The name-your-own-price pre-order promotion is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated – average price turned out to be a whopping $29.13, thanks largely (but not entirely) to several incredibly generous folks who paid over $100.
Lowest donation was $5.00, highest was $500. We decided not to count the lowest and highest donations when calculating the average price for liner-note-inclusion purposes, which brought it down to a still-impressive $23.56.
Yet another press release from the label about the campaign with even more details after the jump.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 17, 2009
SUCCESSFUL FAN PRE-ORDER CAMPAIGN COMPLETED FOR WONDERLICK
Fan Pays $500 For Forthcoming Album
The California-based group Wonderlick has just concluded an extremely successful fan pre-order campaign on their forthcoming sophomore full-length, “Topless At The Arco Arena.” The band ran a month-long pre-order offer via their website which allowed fans to set their own price for the album, with an additional incentive offered to fans who paid median price or higher: they are being thanked in the album package. The final median price was $29.13. The low price paid was $5, and the high price paid was $500. Several fans paid over $100 for the disc.
Says band member Tim Quirk: “I wasn’t too worried about people paying less than the CDs themselves cost, but I was completely unprepared for just how generous fans were. When the first $30 payment came in, that was pretty cool. Then they just kept getting higher — $45, $50, $100. I’m writing them all personal thank you notes, like my grandma taught me.”
“Topless at the Arco Arena” will be released on July 7, 2009 via Missing Piece/Rock Ridge Music. According to Quirk, the record, “examines the intersection of art and commerce from people who have been on every side of it.” “Topless At The Arco Arena” finds Quirk and bandmate Jay Blumenfield making music for music’s sake. Both have very successful careers in other endeavors: Tim is VP, Programming of Rhapsody and Jay is a TV producer and video director. Inspired by Tim’s essay of the same name (originally published in the anthology “This is Pop! [Harvard University Press]), the album was recorded in Oakland and Los Angeles over the past few years. The essay will appear in its entirety as the album’s liner notes.
Wonderlick comprises half of the former members of Too Much Joy – a group known for witty alterna-pop which spawned the ‘90s hit “Crush Story” and sold several hundred thousand records. After Too Much Joy disbanded and some time had passed, Wonderlick started as a messing-around-in-the-studio project in 2001 between Quirk and Blumenfield, who have been friends since their teen years.
After they successfully garnered a sizable amount of money in donations when offering a track at a time to former Too Much Joy fans for free download online, Wonderlick decided to release their self-titled album in 2002. Since that time, they have continued to post new songs, some of which will make it onto the forthcoming album.
Wonderlick can be found online at:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wonderlick/55734476585?ref=mf
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tbquirk (Tim)
Website: http://www.wonderlick.com
For more information, please contact:
Krista Mettler, Skye Media
publicity@rockridgemusic.com, 908-889-5029