the contract could be buy 1 get 4 so that the offering could be more comprehensive. In any case, it is a much better model than what people are getting now. Is this going to reduce profit margins for labels? Absolutely. But the key to this model has always been to move people from the practice of downloading free mp3s illegally to a paid model. A buy one, get X model would increase the volume of tracks downloaded, increase paid mp3 downloads, and give artists the opportunity to share ALL their tracks instead of the one hit wonders, etc.