Sufjan Stevens Free & Legal on BitTorrent
Written by Smaran on December 03, 2006Sufjan Stevens is an American Folk & Indie Rock musician and singer-songwriter, three of whose singles are being distributed legally over BitTorrent. Uploaded by his record label, Asthmatic Kitty, the singles are from his albums, Illinoise and The Avalanche.
The songs are mp3s encoded at 160kbps, the same quality level eMusic.com uses.
It is also worth noting that the album which two of the songs are from was voted the no. 1 best reviewed album of 2005 on Metacritic.com, ie. the album with the highest number of positive reviews.
The three songs are:
This seems to be a new way to market music, a more open one. All three of the songs are some of the best on their respective albums, so it isn’t like Asthmatic Kitty is giving away the less popular ones. Could this work as a business model? Give away the singles that actually fuel album sales and let the people decide if they want the rest of the album? The record companies seem to be doing it the other way around right now. They try and get you to buy an entire album for that 1 song you like. It’s sneaky and underhand. It’s the reason why online music stores like iTunes seem to scare them so much. People don’t have to buy entire albums anymore! But what if some indie labels took it one step further and gave away the popular singles? I think it might work to their advantage.
Sufjan’s record label, Asthmatic Kitty has a page on BitTorrent.com and is offering other artists’ music for download as well.
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5 Responses
das rult pelo!!!! cooler link!!!
Freut mich, dass du es cool findet.
The man puts on a KILLER concert too. . . Oh, and CDs/shirts/posters at his shows are all just $10. Somebody who understands that you can make a living making good music and not ripping-off or suing your fans.
I am a debut artist who’s just recorded one of the most expensive debut albums in recent history.
Like the artists mentioned in this article, we have just released my debut album as a FREE HQ Mp3 download.
It was a tough decision for us to make because of the vast amounts spent on the album. We had two of the biggest record producers in the world work on it…. at Peter Gabriel’s Realworld studio and at Abbey Road studio in london.
Despite all that, we recognise the massive potential the internet and free albums in particular offers. We launched last friday and have already had 1000’s of DL’s all over the world.
We are hoping that people like the album enough to come to a show, which is where hopefully my bread and butter will come from.
Come over and download for free.. it takes 2 minutes to DL because we have a dedicated server.
http://www.jackrubinacci.com
Thanks
Jack
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