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Pearl Jam Releases Video Under Creative Commons
minitrue writes "Pearl Jam released their first music video in quite a while under a Creative Commons license allowing anyone to "legally copy, distribute and share the clip" for noncommercial purposes. Creative Commons thinks this may be the first video produced by a major label ever to be CC-licensed. So although the file is only available as a free download via Google Video through May 24, fans can continue sharing it online themselves in perpetuity."
Another cool thing the band does is sell all their concerts via download in either MP3 ($9.99) or FLAC ($14.99); in the previous Canadian tour the downloads were often available within 24 hours of the show, now they're a couple days later. These shows are soundboard quality (pretty much the best you can hope for in a "bootleg") and completely DRM. The band is even cool about people trading shows; they've stated in the past they don't expect the average fan to buy every show -- just get a couple, like the ones you go to, and trade with your friends. In the 2000 tour, they were selling actual CD's of their shows for near cost (9.99 for a double CD), I don't believe the band themselves made a profit from the sale. This was in order to stop the ridiculous prices their old bootlegs went for on eBay despite that fact that you can get almost any show for free by just asking on alt.music.pearl-jam.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
I don't think a band that debuts at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 chart is "an over-the-hill burnout band, trying desperate internet publicity stunts in order to stay relevant."
Considering Tool was at #1 that same week, I would say Pearl Jam is still quite relevant. Will they sell as many albums as quickly as they did with Ten or Vs.? Maybe not, but they have gone Platinum on every album they have released. IIRC.