Sub Pop: Leading The Record Industry By Example
Finally a record label gets digital downloads right. Sub Pop, home to artists including Iron and Wine, David Cross, The Go! Team and The Album Leaf have announced that they are selling many of their albums online in 192khz MP3 format. Full albums currently cost $9.90 and the only EP (Flight Of The Conchords) costs a mere $4.
Here is the best part. You can re-download the mp3s at ANY time. Even if they add bonus tracks or make the music a higher bitrate, you don’t have to buy the newest version. My speculation is that in 5 years when bandwidth is better you’ll be able to download uncompressed .WAV or .FLAC files. Who needs a CD then? Hopefully other indie labels follow suit. Don’t expect any of the dumb asses running the majors to do this anytime soon but if they did things would be a whole lot better for labels and music fans alike.
Sub Pop also claims “we have every intention of making rare and out-of-print titles available exclusively through our shop.” So soon you may be able to purchase the Nirvana “Love Buzz” single for a lot less than $1000. It won’t be the extremely rare vinyl version but who cares, records are for hipsters.
The full catalog is here.
My top 3 recommendations:
Iron & Wine- The Shepherd’s Dog
David Cross - It’s Not Funny
Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
- Posted by Clint Miller on November 7, 2007 at 6:04 pm
