Digital Music Distribution
Two little blurbs about music distribution, one cool and one really annoying.
If you are a fan of the music videos than you may be interested in pioneering Pacific Northwest band, the Decemberists, who in addition to singing cute little songs about pirates, pioneered a whole new model of music video distribution. They created a video for their latest single ’16 Military Wives’ and then put it on their website for free distribution via BitTorrent.
What is BitTorrent? It's a protocol that allows content creators and distributors to release their material with little cost. In the olden days, the relatively high cost of bandwidth prohibited small acts from putting their stuff online. It was the case where the more popular an act became, the more you had to pay for bandwidth, which would be hard for a strapped indie to cover. Now, with BitTorrent the bandwidth is shared thus eliminating the cost for the content producer. Hopefully with this, music videos will return to prominence as an art form. Remember that they helped launch the careers of Spike Jonze and 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's Michel Gondry.
Read the Decemberists' FAQ page for more info on how to download their video.
On the less cool front, the first single from the newest Coldplay album will be available exclusively as 30-second ring tone. Personally, we think the best way to kill the charm of a new song is to release it as a ring tone. What was a cute hook the first time becomes less charming the 43rd time, except for Digital Underground's 'Humpty Dance' which is always funny.
If you are a Cingular customer with an extra two dollars and forty-nine cents to spare, feel free to buy the 'Speed of Sound.'
