Green Day Gets Into The Office Supply Biz

Hey, I like Green Day … even own a few of their songs. When one of your fellow classmates sent me the email quoted below last night, I thought it was cool and a VERY interesting approach to building some sort of physical connection with its fan base. You see when I was a kid — way back in the 80’s — we bought all our music on cassette tape and then CDs … What’s interesting about that is that they came with some sort of physical presence — a CD jewl case or cassette case. These made you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The whole digital music “revolution” has sort of removed that physical presence … unless you call 4.3MB of one’s and zero’s on a hard drive a physical presence. Anyway, Green Day is selling blank CD-Rs that they say are for you to burn their music on. Actually a cool idea … Here’s what Jason Streeter had to say about it:

“Prof. Camplese,

Check out what the band Green Day is doing to make money because so many people are downloading their music. Instead of trying to stop illegal downloading, they are sort of encouraging it and allowing kids to buy their CD-R’s with the “Green Day” logo on it. This is a very interesting business move but kind of goes completely against what we are trying to create with our project. They advise to use the CDs to make compellations from previously bought Green Day CDs but I don’t really think this is true!

Thought it would make an interesting blog entry for the class.

Enjoy,
Jason Streeter”

To tell you the truth, I don’t think its really because so many people are stealing their music as much as its an attempt for them to give their audience a little bit of that warm and fuzzy feeling you get from actually owning something physical. Either way, very cool find, Jason! What do the rest of you think?

5 thoughts on “Green Day Gets Into The Office Supply Biz

  1. First of all….Jason is a real butt-kisser. He’s in my group and I see it constantly.

    Back to the subject at hand, I think this is a very interesting idea. From the research my group has conducted, many people who don’t believe downloading copyrighted content is illegal, feel that this is just an evolution to better things. For instance, the horseshoe industry probably got upset about the introduction of trains.

    I think Green Day is ahead of their time, and helping to speed past the hole we all are stuck in still, thanks to the RIAA. Instead of trying to defeat so many people, why not meet them half-way as the record companies can make some money in the process instead of losing it all.

  2. ^^^Thanks for the support Mike! I just thought it supported your idea how there is nothing wrong with downloading music…

    Anyways, I still think Green Day is using this as a ploy to make it easier for people to organized their burned music. I have a hard time creating new titles for my blank CDs and remembering what was on them…for instance they are called like good stuff #1, good stuff #2…and so on. It just gets confusing!

    I wonder if other bands will start marketing themselves in the same way?!?

  3. I think what Green day is doing is a good idea but just not realistic for their fans and everyone else. If music lovers cared more about physical pocessions representing a band then saving money, downloading music wouldn’t be such a problem.

  4. Cool idea but we’ll se how much profit they’ll make from it. I think they are probably tying to seperate themselves from all the other artists that happen not to support illegal fileswapping. Kudos!!

  5. I agree with Mike.. Im researching this not only for this class but for my english202 class and all these articles on colleges just cutting off downloading cause they see no means of meeting half way with students is causing huge uproars. I think greenday took a good step.

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