I received the following email from The Raconteurs today:
We are in the process of creating a live section of our website and need your assistance. We’ll have different areas where you can view video footage and photos from tour dates as well as hear select audio for some shows.
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Here’s where we need your help, we’ve been scouring youtube for some video content that fans have shot at past shows and we’ll be adding some of that footage to the site. If you have footage you haven’t yet added to youtube please add it and feel free to send a link to the video for review to livevideo@theraconteurs.com , be sure to include show date, venue, city name and video credit.
Jack White and company understand the value of their fans recording content and making it available on YouTube. Their aim isn’t to necessarily sell more records (recall that this is the band that broke all the rules for their most recent album, Consolers of the Lonely), it is to bring in people to their live shows.
Contrast this with how Prince handles his fans, and the differences couldn’t be more stark. Can you imagine Prince emailing his fan base and asking “If you have footage you haven’t yet added to youtube please add it…”?