Paul McCartney releases new album as DRM-Free digital download
Music wants to be free!
Kudos to Paul McCartney. His latest album for his side project, The Fireman, is called Electric Arguments, and it’s available as a “100% DRM free” digital download. It gets even better than that, though. You can buy just the digital download for $8.99, or you can purchase a CD, Vinyl, or Deluxe edition that includes access to the digital download. The download is available in 320 kbps MP3, Apple Lossless, and even FLAC!
The main page of the site also has a flash player that lets you listen to all the songs on the album from start to finish, so you can try before you buy. It’s so nice to see a professional musician not being crazy about this stuff, realizing that DRM only punishes your paying customers, and that it’s perfectly reasonable for people to want to listen to a CD before plunking down their hard-earned money for it. People are going to do that anyway, so why not let them do it through you, where you can keep track of how many people have checked it out, where they’re coming from, and if they go on to buy the CD. Good job to Paul for seeing digital delivery of content not as a crisis, but as an opportunity. Now if only his record label would get their heads out of their asses and let them put the Beatles catalog on iTunes.
CD Image by rebopper released under Creative Commons.
