Groove Armada invent new online music scheme

The dance duo give their new EP away for free via a unique sharing system

Groove Armada‘s Andy Cato has told NME.COM that the band have pioneered a brand new scheme to distribute music over the internet.

Cato says he hopes the scheme, which is called pass-along-paid-for (PAP4), will catch on and be used by more bands in the future.

The band’s new EP is currently being given away for free via PAP4, which works via a sharing system. The more fans share a track, the more of the EP they are given for free.

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“Our original idea was to make the music free, but one of the issues that Tom [Findlay] and I have about free music is that there’s so much of it that it becomes disposable,” Cato told NME.COM.

“As music lovers, we don’t like that. So we were trying to find a way of making free music, loved music – and we came up with this system.”

Fans who register for the scheme (which is available through the B-Live website) are initially given the EP’s first track for free. To gain access to the second track, fans need to send a unique link to the first track to 20 of their friends.

Once the first track has been shared between fans 200 times, and then 2,000 times, the original sharer is given access to the EP’s third and fourth tracks.

Cato said he is pleased with the success of the scheme so far, although he was keen to stress that the band did receive some help in getting PAP4 off the ground.

“We came up with the idea but we can’t take any credit for the people who actually put it into practise!” he said.

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“But it is working well so far. I’d like to think it will be one of the ways people deal with it [music on the internet] in the future actually.”

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