It’s commonplace for obscure new acts in music to make their work available for free using the many distribution mediums that exist on the Internet. Hatred of the traditional music industry has allowed a great deal of stories involving the above to seep into the media in the years since the rise and fall of Napster. What the world has yet to see, however, is a band who earned high-ranking status before the Internet embracing the Internet as a distribution tool.
That no longer holds true today. After going four years without a studio album, Pearl Jam decided to release the first single from its new self-titled release as a free MP3 download on its official website. The song contained no Digital Rights Management or other forms of encumberance. “World Wide Suicide”, a punky anti-war anthem, was downloaded roughly 250,000 times in the five days it was available. The song can now be purchased on iTunes for $1.00 (along with a free B-side) or heard for free on the band’s MySpace page. Furthermore, the band has promised that everyone who pre-orders the album from its website will recieve a free digital download of the entire new album itself, also free of DRM restrictions.
But the song wasn’t just a Web success. Between March 07 and March 12, the song was played nearly 2,000 times on popular rock stations across the US. It entered the US Modern Rock Tracks chart at #3, making it one of the highest debuts of the last several years and became the band’s first #1 on that chart since “Who You Are” in 1996 (Wikipedia.) Journalists are calling it the first-ever #1 “digital download” in the history of modern music, as it is the first song to achieve such status without the benefit of sending hard copies to radio stations and promoters for exposure.
This is especially heartening at a time when the music industry is suggesting that college students drop out of school to pay fines for downloading songs. When a band who has already become rich and famous the “old-fashioned way” gives music away to their own betterment, it sends a message to other popular acts that the Internet isn’t musical kryptonite. It also reminds fans that not every band wants to contribute to the “How will I get this to play on my iPod?” headaches found with a growing number of new CD releases.
“So what?”, you may ask. From a business standpoint, Pearl Jam is still not making any money from “World Wide Suicide” by giving it away no matter how popular it’s become. Here and now, maybe not. But ongoing conversations among the band’s most rabid fans tell a different story. Forum discussions on the fan website TheSkyIScrape.com display hundreds of people who, by their own admission, can’t wait to buy the new album on May 02nd. The general consensus is that getting to hear one of the new tracks early piqued their interest and gave them something to look forward to.
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I am going to download the track right now! The time has passed where they give the track away for “free” but you can find here http://djmonstermo.blogspot.com/2006/03/pearl-jam-world-wide-suicide-mp3.html
Glad somebody finally embraced the fact that if you put out a package of music good enough to appreciate people will buy it.