“The term indie is short for “independent” and refers to artistic creations outside the commercial mainstream, without the support of a major record label, major movie studio, or other source of a large budget”
There are thousands maybe millions indie artists out there, and sites like Myspace.com and RCRDLBL.com are the perfect reason to go indie…
these past months many major artists such as; Radiohead, NIN, The Charlatans, even Madonna has gone indie, what really happened? are they simply following the current trends? fed up with the record label’s business model? or dying to give away their music cheaper? you’ll be the judge…
Radiohead launch their new record “In Rainbows” without any labels backing them up. There’s no label or distribution partner to cut into the band’s profits — but then there may not be any profits. Drop In Rainbows‘ 15 songs into the online checkout basket and a question mark pops up where the price would normally be. Click it, and the prompt “It’s Up To You” appears. Click again and it refreshes with the words “It’s Really Up To You” — and really, it is. It’s the first major album whose price is determined by what individual consumers want to pay for it. And it’s perfectly acceptable to pay nothing at all. So being a struggling artist myself … lol, I put $ 0.00 on the price box and began downloading “In Rainbows” (I am now at 32% on the download bar)
In their blogs, Trent Reznor of the Nine Inch Nails said:
“Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008.
Exciting times, indeed.”
Their latest album has hit the retail stores across the US (physical Vinyl, CD and DVD) and on the digital downloads sites (iTunes, etc…)
Trent Reznor, also talked about the new Saul Williams album “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!” that has been released directly to the fans/listener. All you had to do is go to his website, register and download the album for FREE!
There are apparent similarities in the way Saul Williams and Radiohead released their new record, however Saul Williams might be a bit more bolder since Radiohead are already a household name while Saul isn’t (yet!)
The Charlatans are also began to follow this trends, they give away their music on their website and on xfm.co.uk
Rumor has it that Jamiroquai and Oasis are thinking about giving away their music for free as well. And I personally believe that there will be more to join this trends.
So, how do these artists got their profit? One, maybe in the long run they could begin to charge big corporation (maybe record labels too!) to put ads on their site. And two, the concert business is booming nowadays. This has been proved by Prince who gave away his album “Planet Earth” for free in the U.K (as a bonus along with Sunday Newspaper), many other recording artists laughed at him. But then Prince announced 21 … I repeat 21 …!!! consecutive concerts in London and sold out every one of them.
2008 will be exciting for the music industry, indeed.
(now playing: Radiohead – House of Cards -”In Rainbows”)
-source: wikipedia.com, time.com, epicfu.com, rcrdlbl.com, myspace.com
