Thread: Record Label Sponsors BitTorrent Site isoHunt

Despite laws, BitTorrent sites are increasing, and thus the pirated music industry and file-sharing continues to flourish. Surprisingly, Honor Roll Music, instead of joining the conflict with BitTorrent sites, has decided to sponsor isoHunt, one of the leading torrent search engines.

Awesome New Republic is a two member indie band based in Miami, Florida. Both band members graduated at Frost School of Music and their first album, released in 2005, had a warm welcome by the critics. Together with their label Honor Roll Music, they decided to try out another innovative marketing strategy to promote their latest album.



In order to announce people of this move, the label booked a monthly banner advertisement campaign on isoHunt, and linked that to a torrent file of their album that everyone can download for free. Doing so, they hope to build a strong fan-base and get people excited about their music.

“As far as we know, we are the first record label/band to advertise directly on a torrent search engine,” Colin Foord, the creative brain behind the campaign told TorrentFreak. “We are sponsoring isoHunt with a banner that links directly to our homepage where the album can be downloaded for free.”

Awesome New Republic’s banner on isoHunt

In a music industry that is changing quickly, Honor Roll Music recognizes that torrent sites such as isoHunt should not be vilified, but instead turned on partners to reach millions of music fans, so they can discover and download new music. Actually, BitTorrent sites have proven to be an advantage, rather than a threat.

As the marketing budget the labels can't afford to buy ad spaces on all major torrent sites, the isoHunt sponsorship is a sign of good faith, who supports them and recognize the value of reaching out to the millions of active BitTorrent users.

The latest Awesome New Republic album named "Rational Geographic Vol 1" is available on several torrent sites, and everyone is free to download a copy and share it with friends. Volume II will be released in July and Volume III, with a physical 3-volume bundle, in October.

nice, that`s how i like it. shake hands boys.

Its about time some of these record and movie industry big shots try a different approach to their losing battle with file sharing. I'm glad to see stuff like this instead of these silly lawsuits that will accomplish nothing in the long run. Guess we will have to wait and see if this new approach catches on.

This is awesome news. We can only hope that this label will see some benefits from this and soon others may follow!

It makes your wonder why bans make music. To make money or to make music? They want compensation for their work but they would rather want it in a form of money instead of die hard fans which can from bit torrent users.

nice! that's a good idea. I think I will check them out.

Their 3rd track is pretty catchy :D

wish more companies followed that example, I really doubt though that any multimillion companies/bands would do so. Brings back memories of napster lol!

yeah , great progress ..Torrent Rocks guys

nobody can neglect how Torrent community is big , they first tried to destroy it but it didn't work ,and Now they're trying to use it for advertisement , They stepped back for a while i guess