New Low For Music: Band Are First To Pay People To Listen To Their Single

An unsigned UK pop duo have launched a unique promotional campaign which involves distributing £2,700 to potential fans who visit their site to hear their first single.The Reclusive Barclay Brothers have released their debut single called We Could Be Lonely Together today via iTunes.The single release is accompanied by an instructional video that explains exactly how people can get their hands on what the band call “incentives”. In the video, viewers are urged to visit the aptly named site www.newlowformusic.com to submit their e-mail address; Over the subsequent 30 days, the band will randomly pick 100 people to receive their £27 share of the cash.The instructional video claims that paying people to listen to music is the only logical conclusion to the current trend of giving music away for free. The number 27 is roughly one millionth of what was paid out by major labels after the 2005/06 Spitzer payola scandal.The band have so far remained completely independent, funding the recording of their debut album and production of a video with a bank loan.They claim that all they want is traffic to their website for the campaign to be worthwhile, citing the £2,700 as a small price to pay.  They have no expectations of reclaiming their money back through download sales, of which 3418 would be needed to break even.The stunt was inspired by the payola scandal, in which record labels were caught bribing radio djs to play certain songs. Singer Pauline Johnston says: "We thought that payola sounded like a smart idea, so we decided to do our own version."---About The BandThe Reclusive Barclay Brothers are Pauline Johnston and Sean O'Meara.They consider Prince, Sparks, Bowie and Annie Lennox as sources of inspiration and fascination.The interest rate on the respective bank loans is 16.9% over 5 years. They've taken out a total of £14,000 (£25,410 - including interest) in order to record, mix and master their music, fund rehearsal rooms, a live band and build websites. The Reclusive Barclay Brothers will pay back a total of £4,900 alone just to fund this stunt.They would be flattered if you described their work as "a patchwork of light and shade bursting with sincerity and post-feminist punch." But feel free to come up with your own beautiful description.They believe that if he wasn't a work of fiction, well-dressed Eighties psychopath Patrick Bateman would have enjoyed their music on a very shallow level.The single will be available for download on the 9th of August from iTunes and other digital stores.Instructions Embedded In VideoBetween January 2009 and July 2010 an ambitious new pop band was formed.The Reclusive Barclay Brothers had written and recorded enough songs by this point but did not know how to get them heard by the music loving general public.During their research on the music business, they stumbled upon this:Payola: Bribery of an influential person in exchange for promotion for a product or service, such as that of disc jockeys for the promotion of records.So, The Reclusive Barclay Brothers thought that PAYOLA sounded like a good idea.But rather than paying radio stations television shows or pluggers, they will pay you, the listener. The discerning consumer.They Will Pay You.You are that Influential Person....that gap was so close you could listen to the chorus.The Reclusive Barclay Brothers have released this song, their debut single.It’s called We Could Be Lonely Together... ...And they are giving away £27 to 100 randomly selected people, no strings attached, no obligation to buy.That’s £2,700!!! Two thousand, seven hundred pounds!!!Just some of the money that they have irresponsibly borrowed from the bank...at an APR of 16.9%Chorus again....The Reclusive Barclay Brothers are hoping that enough people hear this song to make their expense worthwileThey are pretty confident that there will be no horrible backlash from doing thisIt’s certainly not an attempt to further cheapen recorded music and it’s most definitely not a cynical, desperate act to gain publicity...or an attempt to trick their way onto the charts (bribes make a song ineligible for the charts, apparently)People are giving their music away for free all the time!...so of course the next logical step would be to pay you to listen to their song.The theory is if anyone is getting a free lunch out of their rapidly dwindling budget they want it to be someone who listened to their song and hopefully liked itIf you buy the single they would be very pleased, but you don’t need to buy it. If you’ve listened to it and decide you don’t like it, but you would like some free money anyway. Go to this site.www.newlowformusic.com and find out how you can get your £27 courtesy of The Reclusive Barclay Brothers. This is the last chorus. Hopefully you are still enjoying it, the song is going to finish in about 10 seconds.