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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
Iowa City, IA, United States, 03/10/2008 - Ambient musician and sound artist Mark Rushton was about to release two new recordings, his fourth solo album called "Flow" and his first collaborative album called "Mark Rushton and Jon Harnish", and he wanted to get his music into the ears.
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Rushton already had moderate success selling digital download files on sites like iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, and AmazonMP3, but he had no control over the price.
"iTunes charged 99 cents a track or nearly $10 an album. Amazon was about a dollar less for MP3 albums. I've always felt that the price for digital audio files wasn't low enough for many to make a decision to purchase," said Rushton, from his home studio in Iowa City, Iowa.
"Then CDBaby, my portal to digital distributors like iTunes and Amazon, started offering MP3 album download sales on their site. The MP3s are without DRM (Digital Rights Management, a technology employed by many record companies to limit usage of digital media) so they'll play on any media player, but the kicker here was that I could set the price myself. That's what I wanted the most, the ability to set the price lower."
Since CDBaby only took a 9% cut of digital sales, that meant Rushton could offer his MP3 download albums at rock bottom prices.
Rushton chose $3.95 as an album price because it was "so ridiculously low" but he still netted around $3.50 profit per album, about what he made when he sold a physical CD through CDBaby for $12.
All Rushton had to do was promote his $3.95 per album sale. Having a hit podcast since 2004 with many thousands of listeners worldwide helped.
"I recorded new podcast shows, indicated that my entire catalog including the new releases were $3.95 an album, and put samples of the tracks in the show," said Rushton, "and that got things started."
Within the first month, Rushton has sold several times the number of albums than he had in the previous two years combined: "It's just an explosion of growth at the $3.95 per album price point."
"Digital sales have been great for me since 2006," says Rushton, "The bulk of what I've earned from digital sales has been either single track purchases or from subscription service royalties. There's nothing wrong with that, and I'm all for freedom of choice, but I wanted to give fans a better deal when they chose to purchase complete MP3 download albums. $3.95 per album is an incredible deal"
Rushton also appealed to music lovers outside the United States to take advantage of a lopsided exchange rate that favored buyers outside the US: "You can currently buy my entire catalog of DRM-free MP3 download albums for a total of less than $20 in the United States. If you're in England and you factor in the exchange rate, you can get all five albums by me for less than 10 quid. There's no postage with MP3 downloads, and that makes it an excellent deal!"
Initially, Rushton envisioned the $3.95 per album price as a "temporary" sale until the albums hit major companies like iTunes, AmazonMP3, or Napster, but now he's considering making the $3.95 price permanent at CDBaby for MP3 download albums.
"Derek Sivers, the head of CDBaby, just sent out an email to musicians who sell through his service, encouraging them to authorize MP3 sales of their albums if they haven't already done so." mentions Rushton. "If you're a musician, you'd be a fool not to do this. The wave of the future is digital downloads and portable devices, not expensive compact discs. Even my 74 year old father-in-law has a Sony Walkman Digital Media Player. He loves it!"
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