Free Music? All of it? Surely Not?
16/04/2009 By Morpheus Rising
Ok, here we go...
Over the last few weeks there has been much said about the future of the music industry; will it survive as it is? Is the CD dead? Should YouTube pay royalties? Should music be available free online?
This last one is a 'doozie' as they say. Over recent months a plethora of established names have made their latest releases available for download, for free, prior to the release of the physical CD: NIN, Marilyn Manson, Radiohead to name but a few. Marillion even took the unheard of step of releasing their latest album to P2P sites (torrents etc) prior to its release... John Wesley has made his entire back catalogue available for download for free.... the list goes on...
We've done a lot of thinking on the subject and, in time honoured tradition, we have come to the conclusion that what's good for them can't be bad for us!!
You will now find the tracks from The Original Demos 2008 (yes, all 5 of them!) available as free downloads on Last.fm, ReverbNation , ilike, Facebook and BandCamp. Now, before you get all uppity and start shouting "But I've just bought them all from iTunes!!", please don't panic! The downloads which are available for free are not of the same quality as those which you pay for.
The tracks available for purchase are all taken from the original masters of the tracks and converted directly (by Apple, Napster etc) for their own point of sale. This means that they are of a much better sound quality than tracks which have been made from MP3 versions of the tracks.
As an example, if you pop over to Morpheus Rising's BandCamp page you'll see that you can't download the whole album for free, you have to select individual tracks and, if you choose to take the free downoad, it is only available in the lower quality MP3 version whereas the paid for versions are available in multiple formats including lossless audio flormats such as FLAC and Apple Lossless (which means it's exactly the same as we recorded it!!).
The idea behind this is that it will allow more people to hear our music, and it will allow people to let others hear our music and, once those new listeners realise how much they like us, they'll come and purchase the better quality downloads or even the physical CD... well, that's the theory, and it seems to have worked for those musicians we have spoken to who have taken similar steps.
We realise some of you may have opinions on this, and may feel quite strongly about the subject, please, feel free to get in touch and let us know what you think.
We can only wait...
All the best,
Grae, Pete, Daymo, Andy & Gibbo
MORPHEUS RISING
...resurrecting British Heavy Metal!
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