Marillion
The British rock band Marillion is widely considered within the industry to have been one of the first mainstream acts to have fully recognised and tapped the potential for commercial musicians to interact with their fans via the Internet circa 1996, and are nowadays often characterised as a rock & roll ‘Web Cottage Industry’.
The band are renowned for having an extremely dedicated following with some fans regularly travelling significant distances to attend single gigs, driven in large part by the close fan base involvement which the band cultivate via their website, pod casts, bi-annual conventions and regular fanclub publications.
The album “Marbles” was released in 2004 with a 2-CD version that is only available at Marillion’s website - kind of a ‘thank-you’ gesture to the 17,000+ fans who pre-ordered it, and as even a further thanks to the fans, their names were credited in the sleeve notes (this ‘thank you’ to the fans also occurred with the previous album, Anoraknophobia). Following this, they released a download-only single, The Damage (live), recorded at the band’s sell-out gig at the London Astoria. It was the highest new entry in the new UK download chart at number 2.
Following an idea implemented by King Crimson, Marillion have examined their archives of concert recordings and are releasing the best shows (either by performance quality, by sound quality, or importance/rarity of the show) on a subscription basis. Fans pay for a subscription of four (originally six) shows up front and, as the shows are released, they are automatically mailed to the subscriber. Fans can also use their “credit” to purchase back-issues, provided they are still in stock. Only a limited number of copies are manufactured for each Front Row Club release (believed to be no more than 3,000) and are not re-issued once sold out.
