Trend Spotting: The Free Album

Radiohead made headlines back in 2007 when it offered its newest album for free on the internet. For established artists that have more bargaining power with their labels, free albums appear to be an increasingly popular way to get music to their fans.

The most recent artist to venture into the realm of free will be Angels & Airwaves, fronted by Blink-182's Tom DeLonge.

The group's third studio album, "Love," will arrive February 14 as a free digital download. DeLonge and Angels & Airwaves manager Rick DeVoe agree that self-releasing the 10-song set is a financial risk, especially with DeLonge spending up to $500,000 of his own money to fund the process. But the artist hopes to recoup through corporate sponsorships, touring, merchandise sales, premium exclusive tracks and videos on the band's Web site and by selling a deluxe version of "Love" with 30 minutes of exclusive bonus material.

(From Billboard.com)

As more artists go this route and are able to make money from the venture, expect to see more free albums.

Digital Graveyard: Database of RIAA Litigation

Ray Beckerman of the blog "Recording Industry vs. The People" has a database of litigation documents from a large number of copyright infringement cases initiated by the recording music industry. This is a great resource for those interested.

"The Golden Age of Infinite Music"

John Harris writes in an article for BBC News on the ease of obtaining music (by whatever means) and how that has created a generation of musically knowledgeable youth with palettes as well versed as middle aged music lovers. Mr. Harris opines on what a possible and likely future for music will entail:

Empty record shops will be overrun with weeds and old CDs will be used as coasters. Your Madonnas, U2s and Coldplays will prosper, but for anyone further down the hierarchy, the idea of making much of a living will be a non-starter.

While the future looks bleak, Mr. Harris tries to see the positive in the present:

But for now, this is a truly golden age - the era of the teenage expert, albums that will soon have to be full of finely-honed hits and the completely infinite online jukebox.

Is the Album on the Way Out?

Albums aim to contain three hit singles. The rest of the album is usually filler songs whose purpose is to attempt to justify a hefty album price. With the rise of iTunes and similar digital distributors, people are buying fewer albums and more single songs. That behavior is completely rational: why pay $13 for three songs you enjoy plus filler music when you can buy your favorite songs individually for about $1 each. By empowering the consumer with the ability to purchase single songs (and not just the ones the music labels selected to be put on a "single" CD), and allowing consumers to preview songs before they purchase, the concept of the album might fade away. This would be exacerbated if storefront distributors like Wal-Mart stop selling CDs and instead have Kiosks that allow you to basically browse music and burn a CD (or even plug in your MP3 player and download the files).

If consumers have the choice to stop buying filler music, and exercise that choice, it should follow that the economic incentive for recording labels to force artists to record filler songs will be considerably lower. At the very least, the number of filler songs recorded should diminish. Time will tell.