Earlier this summer, an unforeseen surprise caused Christmas to come early for music geeks everywhere, and it presents two starkly contrasting approaches to the current music market. I was able to get my hands on Eminem's Relapse and Wilco's the album in the same week, but what made it such an unexpected celebration is the fact that Wilco's album wasn't supposed to come out until June, yet it matched Eminem's May 15 release.
This isn't surprising to hear as most albums leak before their release date. The real surprise is that Relapse was actually released when it was scheduled to.
To ensure nobody got their hands on Relapse early, Eminem and Dr. Dre were literally the only two people in the world with the final cut of the album until a week or so before it was released. Talk about paranoid. Not even the label executives were aware of what the controversial content may contain. But on a personally owned major label (Aftermath), coming from someone who still cares about album sales, this is what it takes nowadays to keep an album a secret—unless you forego all promotions and put out an album spontaneously like the Raconteurs did last year.
Flip that coin and you have Wilco. Wilco (the album) was slated for summer release on June 28. Oops, it leaked May 14, and in reaction to this unfortunate event, Wilco posted a link to download the album from their official website. They actually decided to give it away themselves.
I can think of one small perk: Reports of hundreds of thousands of hits to their website had to reassure them that the masses out there were waiting on their music.
To me, that makes Eminem's tactics pointless. For as close to his chest as he held his finished product, I still found out about it and got myself a copy in the same way as Wilco's. Preventing leaks until the album's official release date doesn't require more people to buy it, it simply makes more people wait longer for it. In the end, it's not more money for Eminem, just more headaches.
Looking back further, I think Radiohead's strategy for In Rainbows has to be the best way of saving yourself the headaches of commercial releases while still managing to make money that loyal fans are willing to spend on your work. It's a perfect compromise.
First, promoting your music on your website and social network pages is easy and free, plus you have complete control over the release process and fans could (or at least I would) avoid sites with secondhand copies. Second, asking fans to pay what they feel appropriate draws artistic sympathy by displaying a disregard for the commercial aspect of the industry, as well as showing confidence in your work. They just want their music out there to share it with people and are grateful for any listeners.
These are the artists I'm willing to pay for, whereas Eminem, who has already sapped the market during more fruitful times, is lucky he's so talented otherwise his artistic integrity would be completely compromised by his comparatively greedy strategy. Which is why I consider Radiohead's method the perfect compromise. No unnecessary buildup and an opportunity for the artists to potentially control ALL profits from sales.
Yet the market remains in flux as middlemen like iTunes, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Rhapsody, etc. step in to add a recognizable name to online distribution in return for a sizable portion of the profit. It doesn't really make sense to me to pay for an album unless the artists are doing it themselves and getting most of the money, but until that becomes the norm, distribution strategies will continue to polarize the industry between the greedy and grateful.
Think KFC's original blend of spices and Coca-Cola's secret formula are the only secrets that deserve to be known by only two people? Tell Justin about it at jstephani@wisc.edu.
