Band raise $21,000 with silent album

[Bigmanpigman]

You've just go to admire these guys for coming up with this. Ingenious! Some might say one up the arse for Spotify


US band Vulfpeck managed to squeeze $21,000 out of Spotify streaming royalties – from an album of complete silence.


They uploaded the ten-track release Sleepify and asked fans to keep it on repeat while they slept, in order to fund their upcoming tour. In return, tickets to every show would be free.

Describing it as "the most silent album ever recorded," they managed to raise $19,655.56 from over 5.5million playbacks, with each track generating around three-tenths of a cent per play. They also became entitled to a copyright payment of around $1100.

Spotify, who admitted the release was a "clever stunt," asked the band to remove the album in April after it had been available for seven weeks, then took it down itself.

And while the band at first doubted their payments would be made, keyboardist Jack Stratton has now confirmed the money came through.

[Keith Jordan]

Genius.

[Hudini]

What really surprises me is that so many people would actually pay to listen to complete silence, probably believing they are listening to an avantgarde musical experiment par excellence. Has the world become that stupid? Obviously yes.

There is a saying in my country that translates to English as "The sheep are meant to be sheared", meaning "As long as there are idiots, there'll be someone to take advantage of them". Hats off to Vulfpeck just for that.

[The Gunner's Dream]

Very John Cage "4:33"

At least with Cage, the idea behind 4 minutes of silence was the concept of finding music within silence, including the ambient sounds of the audience; shuffling, breathing, coughing, etc. A bit pretentious in my opinion, and a dubious attempt to give "music" a new definition. In my own definition, in order to qualify as music, it needs to be capable of being analyzed using the rules of music theory- and that stretches boundaries more than you think. If notes are being played, it can be analyzed theoretically.

This band on the other hand, just seemed to be pulling off a stunt. I guess the people who payed to "listen" to the album felt they were in on some big joke.