Six digital music pioneers

There is currently a revolution taking place in the music industry. It is common knowledge that music distribution has changed forever with the rise in prominence of digital downloads and the success of portable media players. The media has recently been full of speculation that the record label as we know it will soon disappear. This may or may not happen one day, but the change in the industry certainly isn’t just a recent development. High-profile recording artists have embraced the Internet as a creative and promotional tool since the mid-1990s and more recently have utilised the net as a medium for selling and distributing music independently. Listed below are just a handful of those pioneers. [Please add your own digital pioneers in the comments.]

Aerosmith

Aerosmith Aerosmith have had a long, interesting and varied career, spanning four decades and fourteen studio albums. However, it is a little known fact that Aerosmith offered the first full-length commercial download back in 1994. The track was called “Head First”, recorded initially for the “Get A Grip” album but was later rejected. Geffen Records and Compuserve teamed up to offer the download over their lighting-fast 56kbps connections. The track later appeared as a B-side, but internet history had already been made.

Peter Gabriel

Peter GabrielFormer Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel is no stranger to embracing new technology. He was pioneering CD-ROM entertainment back in the 90s, and became a co-founder of On Demand Distribution (OD2), one of the first online music services. It was established in 1999 and the subsequent technology developed is now used by a number of major players in the online music market, such as Virgin Media, CD Wow! and MSN Music. It was bought by US company Loudeye in 2004, and finally by Nokia in 2006 for $60 million.

David Bowie

David BowieBowie is one of rock’n’roll’s most chameleonic stars, constantly reinventing himself through his self-image and his music. It is perhaps not surprising that one of his many forms appeared in a computer game named “Omikron: The Nomad Soul” which also featured Bowie’s wife, Iman. He even wrote the musical score which later provided inspiration for his album “hours…”. One track titled “What’s Really Happening”, had lyrics written by the winner of Bowie’s “Cyber Song Contest”, which offered fans the chance to submit their own lyrics over the Internet.

Arctic Monkeys

Arctic Monkeys This Sheffield-based band Arctic Monkeys became significant back in 2005 after entering the charts straight at number 1 with “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”. Their almost-accidental rise to popularity began as fans starting sharing rips of their CDs given away at their early gigs. As the band’s profile grew, a MySpace site was started by a fan, containing some of their songs, further boosting their fanbase, and resulting in media attention. Through radio play and sell-out gigs they became more and more popular so their debut no 1 single was no surprise, nor was their subsequent debut at the top of the album charts with “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not” in 2006.

Radiohead

RadioheadRadiohead hit the headlines a couple of months ago when they announced that the price of their latest album, “In Rainbows“, would be decided by each customer. This radical approach came about after they fulfilled their six-album contract with EMI in 2003 with the release of “Hail To The Thief” and looked at alternative distribution methods. The 10-track album was released as a zip-file, with each song encoded as DRM-free mp3 (itself a bold move), although the album will be released as a “discbox” and as a standard CD in December. It has been generally perceived as a success, with the price paid averaging at around $6, and the album being well-received by fans and critics alike. Radiohead have also announced the availability of their back catalogue on a bear-shaped 4GB USB memory stick, also containing cover art and other material.

Kylie Minogue

Kylie MinogueThis may be a little pre-emptive, but Kylie Minogue announced last week that she was launching a social networking site called “kyliekonnect“. This bold move to capture the buzz surrounding social networking sites is either going to be a stroke of genius or a marketing flop. Kylie is about to release her latest single “2 Hearts”, followed by her first studio album for four years, “X”. The big question is whether a Kylie-centric social network can provide enough content or interest to make it worthwhile for fans to keep coming back. Also, if this trend continues and not only every major recording artist has a social network, but also every sports team, comedian, TV program, etc. can any individual keep up with managing all of their profiles?

last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

40 Responses to “Six digital music pioneers”

  1. J. Kyle says:

    I think the Arctic Monkeys are a 2005/2006 band vs. a 1995/1996 band. Good stuff, though.

  2. Steve O'Hear (editor) says:

    @ J. Kyle

    Thanks. Corrected.

  3. Ryan Jarrett says:

    Apologies J Kyle – I can’t believe I missed that!

  4. Scott Clark says:

    Um… you forgot Prince. He’s been way ahead of the pack since we were using 14.4 modems.

  5. Jay says:

    I agree with Scott Clark – how could you possibly miss the major pioneer in music and the internet – PRINCE

    He’s been on the cutting edge of this technology since 1995!

  6. Eva Tienes says:

    Alright, How about:

    Barenaked Ladies – Selling a recording of everynight on their tour on USB Sticks and available for download the next day? The ladies rule.
    Willie Nelson – Pioneered the download store at http://www.livewillie.com and sells a recording everynight on a USB wristband? (Drink that in, a 75 five year old artist at the forefront because he only wants to get the music to the fans!) Willie Rules.
    Big Head Todd and the Monsters – Their Annual concert at Red Rocks this year, 2007, available onsite on little thumb drives as everyone left the theater.
    Matchbox Twenty – New album in stores on flash drive with no DRM! (Wait a sec, major record label no DRM , WHAT?!)And every night on the tour in 2008 available to fans before they leave the venue on USB wristband. Rob and the boys rule.
    Kudos to all you have listed but there is a lot of cool stuff going on (ok, ok In rainbows kinda steals everyone’s thunder…) but there is a lot of cool digital distro stuff going on that you have over looked for sure.

  7. tompox says:

    1) Check your title: it’s “Digital”, not “Digitial”
    2) Don’t forget Tompox and all the others musicians that published on http://GNUArt.net as soon as 2001 (which makes us appear before Creative Commons).

  8. TheFreshpage says:

    Very fascinating article….will be interesting to see how this translates with electronic music artists. We will do some research and see if we can post something about this in our music blog in the very near future.

    Cheers!
    http://www.thefreshpage.com/blog

  9. Kman says:

    Why is the Foreign Exchange album ‘Connected’ is not mentioned at all?

    The first album ever to be created entirely online…. it should be #1 for on-line creativity

  10. Brian E says:

    You should look at two bands in particular that are outside the mainstream music scene.

    Widespread Panic and Umphrey’s Mcgee

    These bands record their shows using high quality equipment and then sell the live recordings(which sound as good as studio quality) on their website for 10$ a show.

    This practice not only drives straight profit for the band but also drives motivation for the band to play better and better and improve on their live performances, something that is disgustingly missing in the majority of mainstream music today.

  11. Kman says:

    also, Public Enemy were pioneers on the online front back in the 90’s…one of the, if not the first group to go completely online…

    hhhmmm… i guess research doesnt matter when ur just looking to get money from advertising for articles huh?

  12. atomicleprechaun says:

    Harvey Danger really should be on this list too. check this out…

    http://www.harveydanger.com/press/why.php

    http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/

  13. Allan says:

    Ummm Wilco? Yeah this list is stupid without Wilco.

  14. BowieR says:

    part of the revolution are site like http://www.seeqpod.com ,,,major distribution sites for the innovator artists

  15. BigToddFan says:

    Inarguably, any such list as this MUST include the incomparable Todd Rundgren. Always a leader in every area of popular music in one way or another, I think it reasonable to point to MANY of his achievements as qualification. Start with the first live concert broadcast by microwave in 1978 and move ahead to 1979 when he produced the first videodisc format demo for RCA. Later on, he produced the first interactive audio-only CD-ROM, No World Order, in 1993. In 1994, Todd’s No World Order won “Best Composition/Arrangement for from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ inaugural awards and the “Best Interactive Disc of the Year” Award from Video Magazine. In 1995 he had a website up supporting The Individualist, a recording which brought him to be named one of the Top 100 Multimedia Producers by Multimedia Producer Magazine in the November 1995 issue, and also won the Digital Hollywood Award in 1996 for Best Music CD-ROM.

    That’s just some of what he’s done. You can’t get much more digital than that, and you can’t fault him for being cutting-edge digital before the Web was even a twinkle in Tim Lee-Berner’s monitor.

  16. Joey says:

    How did Trent Reznor (NIN) not make this list? Update the list while its still popular.

  17. Bargmann says:

    Hmmm, it seems all of the comments are related to the distribution-side of things…
    If memory serves, I think Megadeth was actually one of the first to put out an album (Countdown to Extinction from ’92), that was recorded/edited/mixed/mastered digitally, all the way through…

  18. PHISH should have been in your list. This band had a fan following and had a dedicated usenet page which was converted to Internet (phish.net). This band pioneered the digital download concept in its livephish.com. This was further replicated as a dedicated site (nugs.net) for various bands including Widespread Panic, Umphreys Mcgee, even Metallica

  19. Owen says:

    Yea I agree. How did Reznor not make this list?

  20. gRa says:

    Yeah, the authors obviously ripped this from somwhere. Reznor should probably be first on the list.

  21. dra says:

    What about NIN?

  22. Ryan Jarrett says:

    This is all original work my friend (spelling mistakes and all I’m afraid). This was never meant to be an exhaustive list but just a handful of examples – as indicated in the intro this was hoped catalyse debate and conversation.

  23. Marcelo says:

    Yes, Prince is definitely missing in this list.

  24. K says:

    Trent Renzor should definetly be on this list. First, he leaked a majority of his songs from NIN’s newest album, Year Zero, on flash drives dropped in bathrooms during his tour. Second, the remix of this album, Limitless Potential, was available to download legally through BitTorrent. And third, he and Saul Williams just released a new album online with a great philosophy; if you just want the songs and don’t care about quality, you can get the album for free, but if you want a CD quality version of the album, you’ll need to pay a small fee directly to the artist. This concept is how the music industry should evolve; if people just want the songs and not the quality, give it to them, if they’re a big fan, they will pay for the album because the WANT to support the artist, and if they want CD quality, they’ll have to pay for it.

  25. UM… Aerosmith! The corporate rockers to beat them all!??? Kylie Minogue? Bowie… kinda… Gabriel…. eh…. kinda…. Where the hell is Prince? Where the hell is Public Enemy? What a f’n biggoted article.

    Prince and PE should be at the TOP of the list

  26. Here’s a more interesting article about the state of online distribution: http://blocsonic.com/blog/janet_was_right_it_is_all_about_control

  27. blaine smith says:

    Where is TRENT REZNOR?!?!?

  28. Seems that a firestorm has started. : )

    When I heard about Barenaked Ladies on USB thumb drives, that was probably the most awsome of them all.

  29. DavidE says:

    How about They Might Be Giants? They used to have exclusives available on eMusic. I believe that the Dickies also had a deal with eMusic back in 1999 to distribute their new stuff on eMusic first, and eMusic had their entire catalog available.

    Also, people have mentioned Barenaked Ladies, but nobody has mentioned that they have made at least one of their albums available as a free download.

  30. trey says:

    Phish really should be up there, they invented the whole recording every show, putting it on a website, and selling them to fans for a nominal cost.

  31. thewebgal says:

    What about Robert Fripp (Ex King Crimson dude) … the DGM website – his bootlegTV site had all kinds of videos from the live concerts of his band, etc … see – http://www.dgmlive.com/about.htm

    A (Very) Brief History of DGM

    DGM began operating in 1992 as a response to the dishonest and exploitative practices of the EG Group of Companies. The EG Group collapsed in 1991, undermined by the EG partners’ ambitious interests in property and the Lloyds’ insurance market. During 1988-91 EG diverted artist income from the EG Music Group by “loans” to another of the partners’ companies, Athol & Co. This led, in turn, to the sale of phonographic and publishing copyrights controlled by EG. The sale was contested, with resulting litigation ongoing during 1991-97 between EG, Virgin Records, BMG Music and myself. At the end of the litigation, the EG partners were no longer partners and EG, as a respected player in the music industry, mostly a bad memory to those whose interests EG had claimed to represent.

    This was only the beginning of DGM.

    The new DGM site is based on the insights of David Singleton and which led to the creation of BootlegTV (1999-2001), an online music distribution company based in Seattle. BTV closed during the Great Downturn but, even by then, the interests of VCs had already prejudiced the company’s operation and direction. This parallels our experience within the music industry: the commercial interests of record companies, and other music suppliers, have an almost wholly negative effect on how music is served to open ears and hungry hearts.

    More recently, the accounting practices of Virgin and BMG have not, in the licensing arrangements that followed litigation, been ideal. A current item of interest (March 2005) is that Virgin US has lost the entire King Crimson catalogue of master tapes. To misplace the masters of a large and established catalogue requires either talent or much practice, and these are not the only two possible explanations.

  32. Alex says:

    I’m missing Chris Huelsbeck

    He composed and arranged many soundtracks for C64 and AMIGA games
    e.g. Turrican II (which is one of his greatest work in my opinion) – outstanding music on a device where anyone couldn’t believe to be able to produce such sounds

  33. Angry Dave says:

    Obviously a list compiled by someone who doesn’t know their arse from their elbow.
    How an earth did you neglect to include Trent Reznor on your ‘list’?

  34. a very good article though there are many people have been missed out. maybe you should need to create another list..a comprehensive and detailed one. but really, this is a great read!

  35. Patrick says:

    New Orleans electro-rock group MUTEMATH has gained most of their popularity soley through internet buzz from MySpace and PureVolume and have now sold more than 70,000 copies of their debut album and 30,000 copies of their debut EP. The group spent their first three years together video blogging their shows and streaming their music on the web before their debut release was finally picked up by Warner Bros in a unique deal that allows the group to retain all publishing rights to their music.

  36. monica says:

    Trent Reznor is definetly my fave!

  37. Kylie Konnect? Are you serious? Dated naming conventions aside, I signed up for that service and it’s nothing like a social networking site. All the standard features you’d expect to find are missing. The design is actually worse than MySpace and it’s completely unintuitive.

    I could launch a better social networking service with my eyes closed!

  38. Brian Sexton says:

    Where is Trent Reznor????
    He made an online ARG to promote him album…
    He put USB’s in the bathrooms at concerts…
    He came up with the Radiohead idea, but didn’t have the album ready before Radiohead…
    He released the Saul Williams record online.
    He was one of the first major artists to split from his record label deliberately
    He deserves some credit, in my opinion he single-handedly started this new revolution.

  39. Eva Tienes says:

    Alright, How about:

    Barenaked Ladies – Selling a recording of everynight on their tour on USB Sticks and available for download the next day? The ladies rule.
    Willie Nelson – Pioneered the download store at http://www.livewillie.com and sells a recording everynight on a USB wristband? (Drink that in, a 75 five year old artist at the forefront because he only wants to get the music to the fans!) Willie Rules.
    Big Head Todd and the Monsters – Their Annual concert at Red Rocks this year, 2007, available onsite on little thumb drives as everyone left the theater.
    Matchbox Twenty – New album in stores on flash drive with no DRM! (Wait a sec, major record label no DRM , WHAT?!)And every night on the tour in 2008 available to fans before they leave the venue on USB wristband. Rob and the boys rule.
    Kudos to all you have listed but there is a lot of cool stuff going on (ok, ok In rainbows kinda steals everyone's thunder…) but there is a lot of cool digital distro stuff going on that you have over looked for sure.

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