Our friends at Pastepunk contacted Equal Vision Records to ask them why their recent signing, This Time Next Year, was pursuing a donation-based approach to selling their new album.

EVR's Dan Sandshaw explained the plan to Pastepunk:

Our main goal is to get people to listen to our bands. There is no growth without listeners. The current state of the physical CD retail business has left us with few options to develop our artists. The TTNY record is fantastic and people need to hear it. We want as many people to hear it as possible, even if it's for free.

We came up with it on the label side and the band completely embraced the idea. We will keep working to develop the band with as many new ideas as possible. I'm happy that at least we tried a new approach to get new listeners.