It’s a fact of life as a band trying to make it big that at some point you’re going to have to go out on tour. Unfortunately, that often means you need to put some cold hard cash on the line to actually get you going out on the road, and if there’s one thing most young bands don’t have it’s cold hard cash.
Enter Los Angeles band Vulfpeck, who were facing that very dilemma. They wanted to go on tour, but they didn’t want any of their fans to actually have to pay to come see them.
So according to Billboard, they hatched what could very well be the most hilarious and ingenious way to raise money from fans. No, we’re not talking about some typical Kickstarter where the band will post about you on their Facebook wall or send you a singed copy of their latest EP. This plan, if it works, will see the band raise enough money without their fans actually having to spend a cent.
How? By scamming streaming behemoth Spotify and digging into their huge royalty treasure trove. Will it work? Who knows, but it’s certainly raised the profile in the band so at worst it’s been an extremely clever PR stunt.
So how can you help this band get on the road? Here’s how it works.
Vulfpeck released an album called Sleepify on Spotify last week. But although it’s a 10 track record, all the songs are completely silent. So why would you want to listen to the record? You wouldn’t. Well, not exactly.
As frontman Jack Stratton explains in the promo video announcing the scheme, they are asking fans to stream the silent album on repeat while they sleep.
“If you listen to a Vulfpeck song on Spotify, Spotify pays us a half a cent,” says Stratton. “So if you were to listen to Sleepify all night on repeat you’d generate $4.”
“Now here’s my proposal to you,” he continues. “I’m proposing that if you steam Sleepify, on repeat when you sleep every night, we will be able to tour without charging admission. Also, we’re going to base the routing of the Sleepify tour on where Sleepify is happening the most. Never in the history of music has it been so easy to support a bands tour.”
The band found out that song needs to be listened to for at least 30 seconds to register as a play, so the tracks on “Sleepify” – cleverly titled “Z” through “Zzzzzzzzzz” – are all 31 or 32 seconds long.
Of course, they could have just asked you to listen to one of their other records on mute, but that would have been too easy, and besides the short track length means the Spotify royalty algorithm should pay them out more money as fans will be streaming more tracks more often.
If Vulfpeck does get enough streams to make those Spotify dollars and fund their tour, they intend to focus on locations with the most streams for their tour dates. You can see a graphic depicting a growing number of Spotify streams on their homepage. The above thumbnail is a screenshot.
The band say they’ve looked through all of Spotify’s rules and they don’t think they’ve broken anything. Spotify doesn’t seem to concern either.
“This is a clever stunt, but we prefer Vulpeck’s earlier albums,” said Spotify spokesman Graham James. “’Sleepify’ seems derivative of John Cage’s work.”
That sounds like a invitation to us. Jump on Spotify and help this band get on tour.
