(Original on kaizers.no, Text backup here)
Kaizers Orchestra embark on a short four-day city tour in February!The special thing about this tour is that the band dedicates the profits of the concert for the production of the new album. In a time of great changes in the music industry, it is necessary to come up with new solutions to ensure that quality is preserved.
- It is more and more up to the artists themselves to find solutions to get their music out, Geir Kaizer tells Kaizernews.
- The physical record sale is traditionally the engine that finances the sector, and now that this has been greatly reduced and digital sales do not compensate, parts of the music industry's ecosystem collapse. Even though music can be downloaded for free now, we still have to pay the studio time, the producers, mastering, equipment, hotel, photographer, cover designer, promotion, distribution, printing, marketing, and all that is needed. It seems that we are facing a so-called "paradigm shift" in the industry right now. Most of all, this is an exciting challenge that requires that we do something and "get with the times".
- Is it so serious that this paradigm shift threatens your existence as a band?
- No, we earn our living by playing concerts, so if you look at it this way, it does not threaten us. But we feel a responsibility for the industry and want to participate in pointing out that free downloads have consequences. The smaller record companies are probably the ones that struggle most, they have difficulty obtaining capital to finance the album recordings when there are no profits. So that is what we do now, we collect the capital in advance, so we sell our soul to the fans, not to him down there. We try to use the trust of our fans for a project that serves all parties.
- And those who buy a concert ticket will thus receive a special copy of the next album as thanks for the support?
- Yes, this tour will be like a pre-sale of the next Kaizer album. The approximately 5,000 tickets can be exchanged for a limited edition version of the next album. We will come back later to how this will be solved exactly, but we have a plan already!
Apart from this, this is what the band says in their press release: "The Kaizers will present a representative selection of highlights, day flies, curiosity, two-strokes, four-strokes, noise rockers, and killer ballads from their breathless and energetic musical catalog so far, and they summarize this ten year and five discs long era together with their dear and faithful fans on some of the best stages of the country. "