Having just made a myspace page for me old band 'o brothers  this seemed a good opportunity to promote the page - if you wanted some light relief  and to talk about what happened when we started the band back in the 1980s because although no one then talked about collaboration and co-creation what happened was so extraordinary that it got me thinking - and now what is accepted as a normal part of web 2.0 activity I recognise as something that happened then and can happen just as easily offline.

We went to a festival to busk around the site. One thing led to another (it was quite a weekend). Friday night we busked in the rain. Saturday we busked all over the site. Saturday night we were asked to play one song on a variety show with 1000 people in the audience. Sunday night we got asked to fill in as warm up act in a venue with a capacity of 2000. Monday we got our own gig in an acoustic venue with an audience of perhaps 200 which was interupted when we were asked to move to the 2000 seater venue to do an entire set. Its nice remembering what an adrenaline high the weekend was - just unbelievable. This for a band who had never performed. My younger brother was 17 and I don't think had stood up in front of any audience before.

Now we come to it. Since we were so woefully unprepared we had of course no idea of merchandise. 

Within a week of the gig the fans had sent up 3 bootleg tapes of busking sessions - plus photos

After a month the photos had mutated into badges - which the fans also sent us and then posters of te band

And after 3 months one enterprising fan had made a band Tshirt and sent it to us.

 By which time we had gone into the studio and recorded an album as fast as we could - 3 days including the mixing down! Which went onto sell some 3000 copies. 

What I've never forgotten is that in the following 2 years we never produced anything which our fans hadn't made first. So here's the moral. When a product gets a tribal following people buy to join in. And if they can't buy they make it themselves.  I mention this because so often the selling process is trying to persuade one person to buy. Once. When group participation is much stronger as an incentive - it is being part of something - the purchase is just a way of joining in. Our prices were modest but price really wasn't the issue - we could have doubled our prices.  I have filed this under culture vultures because completely accidentally it turned into a group buy in - and the fans were well ahead of the band. Think about how you could trigger a similar effect. Remember its not about selling but about giving people ways to participate.   And you're welcome to participate in the Woebegone Brothers rather long in the tooth reformation. There's 3 tracks from the albums and a video from a gig last summer - there will be more video to follow!