As can be seen from the Drones Widget above fans are actively encouraged to spread the word about album releases by embedding a player on their own site or sending it to a friend. This is a classic online marketing strategy - make your content easily sharable and encourage users to do so - with the added bonus that anyone who shares the widget will be giving the artist two new email addresses to follow up.

If you click through the buy one any of the bands pages one of the first things that you'll be asked to do is enter your email and (if you want physical product) your shipping address. Also as all the albums are hosted on dedicated pages / sites it is likely that every click registered on the site coming from an IP address is tracked against any customer information submitted during a purchase. So whether tracks are being given away or sold Topspin and the artist gets an email address, physical location (probably), and on-site behavior. Ian Rogers has indicated that any interaction with a widget is also tracked and tabulated giving artists some impressive metrics referenced against a mailing list.

If this doesn't sound particularly complicated it's because it isn't - Topspin are applying some basic economic theory to do with demand, scarcity, value-adding and price-targetting along with familiar viral and permissions (direct to people who give you permission) marketing techniques. 

For a brief introduction on some of the economic theory check out The Cyncial Musician's recent post on the subject and then read Tim Harvard's easy to read The Unercover Economist. For a basic understanding of marketing start with Seth Godin's Blog and work up to some actual book reading.

The basic idea goes like this - recorded music can be copied and distributed digitally for almost nothing, therefore it's difficult to make money off because recorded music isn't a readily available, cheaply (re)produceable commodity. Recorded music is effectively an infinite resource - once a recording is made digital the cost of reproducing and distributing the recording is close to $0. Topspins model acknowledges this but attempts to up-sell to self-selecting consumers by packaging more scarce products and services (limited vinyl pressings to foot massages). 

As products become more scarce some consumers will generally pay more money for 'premium' packages that cost above the market-rate. By providing consumers a choice of formats and a pyramid of increasingly scarce premium packages Topspin has very cleverly allowed consumers who only wan the 'basic' package to feel like their getting good value while extracting extra money from fans who don't really need to pay more but like to feel they are getting something special.  

This strategy has been taken to the next level with Josh Freese's album but it is instructive to note that even the Drones who are relatively unknown outside of Australia are selling 'value' bundles. 

Bearing in mind that Topspin is really a marketing and demand generation company rather than a retailer we should also note that the bundles function as a promotional tool. In Freese's case his offer and subsequent sale of a $20,000 dollar package has garnered massive news coverage but it's interesting to note that a similar strategy is being used by the Drones. Though the Australian bands top-ties bundles are much less outrageous than Freese's they appear to be explicitly targetted at drawing in new fans by bundling the bands back catalogue.

Combine this strategy with carefully placed (paid) streaming widgets, a simple viral campaign facilitated by the same and the ability to target fans directly with special offers (once you've got their contact details, demography and purchasing history) and we might be getting to the crux of the Topspin 'strategy':

Sounds simple enough but can Topspin's model be applied to anyone. Topspin seem to think it can but most of the examples touted by topspin trade off an artists already established celebrity to generate buzz surrounding a release (albeit in some innovative and very cool ways). The question then is can topspins model be applied effectively work for bands who aren't established / don't have celebtrity to trade off.  While it might be fun to drop shrooms and go cruising in Danny from Tools car the prospect would be less attractive, perhaps even sinister, if you were asking fans to meet up with some unknown band putting out records from their parents basement.