Dan Israel is releasing his tenth album this year and is making the press and radio rounds as he promotes his new CD and his release show that  will take place on April 10th at the Acadia.

During a casual conversation I had with Israel a couple months ago we had discussed bands and musicians giving away songs and both came to the conclusion that it might be devaluing the worth of music.

So when I noticed that Israel had offered a free download of his new album on Culturebully.com, I was a bit surprised and wanted to see what made him change his mind.

“Basically, I came to the conclusion that I want to sell as many discs as possible to recoup my expenses, but beyond that, after 10 albums, it’s more important to me to get my music out there than to make a buck off of it…” said Israel.

Israel, like many local musicians has his a day job so he doesn’t have to count on music for his livelihood and that made the decision a little easier.

“Despite being initially opposed to giving music away on the Internet, I can see which way the wind is blowing right now and the fact is that by leaking my album to a local blog for a temporary full-download giveaway, I have the opportunity to get the music into the hands of a lot of people- probably MOSTLY people who wouldn’t buy it anyway.  Am I going to lose some sales though? Sure, But I also am gaining a great  deal of publicity for the album which, in the long run, could lead to  some increased sales, both in terms of hard copies of the disc and also downloads on iTunes and such once the free download blog posting is removed” said Israel.

Only time will tell, if Israel’s strategy will work, and I am sure many other bands and musicians are facing the same dilemma. As the music business moves farther into the unknown territory of the web and music sales, hopefully someone will figure it out so the musicians can keep making music and we can keep on listening.

www.danisraelmusic.com

Filed under: Misc.