Suburban Home Records, when faced with the complexity and unpredictability of online consumer behaviour, have thrown their hands up and said ‘Oh go on… just download the album already’.
Sometimes the adaptation process takes a bit of a leap of faith, and it looks like these guys are ready to take it.
The fine folk at Suburban Home Records [via Indie HQ] have decided to embrace the very technologies that the major record labels decry, and so now you can download a 14-track sampler:
I Celebrate Their Entire Catalog.
This from a label who has just sent out entire album downloads to customers who have pre-ordered the vinyl or CD. That is… they’ve been given the download before the pre-ordered physical album is available. That’s kind of interesting, right?
But perhaps what’s interesting here is not that they’re giving the album away, but that they’re giving it away using the same tools that some people use to distribute unauthorised copies.
If you like what we do and what we are about, I encourage you to forward the YouSendIt link to anyone and everyone you know.
Just copy and paste this url:
http://download.yousendit.com/7399CB6878C37021.Post it in your blog, send it out in a Myspace bulletin, burn it onto CDs and give them to your friends, hell text it to your Grandma. We want everyone and anyone to download the sampler.
As they put it: “If we hope to be releasing new music years from now, it is only natural that we adapt to the many changes that are happening.”
But what comes next? Is it possible to see what’s on the other side of this, do you just have to get it out there and hope for the best? I mean… it’s not as if giving your album away for free is remarkable enough to get you onto the front page of the Guardian or the LA Times anymore. It’s hardly even noteworthy, outside the confines of the blogosphere.
I’ve heard people say that giving music away for free has just ruined it for the rest of us. I’ve heard that there’s no point giving it away for free because it’s just a gimmick that no longer works. And I’ve heard that now that free albums are a mundane practice, there’s just no question about it: you just give it away because that’s just the minimum standard expectation these days.
Where do you stand on this? And, I suppose most importantly… what do you think of the record?