Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

The Barenaked Ladies are offering their latest album, “Barenaked Ladies Are Me,” as a download from their website without digital rights managment. All audio downloads are available in the popular MP3 format, encoded at 196kbps. Some audio has also been made available in FLAC file format, which is a lossless format. The files are not encrypted with digital rights management or copy protection software. Artists are slowly migrating to distributing their own content via the internet. This seems like a great idea and should scare the RIAA more than any college student downloading a pirated song. BNL also is offering live recordings from their concert tours. An album is sold for $9.99 for mp3 and $12.99 for FLAC lossless files. Essentially you are paying $12.99 for a CD, which is a better deal in my opinion than iTunes (due to lossless files).

More importantly, BNL has been very successful, topping $970,000 in gross sales from “intellectual property” during the first week following the release of “Barenaked Ladies Are Me,” according to thedigitalmusicweblog. One thing to keep in mind is that the band makes more money than selling albums through more traditional channels, with artist run labels making almost $5 per album.

I really like this business model. I think it is good for the artist and the consumer. We should really support bands that branch out like this. I think this is the best way to send a message to the RIAA and even Apple. It should be noted that the album also is available on Emusic. I was able to download the album as part of my $9.99 subscription.