Big Head Todd promotes its shows with free album

By John Schoenberger

NEW YORK (Billboard) - At a time when acts from Radiohead to Madonna to the Eagles are pushing the boundaries of the standard record-release model, rock band Big Head Todd & the Monsters are trying a new business model as well -- and they're making sure radio is part of the plan.

The band is using its new studio recording, "All the Love You Need" -- slated for release in early 2008 -- as a direct-mail promotional tool by giving it away via special campaigns with radio stations.

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. Thousands of copies will be provided to the stations. Sponsors help defray the cost of producing the customized CDs, and the stations pick up the mailing costs.

According to Big Head Todd manager Bill Rusch, the band -- which has sold 48,000 copies of its last traditionally issued studio album, 2004's "Crimes of Passion," and 1.2 million copies of its 1993 album, "Sister Sweetly," according to Nielsen SoundScan -- wanted to try something innovative.

"The real source of income and continued success is our live show," he said. "We felt that in this stage of the band's career, we would try using the recorded music as a marketing and promotional tool to drive that.

"It was also a way for us to get radio onboard as a partner on a deeper level than just asking them for airplay," Rusch continued.

So far four stations have taken the band up on its offer: triple-A outlets KBCO Denver (a Clear Channel station), KPRI San Diego (Compass Media) and KGSR Austin (Emmis) and Central Missouri State University's KTBG Warrensburg, Mo. The mailings in Warrensburg, Denver and Austin were tied in with a holiday gift campaign, while San Diego will participate in late January. In addition to the new studio disc, KPRI plans to mail out a live CD the band will record in San Diego.

Rusch said the band expects to add other markets in first-quarter 2008, expanding the campaign in relation to its touring schedule. Plus, the group extended an invitation to everyone on its fan list. "We basically said that if you give us your address, we will send you a cool Christmas gift, which will be the CD," Rusch said, adding that 25,000-plus fans received the album.

Since the band writes its own material, it didn't have to ask songwriters or publishers to forgo their normal royalty rates.

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," 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."

Reuters/Billboard