I was reading an article on Musical Independece Revolution about how a number of bands are skipping past the record labels and selling directly to the fans. Basically doing what has been said they need to do for decades now.

Looks like Radiohead’s latest independent approach to album promotion and sales, basically giving away their latest LP for how much you see fit, has sparked a wave a of revolution amongst the influential bands in the industry. Yesterday it was time for Trent Reznor and NIN to join in, after terminating their contract with their label and announcing “some exciting times for 2008.” Today we’ve found out that Oasis, curently unsigned to any label, are considering following the same golden path as Radiohead and release future albums in the same manner.

English alt veterans The Charlatans are also giving away their next, yet untitled, eleventh album, completely free as a digital download. Alan McGee, the musical impresario behind Oasis and Charlatans, believes that the business model for selling music is moribund and that future income will largely come from ticket sales for live shows and merchandising.

“I thought, ‘well nobody buys CDs anyway’. If you talk to a 19-year-old kid, they don’t buy CDs. In eastern Europe, nobody buys a CD – everything is digitally downloaded from the internet for nothing. I came to the conclusion, ‘Why don’t we just give it away for nothing’.”

Also a few months back Prince gave away an estimated three million copies of his latest album,”Planet Earth,” with The Mail on Sunday, driving ticket sales for his record-breaking series of concerts at London’s O2 Arena. Clearly giving away albums isn’t quite as crazy and foolish as people may think, many artists have had more benefits then actual downsides, but this seems to apply to well established bands and artists. What about the emerging, young and aspiring bands? I’ll leave you to ponder upon that.

[Musical Independece Revolution]

With all that, and the fact that their campaigns against piracy only getting mostly grief and so far working in the negative on the lawsuits. They have only won one case of note, and that was recently and still in appeal. Add to it the above news about Radiohead (BTW - the Radiohead album will be sold sans DRM also. Meaning they are really understanding what their fans want.) to the fact that even the normal rumors are showing a lot of discontent with the record labels. And those that are still with the record labels, few are still pushing for anti-download and more protections (like Metallica).

Edit: And to add to everything else was the announcement that Madonna just left her Record Label to instead sign with a promotor LiveNation for distribution for $120 Million Dollars.  Mind LiveNation is still pretty coporate as a child company of Clear Channe, but they are not the typical Label.