Re: [rumori] The Next Droplift Project


StopchildrenATaol.com
Date: Fri Dec 15 2000 - 04:12:45 PST


>> show here in Cleveland, OH) Droplift has gotten write-ups in zines such
>> as Entertainment Weekly & the LA Times, and has gotten exposure on
>
> i didn't think those were "zines"....

    Yeah - Entertainment Weekly is a fairly mainstream 'maga'zine and the LA
Times is, of course, a newspaper. I think he was just trying to give some
references in a message that was probably posted to more than just this one
group.

>> The press is just beginning to truly catch on to this
>> project nearly a half year old, and it's only going to
>> get bigger as we do more of these. The beauty of this is
>> that as the press covers it more, more CD's get
>> downloaded, burned, and distributed.
>
> i think you're misunderstanding the media - why would it get
> bigger? the more you do, the less attention you'll get,
> because it won't be new or unusual anymore.

    I agree with Steev here - Droplift was a good hook for the media (and it
worked reasonably well), but I don't think it will really work again. I think
the web aspect of Droplift is continuing to spread with more people
downloading and linking to the site, but I don't expect the "media" to
respond anymore than they already have.

>> must donate $50 per track
>
> so waitaminute, i'm supposed to give you 50 bucks so you can
> give away 1000 CDs, most of which will be sold by record
> stores which will keep 100% of the revenues?

    I think the deal is that aside from a certain portion of the discs set
aside for promo, the individual contributors would have the remaining discs
split up between them. At that point, you could do whatever you wanted with
your portion of the discs.

> i do like the fact that you are trying to encourage pieces
> that have a message. i will be interested to hear the
> finished collection and see just how much message there is,
> and how focused and coherent the whole result is.

    Absolutely, a good concept album is usually enjoyable, and commercial
manipulation is such a natural theme for a bunch of audio collage artists to
tackle. I'm expecting it to turn out very well.
    
> I just think it would be a stronger project if it had
> nothing to do with "droplifting".

    I was involved with Droplift and I plan on being a part of this project,
but I have to agree. This is something we talked about over on Snuggles, and
most of the people there seemed to echo this sentiment.. I think that's why
Jay said more than once in the message that the project was NOT going to be
titled "Droplift II". Still, I think there are valid objections to attaching
this project to Droplift beyond just the name. It's a totally different
project with a totally different "hook", and there's really no advantage to
dropping it into stores. I think we should focus more on the idea that it's a
'free' album rather than a droplifted one.

    Perhaps there should be some sort of vote among the participants about
this issue.. I very much appriciate Jay's initative in getting the thing
moving, but perhaps it's moved a little bit too far from the collaborative
decision-making that made all of the participants so satisfied with Droplift.
I've heard very little support for the idea of making this "another" project
to be dropped in stores.

> And maybe if it was
> curated rather than paid for by each artist.

    Well, this would certainly be a break for the artists involved, but how
do you suggest we find somebody to fund it?

> i predict it will continue to be given little focus. why
> was it perceived as a prank? because it was. i mean, even
> if you really did it, it was a prank. admit it. a stunt.
> guerilla marketing.

    Sure.. it certainly was a prank. It was designed to achieve certain
purposes other than just being silly, but it is a prank by nature. And I
don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think it would be ridiculous
to deny that it's a prank, but I wouldn't reduce it to a "mere" marketing
effort. I think pranks are a key part of "culture jamming" and the whole
droplift project was an interesting bit of concept art in addition to
whatever else you will call it.

>> The original pressing will be 1,000 CD's, but as with the Droplift Project,
>> my hope is to make this publicly downloadable by anyone in the world,
>> encouraging people with CD Burners to duplicate and "Droplift" more of
them.

    I think we'd have much more luck just encouraging people to duplicate
them for their friends rather than asking them to drop them. Free
distribution isn't just a gimmick to get people to droplift the discs, it's
more the other way around.

>> The original Droplift CD has also had 1,000 CD's dropped around the globe,
>> and judging by the numbers by those who monitor their daily downloads,
>> several hundred more have been downloaded! If even half of those people
>> burned at least one or more copies of their downloads, we can safely
>> estimate that at least another thousand has been burned to disc and
>> Droplifted.
>
> I don't believe your math. Can we get some real statistics.
> Does anyone know how many of the 1000 were really "dropped"?
> Naked Rabbit, do you know? I'm sure hundreds were sent out
> as promos, right? I got one so i sure hope at least a
> couple hundred journalists and radio stations got one before
> i did.

    You are correct. Jay should know that not exactly all the 1000 discs from
the original droplift pressing were droplifted. Ignoring the hundreds of
discs that were indeed sent as promo copies, each droplifter decided what to
do with their own discs. And although dropping some amount of discs in the
stores was implictly expected of each droplfiter, certainly most of us chose
to keep a few copies and give them to friends/family/etc.. I disagree with
Steev's implications that no discs at all were droplifted (although it's true
that we could have probably skipped that and still gotten the same media
response), but I would say that the real number is probably closer to 500.

> Further, you have no idea how many of the downloads
> translated into burns and how many of those were dropped. I
> might agree that 50% of downloads were actually made into
> cd-r's. But most people probably just made one for their own
> collection.

    True, we can't get any exact numbers on things like that, but however it
breaks down - there are a hell of a lot of downloads coming off the droplift
servers. The main page of the site reads 35,000 hits. And aside from burning
for personal collections, of course lots of trading and burning for friends
is going on. Droplift is pretty easy to find on Napster/etc as well.

> How many people who were not artists ON the disc
> or their friends would actually droplift copies? Just for
> the thrill? I would like to belive it, but let's don't kid
> ourselves!
>
> But maybe I'm wrong. Anyone on this list who was NOT on the
> Droplift CD and who left a copy in a store, please speak up.
> I want my cynicism to be crushed like a rotten durien fruit
> under a combat boot. eww.

    Yeah, I'll admit we didn't really expect an army of volunteer
droplifters, but the response has been greater than you might think. I've
dealt with a lot of the email coming in and talked to quite a few people not
connected in any way with the droplift members who have burned copies of the
disc and dropped it in their local stores. They are out there. Also, lots of
the people who reviewed the disc claim in their reviews that they have
droplifted a few discs themselves.. and there's lots of Snuggles members who
didn't have a track on the disc but still helped out with the drop. We've
also gotten all sorts of other interesting responses such as teachers who've
used the project to show to their classes.

> ( Oh, and i notice that there's still no photos on the
> droplift.org photo page. not ONE photo of someone leaving
> the disc at a record store! )

    There a number of videos from actual droplifts in progress on the
Droplift FTP site, but they aren't linked directly from the website. I guess
we really should get those posted up..

----
http://stopchildren.droplift.org
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