💡✍️ADN #139: How To Sell Your Album for $100
Jul 13, 2025This week’s newsletter is a little different than usual.
I want to highlight a friend and artist.
Thad is on a unique journey with his latest album, “The Kid.”
He has been selling his record for over a year exclusively through his website for $100 ($99.99).
What does that mean?
It means:
- For $100, you can buy a digital download of the album
- For $100, you can buy a vinyl
What it also means:
- You cannot stream it on any DSPs.
This is a unique approach, and after some time, one that is working.
Thad has sold over 500 albums.
500 x $100 = $50,000.00
To put that into perspective, it would take 12.5 million streams on Spotify to earn the same amount of money.
He has chosen to apply a value to his music.
Thad spent a few years writing, recording, and producing “The Kid.”
By the time it was done, it was a heartbreaking proposition to throw it up on DSPs and potentially get lost in the sea of 100k-plus songs released daily.
Instead, he decided he would go slower.
He would narrate differently.
He would build one relationship at a time.
When I first heard about this, I was skeptical.
After I heard the record, I understood.
This record, 18 songs, this is Thad’s whole life encapsulated into 80 minutes of music.
If that’s not worth $100, hell, $1000, or more, then what is anything worth?
And that’s the beauty of the proposition.
It forces you to think.
When you listen, you feel the value.
Thad is now onto phase two of promoting “The Kid.”
He has begun selling house concerts to his superfans.
How?
Buy 50 albums at $100 ($5000), invite 50 friends, and Thad will come to your house and perform “The Kid” live in your living room or backyard.
This is so simple and so genius at the same time.
Why?
- One, it leans on the people who have already shown their support for the album.
- Two, it deepens the relationship with those fans by giving them a one-of-a-kind experience.
- Three, it turns 49 new fans onto “The Kid.”
- Four, it helps sell albums!
This approach plays directly into everything I believe to be true about Artist Development and life.
Whoever tells the best story will eventually find what they are after.
In Thad’s case, it may be a slower build, but all great ideas take time.
And the time put in is worth it when you have a better story to tell on the other side.
Thad is the epitome of my favorite phrase, “fit out/not in.”
He’s telling a better story than most, in his way, and carving a path that will distinguish what he is about from the rest.
In the process, he will have found his 1000 true fans (and I suspect many more.)
If you’re interested, you can check out one song, “What if,” from “The Kid” on YouTube.
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To wrap up today, I have another Thad story to tell you.
Last week, we all watched helplessly as lives were lost in the Kerrville floods in Texas.
It’s a story that has been hard to wrap my mind around.
It’s the type of situation that leaves you asking “why”?
While Thad asked why himself, he wrote a song.
Here is what he had to say -
“This song came to me after reading the article about the Texas floods, where the two sisters were found holding hands. Sending lots of love to all those affected and to those who lost loved ones.”
A couple of days ago, he shared a video of the song “Brighter Day” on social media, and as you can see, it has had a big impact and has helped bring a bit of hope to what has felt like a hopeless situation.
Something tells me this is only the beginning of this song being a healing tool for the many families affected by the flooding in the hill country.
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Finally, none of what Thad is doing now would be possible without the years of work he’s put into his music and learning the ins and outs of the music industry.
Thad’s mindset is a deep dive into artist development and where a career can go when you open yourself up to building and telling your story in a unique way.
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If you enjoyed this style of newsletter, please shoot me an email and let me know if you’d like more deep dives like this.
If you didn’t like it, shoot me an email too :)
See you next Sunday,
Neil