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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."
These are guys who've been in the arena trying to fight unfairness with Ticketmaster and the bigger Music Houses. While they might not be everyones flavour musically, they are definately on of the bands trying to break molds with how their music is distributed. Maybe this is a little bittersweet, but damn good to see someone trying to get paid without ripping half the world off.
why wouldn't a band want people to share their videos? I could understand if they were a primary source of revenue for the band, but as far as I know they're not. These days it's not like someone's going to go to thr trouble of ripping the audio out of a video stream to obtain an illegal copy of the song (since there are other, easier ways to do that), so all in all it's just free publicity.
By releasing this for free I'm sure they would be missing out on some lost sales, maybe the RIAA will sue them.
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
This is genius! If the concept of a video is to promote your album, why not make it free to distribute? I mean MTV isn't going to play it unless your target audience are preteens. And even then they'll only show 30 seconds of it with somebody saying something stupid like "OMG! Ponies!" in the background.
And forgive me, as I'm using a Mac, but I was able to open it in QuickTime, and I could easily edit it and export it to a different format.
Albuquerque PC
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.
I disagree wholeheartedly. That unfamiliar, not-exactly-in-tune-to-the-cent pitch you hear from Eddie's voice (and at some point throughout the song, from every other harmonic instrument, as well), is something missing in today's soulless and sterile music enviornment. Call it "blue notes" (actually bluer "regions" around notes), emotion, angst, feeling; even call it "out of tune," if you want. I'll take it every day over whichever plastic, overcompressed "prostitute with a thug posse"s the labels (albeit, the same bastard labels) give us as options. Auto-Tune (and the like) do have their uses, but this is NOT one of them. There are other places to go if that's the sound you prefer.
Almost every album on the planet is distributed via BitTorrent. Some less legally than others, I suppose, but they're still there.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
What is that supposed to mean?
They produced a music video, as musicians sometimes do.
They released it under a Creative Commons license, which is rare.
This allows people to do rare things with a mainstream artist's creative content, like download it/enjoy it/distribute it for free.
Most artists would have prohibited the above mentioned activities in their license.
Thus, what Pearl Jam has done is interesting news for most of us, and it would benefit fans if other artists followed Pearl Jam's lead.
So what is there for you to possibly complain about? That they haven't sold many CDs at your store? What does that have to do with anything?
Do you have a coherent point to make, or did you just want to post incoherent ramblings?