Downloading is killing the music industry. At least, that’s their claim. Consider this:
"Since the release of Give Up early last year, Sub Pop records has offered the Postal Service’s two lead singles available as free downloads on their website, and they’ve sold more than 300,000 copies of their album. Despite the fact that the songs have been downloaded for free 1.5 million times since then (or more likely because of this), Such Great Heights and The District Sleeps Alone have both been in the top 100, sometimes at the same time, on the iTunes Music Store for the past several months.
But I’ve worked with the music industry in the past… I’m pretty sure they still think we’re all a bunch of thieves."
–anildash at September 23, 2004 01:14 AM
"Since the release of Give Up early last year, Sub Pop records has offered the Postal Service’s two lead singles available as free downloads on their website, and they’ve sold more than 300,000 copies of their album. Despite the fact that the songs have been downloaded for free 1.5 million times since then (or more likely because of this), Such Great Heights and The District Sleeps Alone have both been in the top 100, sometimes at the same time, on the iTunes Music Store for the past several months.
I first mentioned Postal Service in A Different Kind of Top 10 Music List For 2004; The Postal Service downloads mentioned above can be found here. The two songs are linked here:
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
From Give Up [MP3 5.43m]Such Great Heights
From Give Up [MP3 4.07m]
Be sure to check out the live performance in the KCRW studio (real video).
Here’s a thought. Why not take the idea a step further and apply it to the tv series that make it to dvd. The industry is making a larger and larger percentage off dvd sales. But most of these sales are from people who are already familiar with the series. What about shows that are no longer on the air? What about all the great shows on HBO(and similar channels) that most people never see? How are people supposed to get excited enough to spend the money for those dvds? Why not simply offer for download the first episode of all series that are for sale via dvd (or one of the better episodes if order isn’t important)?
Only real problem might be the rebroadcasting rights.
Ok, that’s an odd coincidence. Just a few hours after posting that I see a link off slashdot from another site that scifi.com is doing this with the first episode of battlestar galactica. http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/33_full_episode/