Opening the door on a CD-less music label

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The group, which plays an eclectic mix of music that Brewer describes as "punk rock Mary Poppins," is one of the first six bands to be released on Cordless. She says a friend passed an MP3 of their music to Holzman, and the label called not long afterward.

The band members hadn't heard of Warner's digital plans but were impressed by Holzman.

"He's really what people say about him," Brewer said. "He's honestly beyond making a legacy, and he just wants to put out good music. He's probably not nearly as dangerous as he was 20 years ago."

Holzman came to the project almost by accident. His roots stretch back decades, to 1950, when he started Elektra as one of the first independent record labels in the country, ultimately signing The Doors as his most lasting band. He sold Elektra to Warner in the early 1970s and has been in and out of the company since, serving as Warner Music's Chief Technology Officer in the early 1990s before leaving for another start-up.

His return to Warner came shortly after Bronfman's purchase of the label nearly two years ago. He met with Bronfman, who showed him a list of potential digital ideas and asked if he wanted to be involved with any of them.

Holzman liked the idea of a digital-only label and has worked since to put the infrastructure for Cordless in place.

The first six bands are all young and relatively new to recording. Along with Boston-based Humanwine, they include Jihad Jerry & The Evildoers, Breakup Breakdown, Dangerous Muse, Nozzle, and Koishii & Hush. There's no common thread, other than that Holzman and the others helping to run the label liked the music, the executives said.

They aren't likely to make an immediate significant impact on Warner's bottom line. But that's not the point, or not yet. Cordless is an experiment for both the label and the bands on it.

For bands, which will get only a small advance that will cover some recording costs, it's a bet that the Internet can help build their reputation without having a CD available in Tower Records or other stores. In return, they get the extraordinarily rare right to keep permanent ownership of their music.

On the label side, it's an attempt to reach out to a music-consuming world that is increasingly deserting radio and record stores for iTunes and MySpace.

"The scene today is one of some confusion," Holzman said. "Nobody knows which way to jump or where it's going to go. But we intend with Warner and Cordless to point the direction we want to go. Whether anybody else follows is another matter."