Weird Al Yankovic: Download my songs as soon as I record them
Weird Al Yankovic, best known for his parodies of popular music and popular culture, is taking full advantage of the digital revolution to release his songs to the masses as soon as humanly possible. Most popular musicians do things the old fashioned way by going into a studio, recording a bunch of tracks, editing the heck out of them, deciding what order to put them in, choosing album art, and then waiting a few months to release the whole thing to the public. Yankovic has signed a deal with iTunes to distribute his songs digitally as soon as they're recorded. A few days ago he announced on his blog that he was busy recording a single which would be available for purchase on October 7th.
The move makes a lot of sense for Yankovic, whose songs often spoof current events and current songs. As the musician notes, he typically only releases an album once every few years, which makes it hard to keep things topical. Digital distribution changes that.
I'd love to see more popular musicians take a similar approach. Not that I don't appreciate a well crafted album with a group of songs meant to be played back to back. But if there's no good reason to hold a song back for a few years until an album is ready, why not release it as a single online?
[via Slashdot]
