With Coldplay, Indian Ocean and Black Eyed Peas putting up their hit singles online for download before releasing their albums mainstream, other artists too like Katy Perry, Usher and Kylie Minogue follow suit, making it the new trend.
Subir Malik, the keyboardist of Indian band Parikrama, thinks it was always meant to happen this way.
“Once BBC did a documentary on us because we began to release music online since 1997. In a way, we think we pioneered the trend of online music as we realised, when any kind of music is available for free online, no one would go out to buy his or her CD. Even with the big artist, the day after they release their album, it’s out on the Internet. This is just a marketing tactic to retain interest in their album, hoping that fans would buy it if they find the single good,” he says.
Usher released his new single DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love from his new album Versus online recently, whereas the album is only set to release a few months later. Singer Katy Perry too released her billboard hit California Girls months before the album Teenage Dream was set to release.
Bass player Colin D’ Cruz of The Brown Indian Band thinks this trend has picked up because people now have a choice. “I began to release my music online for free because I realised people have a choice to download online and most don’t prefer to buy. I experimented once and tried selling singles online for 75 cents but got 0 hits. When I eventually made it free, I got about 300 hits on the single. Nowadays, people can download either a single or a CD. So, if they like the song, they download just that song or two more and not the whole album. Perhaps the artists are just trying to make sure the albums sell,” he explains.
Michael Jackson’s memorial single This is it was released online after the musician’s death way before the album and the movie came out. They were all limited editions, except the online single. Rudy Wallang, lead singer of Soulmate, thinks social networking sites have lent a big hand to this trend.
“There are so many people who listen to music online, especially on social networking sites like MySpace and other sites like Amazon and iTunes, where they can buy singles on line or just download them. Perhaps, artists release them to judge the success of their music, so that the rest of the album can be a success too,” he says.
“It’s a practical choice to market your music online in this era of internet technology,” concludes Subir.