Big Head Todd and the Monsters are joining the “give it away and see what comes back to you” tribe at just the right time. With a new album out and a 60-date tour underway, the band is making All the Love You Need available for free on their website for those who join their mailing list.
Big Head Todd is also supplying radio stations like KBCO in Boulder and KGSR in Austin with the record. According to Billboard, the strategy involves customizing CD artwork with a participating station’s call letters along with the imprint of a corporate sponsor and distributing it via direct mail, using each station’s listener database. The band plans to distribute half a million CDs via this channel.
The endgame is to distribute the CD to hundreds of thousands of existing and potentially new fans in the hope that many of them will support the live show. “I am not sure yet how it will all really shake out for us; we probably won’t really know for a year or so,” Big Head Todd manager Bill Rusch said. “It will either have been a brilliant idea or a major blunder. It just seems like a natural next step for us, and we feel we are in a position where this will provide a strategic advantage.”
“I’ve always rejoiced at the crumbling of the old empire,” Todd Park Mohr told the Denver Post. “Digital music diversified the music that is being created, and it also makes a level playing field for artists. Culture is a lot more interesting when there are a lot of little things going on instead of a couple big things happening, and that’s why this is the Wild West—it’s so fun to be listening to music right now.”
SOUNDS: Track 04, “Cash Box”