Posted by Sla#s on 10/12/07 19:41

How long before all recorded music is free?

Will recorded music just become the advertising for live concerts?

I see the Charlatans have decided free is the future.
http://www.nme.com/news/the-charlatans/31475

Prince too gave it away.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6256732.stm

Radiohead tried Freakonomics
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/10/08/ccdiary108.xml

Now Madonna, whilst not giving it away, seems to have decided that it's the
concerts that make the money
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/10/and-the-walls-came-tumbling-down-madonna-dumps-record-industry/

"Since reporting Monday that Nine Inch Nails had dumped its record label and
was to offer future albums direct to the public, Oasis and Jamiroquai have
also joined the move away from the record industry, but the biggest
announcement of all is news today that Madonna has dumped the record
industry.
According to reports, Madonna has signed a $120million deal with L.A. based
concert promotion firm Live Nation to distribute three studio albums,
promote concert tours, sell merchandise and license Madonna's name.
Whilst the deal differs from Nine Inch Nails in that Madonna is not offering
direct-to-public albums, Live Nation isn't a record company. The deal shows
that even for a world famous act, a record company is no longer required in
the days of digital downloads and P2P music sharing.
The only real question now is how fast will the music industry model come
tumbling down. When Radiohead led the way in offering their music directly
to fans many predicted that the move was the beginning of the end; Madonna
may well be the tipping point from where we will now see a flood of
recording artists dumping record labels and where today's model will shortly
become a footnote in Wikipedia."

Slatts

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