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Slice The Pie


elom
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I came across Slice The Pie ([url="http://www.slicethepie.com"]www.slicethepie.com[/url]) recently. It looks like a potentially interesting way to find new unsigned music and offers the potential to secure £15,000 funding for your originals band.

It does look slightly complex so have a good read of the [url="http://www.slicethepie.com/About/FAQ.aspx"]FAQs[/url]. The blurb on the web site describes it like this:
[quote]Slicethepie enables artists to raise money directly from their fans to professionally record and release an album.
How? We turn every music fan into a record label.
On Slicethepie:
[list]
[*]Artists can raise money directly from their fans to professionally record albums
[*]Fans can become emotionally and financially involved at all levels of the music industry - scouting, breaking, investing in and influencing real artists
[*]Investors can gamble on, trade in and profit from the success of these artists
[*]Artists who secure finance pay Slicethepie a small royalty on album sales but keep all their copyright and publishing rights
[/list][/quote]

Just thought I would flag this up in case it was of interest to our brothers in originals bands.

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I'm deeply unimpressed with both Sellaband and SliceThePie to be honest.

For a start, Sellaband takes 30% of your albums sales for the length of the copyright and SliceThePie takes about 22% of download sales (only downloads are on offer in their deal). It cost you money to load up your songs, with plenty of opportunities for it to get you nowhere - £1000 short of the £25,000 or £15,000 minimum needed for a 'deal'? Sorry, you're back to square one.

To my mind, if you've got the fanbase to record an album (and if you haven't why are you bothering) you might be as well to appeal to your own fans. Marillion did this with 'pre-sales' on a forthcoming album, and Electric EEl Shock have successfully asked for £100 donations in return for a variety of freebies.

But then I'm a natural cynic. :)

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[quote name='gafbass02' post='123362' date='Jan 19 2008, 01:34 PM']A good mate of mine just won 15 grand to release an album through slice the pie, should they be worried?, hope not they've worked damn hard for it, id be gutted if it was a bit dodgy?, any thoughts?[/quote]

I don't think they've got anything to worry about as such. SliceThePie take a cut from sales for a few years, after that everything goes to the band.

My only doubts were that if you're going to put in the hard work in getting fans to sign up and pay through one of these services, why not just do it yourself? It seems likely that the majority of the cash will be coming from fans the band has encouraged to participate, rather than from people who've just chanced upon the band.

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on Sellaband you have to get 5000 people to invest $10 -

but then couldn't they just pay $10 for a CD of your music instead?
home recording setups are good and cheap enough for decent results if you know how to use them.

is it just the novelty factor of these schemes that draws people in?

or is it just a scam to get bands to bring traffic to the site so the ads get more exposure?

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some pertinent words of wisdom posted on the RecordOfTheDay forum-

"There'll always be people digging for gold and oil in music - provide the picks and shovels and you're sorted".

there's money to be made from exploiting people's dreams of success, even if there's no gold and oil for them at the end of the day....

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Im sure a lot of people have seen this article but its worth a read-
Steve Albini really hits home

[url="http://www.negativland.com/albini.html"]http://www.negativland.com/albini.html[/url]

The part at the end especially re: money is a real eye opener

Edited by Stu-khag
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in the modern digital internet age, i feel that the one large remaining advantage record companies have over artists selling their music themselves is in their ability to create a demand for an artist-

via PR campaigns, radio and tv airplay and press coverage (read- "hype"). only all that will cost money (PR budget, pluggers, dare i say journalist incentives) and come out of a signed artist's pocket anyway.

I reckon that today if you can crack that side of the business yourself, and create a buzz about you and your music by yourself, you don't need record companies- their distribution capabilities mean less today with diminishing sales of the physical product.

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  • 3 months later...

Hello there - I know this is an old post but I needed to add my support for Sellaband
I am the manager of Electric Eel Shock - Yes back in 2006 we asked 100 fans to pay £100 in return for guestlist for life on all Electric Eel Shock gigs...
That was a success - but when we first saw Sellaband we knew that was the way forward

We have watched the Sellaband concept develop and grow over the last two years and always knew we would sign up at some stage... we have raised over $8000 in 2 days and if they don't step up quick then they will miss out on he chance to be involved
I think that would be a little harder on slice the pie where working ot what the site does is difficult

We also checked out Slicethepie - but it just looked confusing to us
The beauty of Sellaband is that it is clear and straight forward for a Believer
- even with this our fans are being slightly slow to get their head around it and step forward - I am sure they will when I nudge them with another email and tell them that

We can see thatSellaband is sustainable and also has an increasingly strong infrastructure to support artists after they have recorded their album
It is run by a great team of passionate and experienced people
I can see he concept developing in time to supporting artists much more - all with the artist in control of their own career

We have worked with many different record labels including Roadrunner, Bitzcore, Gearhead etc
EES have also recorded for Sony in Japan
However the team at Sellaband impress me more than any of these
I see Sellaband becoming a major international player in the rapidly changing music industry and I am very glad EES will be involved in this

We have achieved over $8000 investment in 2 days
And the EES fanbase hasn't even kicked into action yet!
Loads of new fas

Already I have had two calls from journalists wanting to cover this story - EES fastest band on Sellaband so far
So publicity too

Yes there are some conditions - mostly that Sellaband thke a share of your publishing - However I think they will be well worth this %

Any artists who are undecided about joining Selaband please drop me an email and I will tell you about our experiences

Cheers

Bob Slayer
our Manager of Electric Eel Shock / Believer in Sellaband
[email protected]

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