With the release of our 2nd EP we’ve decided to take a bit of an odd ball pricing strategy. Our last EP was available for free streaming, download, and physically. While we were happy to share our songs without charging anyone, we noticed some things:

A lot of people who listened and liked our stuff didn’t seem to be coming to shows. Because most people experienced the music as a purely digital spectacle, without any meaning or memory attached to the music, our art was just passively consumed and forgotten in a detached manner.

When we were kids (we still are) we would see local and out of town bands play, meet them, get their music, and in the process meet other people with similar interests. Now, we find music online, download it, consume it, and promptly move on to some other distraction. It is as if the human element of the whole process has been stripped out and streamlined into some absurd production line process.

We don’t want capital to the final arbiter of who gets to hear us and who doesn’t, yet don’t want our art to be just another passive, uncommitted piece of analytical data.

After considerable deliberation we have decided on the following release plan:

Streaming the EP will be free. If you come to a show, you can take the physical EP for free. We don’t have a ‘merch guy’, so you just have to walk up to the table and take it. In addition to the disc, the physical EP will include a download code, stickers, and other surprises (ancient secrets, nude pics, cereal prizes, etc.). This is how we would prefer you get it. Because we play mostly in Toronto, and bars hate culture and love cash, we can’t play as many all ages shows as we’d like (we’d like them all to be all-ages). If you’re too young to buy beer, send us a Facebook message or an email and we will send you the digital EP for free. If for whatever reason none of the above works for you, we’ll take trades of any kind for our music. Send us a picture of yourself holding a piece of paper that says ‘The Bare Minimum’, send us your band’s music, send us your gold or old jewelry, send us anything and we’ll trade you our digital EP. If all else fails, and you refuse to be an actor in the music scene. You can passively consume us like a happy meal (but cheaper!) by purchasing the EP digitally for $1 on Bandcamp. No human contact necessary.

We feel like this is the plan needed to build a music scene made out of people, rather than HTTP requests. Your move:

Find when our next show is: our facebook page

Email us your offer: thebareminimumband@gmail.com

Consume us: Bandcamp

-The Bare Minimum