Add Oasis to the list of bands considering music giveaway
These are fearful times for the music industry. As record companies train their considerable legal might on a Minnesota mother accused of illegal downloading, their talent is walking out the back door.
No sooner had Nine Inch Nails announced on Monday that it no longer was under contract to a record label, when word came that Oasis and Jamiroquai are considering whether to release songs online for free, according to British publication, The Telegraph.
Should they decide to go the free route, Oasis and Jamiroquai--two unsigned but very popular bands--would follow Radiohead, the British group that last week announced it would issue a digital version of its next album, In Rainbows, for whatever price individual customers are inclined to pay.
In addition, Radiohead, one of the world's most popular bands, said it would no longer be represented by a music label.
Even the hardiest music executive is going to struggle to spin this news. There's no hiding what's occurring here. The music industry is on the threshold of disintermediation, a fancy word that means the Internet is threatening to blast a thick layer of the sector's infrastructure into blue oblivion--just like it has with travel agents, stockbrokers and newspapers.
Bands don't need huge music conglomerates to give away songs. Legions of A&R teams are no longer needed to ferret out talent. Music fans can go online and decide for themselves what gets heard.
Should it occur, the extinction of music-industry suits will only be celebrated by the file-sharing crowd. To them, the businessmen who run the record labels stand at odds with art and music. The reputation of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was cemented in the minds of many last week when it won a $220,000 judgment against Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota woman accused of illegal file sharing. Thomas steadfastly claims she is innocent.
But artists should understand the direction they're headed. Album giveaways are the latest sign that music sales will soon no longer fuel the record industry's economic engine.
In Radiohead's case, the thinking is that even if only few people fork over money for In Rainbows, the group can make up some of the revenue with the sale of concert tickets and merchandise. And the bands could save big by not having to cut the label in.
If the system works this way, great. But for the performer this means we're heading back to the days of wandering troubadours and minstrels singing for their supper. Not really, but it does mean long days and nights on the road, for sure.
Will the artists be satisfied with that? Will they have a choice? Will they take to being merchants as well as musicians?
So far things look promising. Radiohead's promotion has attracted enormous attention, according to the story in The Telegraph. The paper reported that although the band declines to say how many fans have pre-ordered albums, the group's Web site has soared from the 43rd most visited music site in the U.K. to No.1.
Google reported that searches for Radiohead are 10-times higher this week, according to the paper.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
today, few bands make real money off CD sales, their money is from concerts. So this model changes little, even if they don't charge for the songs.
Then the label stiffs the small artists on marketing in order to throw everything at the wall when 50 Cent's album drops, then when sales aren't huge the band is cast off - minus the masters they put their heart and soul into, which remain with the label. (Let's not even think about the scenario, famously documented in Wilco's famous case, of the label who just takes your new album master and simply refuses to put it out.)
So faced with doing it the major-label way and MAYBE lucking out and making it big but more likely living out the above scenario, OR going DIY and keeping far more of your revenues.
Not a difficult choice.
Unless your music sucks. Then you need the major labels.
Notice that hot or mainstream bands would never do anything of the sort. This speaks volumes about what will be made free; basically nothing that anyone really wants, by bands that no one really cares about anymore.
Me, I'll pay for a professional product produced by a professional band represented by a professional industry. I want a quality product that is actually seen to have value.
Once enough foolish musicians figure out that they are broke from giving away their product, they'll be begging for representation. If you give it away for nothing then nothing is what you will get.
If you think bands like Oasis, Radiohead, NIN, and Jamiroquai are "has-beens" and "old washed-up" bands, then I find it hard to believe that you even no what a "quality product" is going off of your dribble.
The model changes a lot. Now the music label won't make anything they shouldn't have been making in the first place.
@Geminate,
The only valid reason of you having this opinion is that you have more talent than these artists mentioned. I could never in a thousand years dream of accomplishing even a tenth of what Radiohead, Oasis, Nine Inch Nails or Jamiroquai have...
off by massively overpriced CDs and then to learn that they disgustingly underpay the
Artists..!!! I was shocked to learn that the Labels ONLY pay a maximum of 15 cents per CD
to the Artists and turn around and charge us 100 times more than what they paid for that music in the first place..!! Again, and they call WE the
fans the pirates....?!?
I for one will gladly pay the Artists 10 times what the Labels pay them for a CD if we can cut the Labels out of the picture.
F**k the Pimps of the music industry (RIAA and Labels) and support your favorite band DIRECTLY...!!!!
Look to the success of Dave Mathews, you can get his concerts off of bt.etree.org as well as a host of other bands as well. ALL LEGAL and all free.
This is where I pick up my downloads from.
- by matthew-fedak October 23, 2008 3:49 PM PDT
- i think its ok for noel and liam to charger still, when noel got pushed off stage earlier this year by that stupid canadian kid, doctors looked at youtube to see how it happened, thats the world we live in folks, its realistic that more people will illegally download dig out your sole than buy it n there performances n music videos are on youtubube in no time after being released. if they give away free cd they will loose a fan. people should be proud to buy a cd n oasis can stil pull it off. only reason In Rainbows was free is cause no one would of bored given radioheads previous few albums which were really really bad.
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