I’ve been a Counting Crows fan ever since “Recovering the Satellites” was released back in 1996. There’s just something about the combination of Adam Duritz’ voice and their collective musical talent that feels right. They’ve been relatively quiet for a few years, working on a number of different projects.
One of those projects is their new album, “Underwater Sunshine”, which is actually a cover album. They released several tracks from that album on BitTorrent recently – yes, the ‘pirates’ haven’ BitTorrent (if you believe most folks in the music industry). Duritz isn’t the first artist to release content via torrent, and he won’t be the last. His attitude towards it, though, is what really makes me glad to be a fan:
Duritz said that the major labels don’t understand many of the changes going on in the music biz these days. “They are so used to being in control – being out of control must be really scary,” he told me. Labels would continue to pay huge sums of money to promote their music in stores and on the air — a practice commonly known as payola — even though the audience on BitTorrent is much more interested in music than people listening to radio nowadays, argued Duritz: “The future is not just in bribing radio and record stores.”
What a great example of a content creator thinking outside the box about ways to be where his fans already are, instead of trying to force fans to do it the way the band (or label) wants them to.
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Ricky Cadden 