Bacardi Groove

Bacardi, the famous rum producer, has initiated a novel approach to sharing music. Bacardi has partnered with the band Groove Armada, a big beat duo out of England, to be one of the online distributors of the band’s new EP. The idea is for users to promote Groove Armada through Bacardi’s B-Live site.

Users can download the first track on the album for free. After that, if the user shares the first track with 20 friends, he/she can then obtain track 2. And the B-Live site will connect directly with Facebook so that users can send the track information right through the large social networking site.

And the pyramid scheme goes on and on. You obtain track 3 by sharing track 1 200 times. You obtain track 4 by sharing track 1 2,000 times. Levels of sharing beyond this can also lead to special access at live shows.

Andy Cato, one of the members of Groove Armada, had this to say about the novel approach: “We wanted to find a way of embracing the fact there is free music out there, but giving it value again.”

This is a great idea and a great partnership between Bacardi and Groove Armada. It legitimizes the file sharing experience to some degree. However, I will be interested to see how much of an impact this service has.

The main setback is that this service is just for one band. I think that most internet users want to experience music in the quickest way possible. One of the main components of speed is catalog size. If a user is already within iTunes or a file sharing program, they have access not only to Groove Armada, but every other band in the world (well almost). In the case of the B-Live site, a user will need to first register with B-Live and then use quite a bit of effort to share it with hundreds of friends just to listen to the next song.

Like I said, it is a great idea, but may be too cumbersome in the internet world of easy sharing. Let’s see how the initiative does.

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com