Jim Carrollon music
Bruce Springsteen has become the latest act to deal with new business realities for the music industry by giving away his music for free.
Ahead of a new album, Magic, and a worldwide tour with The E Street Band, which includes a date at Belfast's Odyssey Arena on December 15th, Springsteen has made the album's first single Radio Nowhere available as a free download on many different sites (including ireland.com).
Giving away a track or two for free has become a popular ploy for acts and labels in recent times. They hope that the free samples will lure in an audience who will shell out for a full-length album or for future shows.
While Springsteen is a proven box office draw, radio play for his new music is no longer a given because of tightly controlled radio formats. The belief is that by giving Radio Nowhere away for free, Springsteen can bypass radio programmers and go directly to his fans.
Some music business observers have also been riffing on the notion that Springsteen should, like Prince, just give his new album away for free. After all, the logic runs, he will more than recoup the costs of such an audacious move when he tours later this year and in 2008.
However, unlike the Mail on Sunday's favourite purple pop star, Springsteen still enjoys a lucrative relationship with a major label and shows no signs of seeking to change that situation.
There is also the fact that, at this stage of his career, Springsteen's contract with SonyBMG would be very much weighted in his favour, especially when you take his huge and still highly marketable back catalogue into account.
However, Springsteen's recruitment to the ranks of free music advocates (albeit on this scale) is significant. It indicates that a heritage act such as Springsteen and his advisers are hugely cognisant that changing music business models bring new challenges - and opportunities. That the track has succeeded in building anticipation for the album and live gigs shows that their plan is working.
Radio Nowhere is available to download until Monday at ireland.com/brucespringsteen. Tickets for Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast on December 15th go on sale on September 6th.
No fall-off for the festival season
Despite the weather, summer 2007 featured more than 70 music festivals and open-air shows in Ireland.
Some promoters are already predicting that next year will be even busier, with a number of new festivals mooted and plans afoot to import UK fests Bestival and Latitude.
But this year's festival season shows no signs yet of running out of steam. In the next few weeks, Dublin music fans will have the Spiegeltent at the Fringe Festival, Green Synergy and the Most Wanted hip-hop fest.
In late October, it's the battle of the tents when Pod's Some Days Never End festival at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and MCD's Big Top in the Phoenix Park open for business.
For those seeking a weekend away, there's Sligo Live over the October Bank Holiday weekend with Duke Special, Alabama 3, what currently passes for the Buena Vista Social Club, Dervish and many more.
More albums go live
Even more acts are clambering onboard the play-your-best- album-in-full live bandwagon.
Lucinda Williams is set to play five of her albums, including Sweet Old World and Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, in their entirety at separate shows in Los Angeles and New York. Nearer home, The House Of Love will mark the reissue of their 1988 self-titled debut album with a tour, which includes a date at Dublin's Village on September 21st, where the band will perform that album in full.
Expect even more acts to have a go at this in 2008.
Free Ticket at Picnic
This weekend, special editions of The Ticket will be produced and distributed for free to festival-goers at the Electric Picnic on Saturday and Sunday.
The Ticket at the Electric Picnic will be the first time a daily publication has ever been produced at an Irish festival.
The Ticket at the Electric Picnic will contain news, interviews, the first reviews of the previous day's events, various views on what's happening at the festival, updates and a certain quota of smart comments.
The Ticket at the Electric Picnic will be reproduced via the On The Record blog from Monday.
