On October 6th, in support and celebration of the release of Mojo Nixon's latest album "Whiskey Rebellion", The Orchard, a full service media company specializing in the distribution of music and video entertainment, announced that Mojo's entire catalog would be available to download at no cost, exclusively from Amazon MP3. Since this announcement, the promotion has led to more than one million downloads of Mojo's music. As an innovative promotional tool to expose new and existing Mojo fans to his vast body of work, the free downloads are available at www.amazon.com/mojo until October 28th."The successful execution of this pioneering promotion has generated tremendous awareness for Mojo," said Brad Navin, EVP and General Manager of The Orchard. "This is a showcase of how The Orchard, as a nimble and forward-thinking company, has the ability to orchestrate trendsetting promotions for our clients. The success of this promotion will be measured by its long-term benefits, not the short-term risks, and our expectation is that it will generate sales momentum."
Mojo Nixon's current catalog includes 11 albums and 144 tracks. The downloads for this music during the two weeks of the Amazon promotional period amounted to a 23,000% increase from paid downloads across all digital retail networks in the United States during the first half of 2009.
BigChampagne, a technology-driven media measurement company that analyzes the trends of popular entertainment media, reported that the number of users and corresponding volume of files stayed pretty consistent overall on P2P sites during the two week Amazon promotion that began October 6th. In August and September, the average volume of files on P2P networks was 35,000 and in the first week of the promotion, there was 13% increase on the networks, but this fell back down to around 35,000 the following week.
"The success of this promotion is demonstrated by the numbers," commented Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne. "As a result of the giveaway, Mojo's online popularity is spiking across key indicators. It's also worth noting that there has been no concurrent increase in piracy of Mojo's material. Free Amazon MP3 downloads now completely dwarf the unauthorized flow of his catalog."
Mojo Nixon, remarking on his career and lack of digital marketing skills, said:
"Great googley moogley. I'm almost speechless. A million Mojo songs stirring up trouble across this great land. I'm a cult artist and apparently I've grown the cult and made the cult happy. A little blast of joy in these dark and desperate times. A retired lunatic with no Facebook, no Twitter, no MySpace or tour. Not even an e-mail list. Never underestimate the power of the Mojosity. The true sound of the American nutjob is forever. You can't kill rock 'n roll. The question is--did I lose a million dollars or gain a million fans?"
