Citing a change in the musical landscape over the past few years, the rock band The Smashing Pumpkins have announced they will no longer record any new albums and instead will release singles for iTunes only.
The once extremely popular band who took a 7 year break before returning in 2007 noted that “disappointing sales and a comparatively poor reception” for their comeback album ‘Zeitgeist’ also influenced the decision.
Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins guitarist and lead vocalist, added, “We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles and skip over the rest.”
“The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.”
Corgan does feel there are some artists that can “buck the trend” because of how influential they are.
“When Bruce Springsteen puts out a new album, I pay attention. Same with Neil Young. Because they’re major artists who have something to say. I consider us in that category. When we do something it should be taken seriously, even when we’re off.”
Result for: new albums
IsoHunt, the public torrent site currently in legal trouble with the MPAA, has announced that it has made a new partnership with Creative Commons music distribution site Jamendo and will offer over 10,000 free and authorized albums on the site.
Despite coming under attack from the MPAA in 2006, IsoHunt has refused to shut the site down and continues to add features to the site. The main feature is the continued addition of Creative Commons licensed content. All CC media is free to be shared and licensed by its creator. The most notable use of CC recently is Nine Inch Nails releasing their Ghosts album earlier this year, for free, using a CC license.
Jamendo is a site that indexes Creative Commons licensed music and just recently hit 10,000 albums available. Adds Laurent Kratz, CEO of Jamendo, “Jamendo uses the Creative Commons licensing scheme to keep the rules very straight forward : copy as much as you can eat, the artist, the right-holders are ok. The new thing about partnering with a torrent portal like isoHunt, is that Jamendo has started an editorial work on top.”” Kratz added. “In order to maximize the interest of millions using torrent search engines every day, it was critical to only highlight a subset of all the albums we receive every day. It’s not about discriminating one band from another, it’s about getting anonymous BitTorrent fans to Jamendo, and discovering unsigned bands from everywhere in the world.”
“We receive up to 500 new albums per week, from more than 60 countries in the world,
