Paul McCartney releases new album as DRM-Free digital download

2008 December 8
by Medieval Cow in Media, Technology
Music wants to be free!

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.

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13 Comments leave one →
2008 December 8
Slow Motion Walter permalink

The Beatles’ discography remains the most glaring omission in the iTunes Store selection, but there’s also, what, Metallica and AC/DC off the top of my head. But one would hope that having the most significant surviving songwriter of the band be so wholly onboard as anti-DRM would be kind of a big deal.

2008 December 8
Djelibeybi permalink

Metallica is on iTunes, at least in Australia. I’ve bought a bunch of their songs recently.

2008 December 8
Medieval Cow permalink

Metallica is indeed on iTunes, but no AC/DC. You’d think Paul and Ringo wanting their music on there would mean something, but Apple Records still has their panties in a bunch about Apple Computers getting to use the name Apple. And that only got worse when Apple started selling music. It’s just a dumb pride thing, but at this point keeping your catalog off iTunes means you must not like money.

2008 December 8
Fionnabhair permalink

Or maybe they really, *really* don’t like DRM?

2008 December 8
Sergei permalink

I thought Apple and Apple had settled their differences two years ago or so.

2008 December 8
hemlock martini permalink

Isn’t it “Sir Paul,” now? Hasn’t he been knighted or something?

2008 December 9
Medieval Cow permalink

Fionna, I don’t think it has anything to do with how Apple Records feels about DRM. Even if it did, you can put tracks up on iTunes DRM-free now.

Sergei, they settled their differences in court, yeah, but Apple Records is still upset because they lost. And as such, there is still no Beatles catalog on iTunes. Though they’re constantly in negotiations, and a breakthrough has been perpetually “right around the corner” for some time now. It’s all quite dumb.

It is indeed “Sir Paul” now. We apologize for the oversight.

2008 December 10
S A Frank permalink

I’ve got flash 10, tried to buy the album, I just get 99% black boxes, I managed to get to the credit card form (I think), but I can only see the outlines. Anyone have a URL for a normal form? Seems like a stupid application for flash. I tried it again with 9.0.124 (they claim anything 9.0.115 or newer will work). What a silly use of flash, not to mention the encryption aspect.

2008 December 10
Medieval Cow permalink

The form seems to work for me, but I don’t see any way around the Flash. If you disable Flash and/or Javascript, it just doesn’t work. Oh well, that is indeed a silly use of Flash, but I give him more points for the DRM-free lossless tracks than I take away for the crappy website design, which he probably had much less of a hand in. It does say the info is sent via SSL when the Flash form loads properly, though.

2008 December 10
24.24.1.101 permalink

Trent Reznor developed this release methodology for the Ghosts I-IV albums. I’m really glad to see that yet another famous artist has caught on to the fact that fans want choices and no DRM.

2008 December 11
Texas Music Scene » The Daily Chord - Thursday, December 11 permalink

[...] McCartney’s side project available as DRM-free download Post from The GWire. [...]

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2008 December 12
Suburban Guerrilla » Blog Archive » The Fireman permalink

[...] a new McCartney album, and he’s selling it with no DRM technology. You can download it or listen to it [...]

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2008 December 18
Susan permalink

It’s not Apple Records that is holding up the catalogue on iTunes, it’s EMI holding out the negotiations. People must remember that so many parties have their hands on different rights to the Beatles music, Paul, Ringo and the estates of John and George, don’t have the total control. EMI and Sony/ATV are also involved, plus Apple, plus Apple Records (The Beatles).

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