With the Brit art-rock band Radiohead releasing their new album titled In Rainbows as a digital download and sold it for whatever their fans volunteered to pay, is this soon to be a hot trend in the strategies that bands supply their music to the general public? With CD loads to outlets down 13% from last year, this cutting edge method to get rid of the middle man, the record label, has proved precisely where the music biz is headed. There is , but a catch, the release is available only through the web site ( InRainbows.com ) and can’t be purchased in retail shops. The band will also offer fans a deluxe-edition box set that includes vinyl and CD copies of the release, and a CD of bonus tracks and a lyric book on December three. Will this system catch on? One can only guess, but given the restraints that some record companies have on their artists, early reports suggest that most patrons are basically stumping up for the release. An entrancing part to this is that the release is getting more advice by friends promotion and hoopla than most albums.
folks are teased and are talking about it and giant websites ( customarily company ) are not deliberating it because the record company ( or lack thereof ) isn’t asking them that they do so. Now is this an one off phenomenon or is Radiohead blazing a new musical distribution trail? It could be a bit of both, in fact.
This release is a record label’s nightmare, a band can actually release it’s own material without jumping through the ancient company rings and record label red tape, and truly earn money in the act. It also shows an approaching trend, where music can be released without aid from the hard media like CDs or vinyl records.
There are predictions that in the coming years lots of bands and artists will follow this lead and may offer album downloads as a market tool to bump their tours as well as sell other product. Actually Trent Reznor, of the hard-rock band 9 In. Nails has said that they don’t have a recording contract with their record label and may follow a congruent trail of failing to have a record label to support their next release. So this is going to be the direction music is heading. Bands have also taken note of the singles market, where a customer can pay for just one or two downloads, and the artist won’t always have to have an album release to support the singles.
Yes, the digital download is here with a bang much to the chagrin of the record labels as well as vinyl fans. There is a complete new digital world out there for musicians and one they are running to snatch by the horns.
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