Tricking Spotify & raising $20.000 with lateral thinking
A great example of solving a problem by looking at the bigger picture
Today’s little lateral challenge:
There are 6 eggs in a basket. 6 men each take one egg. At the end, there is still one egg in the basket. How is that possible?
Remember, there’s no right or wrong answer. The challenge is to find an explanation that is logical and also easy to execute. If you’re overcomplicating the logic, you’re doing something called horizontal thinking (making logical, but improbable assumptions).
As usual, the answer is at the end of this newsletter.
It’s Monday and I’m laterally thinking about the fact that I got up at 6 AM to send this out. There’s definitely a better solution and I should walk the talk soon and actually came up with better ideas on how to deliver this newsletter.
But enough of my insomnia. Let’s talk about how a band used the time their fans were asleep to raise over $20.000 in order to go on tour and not charge for admission.
Let’s look at the problem vertically.
A small band called Vulfpeck wanted to raise money so they could go on tour. They are fairly popular, so the logical approach to this would be to launch a crowdfunding campaign and ask fans to contribute. Using social media and a few marketing tactics to amplify the campaign, they could potentially raise a large enough amount to cover their expenses.
This is not wrong and many bands do it because it works.
However, the band started thinking of different ways to raise money.
They realized Spotify would pay them roughly $0.007 each time a person streamed their music. People listen to their music when they’re awake, but what if they could help the band make money even while they slept?
Vulfpeck created an album called Sleepify with 10 songs, all of them completely silent.
They asked their fans to play them while they sleep, with each fan streaming it for 7 hours generating $4 for the band. In total, the album generated over $20.000 before being pulled by Spotify.
The ingenious approach let the band keep their promise and go on tour without charging admission, but also generated a huge amount of press.
If you want to learn more about the story, here’s a short video and a feature on Rolling Stone.
Lateral thinking doesn’t always offer you a better solution.
But it offers you more alternatives that you can choose from compared to vertical thinking. Mixing the two is bound to produce better results.
Answer: after 5 men each took 1 egg, there was only 1 egg left in the basket. The last man simply picked up the basket with the egg still in it.
Love this.