King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard put out a call to “indie labels, bootleggers, fans, weirdos” to release 17 previously unreleased albums worth of live recordings and demos spanning the band’s entire career and touring history. The band hosted a dedicated URL with links to audio master files and cover art, but also messaged for participants to “feel free to get creative with it if you like – it’s yours”. They even suggested some ideas: double LPs; 7-inch remix; reimagined cover art; bizarre-looking wax; live show boxsets; tapes. “Or keep it simple – that’s totally ok.”
The only thing that was asked was for participants to “send us some of them to sell on GIZZVERSE.COM – whatever you feel is a fair trade is cool with us.” This has all been done on the honour code.
In launching this bootlegger series, King Gizzard have not only broken new marketing ground, but helped support and enrich a vital part of the music community – indie labels and shops – all while super-serving their voracious fans with highly sought after content, packaged in unique, often creative and very limited-edition products, all while generating tons of visibility for the band, and earning priceless goodwill with fans.
The series has been so effective, there have been a total of 746 versions created – with hundreds of versions released on vinyl (the most popular format) and cassette, as well as some very unique versions on 8-track tape, flexi discs, picture discs and more than a few boxsets!
The band ended up selling over 150 versions on Gizzverse.com from 46 different labels around the globe and, before the end of the year, will have sold nearly 4,000 copies on Gizzverse alone. Those 4,000 units represent only a small fraction of the total number of products for sale with an estimated value in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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