Change of Plans and Title on the New Bill Mallonee Album

posted in: Music News | 5

From Bill: “Many of you knew of our attempts to launch our album (formerly titled Hall of Mirrors/Room of Woes) via a funding group called Kickstarter. (They had made serious national news as being artist-friendly by being able to appropriate support for artistic projects). That same company also made national news just last week when it’s online security was breached by hackers.

Although NO credit card data was stolen, some people did have malicious spy-ware (mal-ware) sent to them & their Email contacts. The upshot? We have cancelled our project there.

To be honest? I had reservations from the start, mostly because we’ve never had a problem with simply appealing to YOU, the fans, for support of my work. I “succumbed” to various voices who claimed to be “in the know” about Kickstarter and it’s way of reaching more folks.

The truth? We reached no one new as far as backers go that we haven’t reached before directly by taking pre-orders here.
I have to chalk this up to a “live and learn” experience.

SO: We’ve renamed the album. (Yes, I’m a bit superstitious!)
It is now “Dover Beach.” (Named after the poem by Matthew Arnold.) It is still due out in Sept, 2014.
The Big News? “Dover Beach” will be offered in Hardcopy Cd/Vinyl/and digital download formats!

We’re very happy about returning to this approach.
It makes my work available directly from us…to you…with NO ONE in the middle.

On a side bar? I think the new album is sounding fantastic. Strong songs. Strong lyrics, Strong recordings.
We hope you’ll pre-order Dover Beach soon.
And please share this email, if you’re so inclined.

All the best to you,
Bill Mallonee”

5 Responses

  1. I’m a fairly big Bill Mallonee fan (I’m here at this site, aren’t I?!) but this message makes me irritated. Bill comes across as a know-it-all who gave Kickstarter a try because he was pressured into it, but now realizes he was right all along. Why? Because Kickstarter got hacked. Um, Bill, how do we know your online store won’t get hacked?

    The truth is Bill’s Kickstarter campaign was lame, and again I’m speaking as a fan who still signed up for it. The prices, instead of having incentives and really interesting stretch goals, were higher than normal and basically seemed to say “support me, but there’s nothing much in it for you”. So it was a poor marketing campaign, but Bill’s going to blame it on Kickstarter and new technologies…

    Unfortunate…

  2. I was following Bill’s KS, and while I agree that the prices were too high, it was well on its way to being funded and then some. I would encourage you to go back and read Bill’s words. He’s not saying he is a know-it-all. He was saying that he was promised he would reach MORE people through KS and that did not happen. His main gripe is not the hacking, but the ability to reach “more” fans. People say that all the time about KS, and its just not true.

  3. But he could have reached more people with good incentives. Instead of putting something out there that people might take a flyer on like say $8 for a download. He charged $20 which is only going to appeal to his core audience.

    Then those customers who bought the $8 download if the liked what they heard could then access his 50 albums on bandcamp and he would have been ahead

  4. I agree that he was overpriced. Even now, he is still charging $15 shipping on the vinyl, which is three times higher than anywhere I have seen. But most people are finding out that Kickstarter does not magically pull in more people that would have never noticed your fundraiser in the first place. You still have to get the word out and pull the people in. KS takes a higher cut than Bandcamp, so if you are going to be reaching the same people, might as well do a pre-order through BandCamp.

    Lower prices will increase sales as more people can afford the lower price, but it still doesn’t bring in more people in the first place. That was what Bill was getting at. And that is what other bands are noticing, too. Crowd sourcing is such a crowded field that few people are finding them out of the blue.

  5. Thanks for the interaction Matt. I’ll probably join his new one too, since I’m a fan :-)

    As to his attitude, I guess we’ll agree to differ. This letter came across as a non-techie luddite criticizing technology without really understanding it.

    And as to getting new customers, Polar Boy is right I think. As a diehard I might pay the high price to support Bill, but new people won’t, and I likely won’t even tell my non-friend fans about it, as there is little incentive for them to “try” Bill’s music in this way.

    Put it this way: if I, as unknown or little-known artist, did a KS page and put my price at $100 and got no backers, I can’t criticize KS for that. I clearly didn’t judge the market properly.

    KS is ADVERTISING and MARKETING, both of which have costs. Bill was viewing it as a distribution chain, based on his pricing and lack of any interesting incentives. Again, he should have educated himself by looking at the Choir, DA, Mike Roe, Steve Taylor, etc. as to how they did KS campaigns.

    Thanks for doing this site, Matt. I really appreciate it, having grown up on a lot of these bands, with most obscure alternative Christian bands from the 80s and 90s meaning more to me than any other music in the whole world.