WED TO THE WEB THE ARTS RADIOHEAD, THE RACONTEURS, REM, GNARLS

Sunday Herald, The, Mar 30, 2008 by BARRY DIDCOCK

ON Easter Monday, REM performed a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, carried live on BBC Radio 2. The band played the old favourites, of course, but they also dipped into their new album, Accelerate. It wasn't in the shops at the time of the concert. In fact it still isn't: the CD is released tomorrow. Yet many of the fans who attended the Albert Hall will have travelled there listening to it on their MP3 players or car stereos. How? Because REM, in their wisdom and I use the word advisedly released the album for free on the social networking site iLike the same day they played London. Or not quite for free: it cost fans nothing to listen, but they still had to pay to download the 11 tracks.

"It was one of those ideas that was presented to us and it seemed like a good one, so we ran for it, " REM's Michael Stipe said ahead of last week's launch. Talking about the huge effect the internet has had on the way people consume music today, he added: "you can either go with it or sit back and watch it happen." REM, it seems, are going with it. But theirs is only one rst among many. Radiohead set a precedent of sorts last autumn by releasing their new album, In Rainbows, on the web and asking fans to pay what they thought it was worth. Moreover, they announced the release just days before it happened. It was also available in physical format industry jargon for something you can hold in your hand but not until several weeks later. Last month, meanwhile, cult US rock band Nine Inch Nails ollowed suit when, completely without warning, they released a 36- track instrumental album called Ghosts I-IV via their website. Volume One is free; the others are priced between dollars-5 and dollars-10. There are also deluxe CD sets priced at dollars-75 and, for the die-hards, a dollars-300 limited edition boxed set.

It might be interesting, but this isn't the measured and controlled way that the music industry is used to going about its business. And there's more where that came from. Prince's most recent album, Planet Earth, was given away free with a British Sunday newspaper and he handed out more copies to the 140,000 people who attended his 21-night residency at London's O2 Arena last summer. Earlier this month, The Charlatans made their new album, You Cross My Path, freely available on their website. To date, there have been more than 60,000 downloads. Not to be outdone, Madonna's new album, Hard Candy, will be available as a mobile phone download on April 21, a week before it hits the shops in CD form.

Finally there are rock supergroup The Raconteurs and hip-hop duo Gnarls Barkley, who both released new albums this month. Gnarls Barkley's The Odd Couple hadn't been expected until April, but popped up on iTunes on March 18. Within two days of its digital release, it was number one in the US download chart. A CD version is released tomorrow. However, nobody even knew there was an album in the ofng from The Raconteurs, whose members include Jack White of The White Stripes.

The Raconteurs album is called Consolers Of The Lonely, and it was released on all formats last Tuesday. Recording was only completed at the beginning of March and the master tapes were taken immediately to, rst a vinyl pressing plant, then a CD pressing factory. The band's initial plan had been to simply have their label, XL Records, deliver it to shops unannounced on March 25 while making it available for download at the same time.

"The purpose, " the band wrote on their website, "[was] to get the album to the fans as soon as possible. We wanted to get this record to fans, the press, radio, etc, all at the EXACT SAME TIME [their emphasis]. We wanted to explore the idea of releasing an album everywhere at once and THEN marketing and promoting it. The Raconteurs would rather this release not be dened by its first week's sales, pre-release promotion, or by someone dening it FOR YOU before you get to hear it." The deliberately blurry black-and-white photograph on the album's front cover shows band members dressed up like turns in a 19th-century American vaudeville show. On the back, drummer Patrick Keeler holds two blank CDs in his hand.

A message of encouragement to the fans? Two fingers to the industry? Who knows. Interestingly, the band also recommend listening to the record on vinyl.

In the end, however, the surprise attack The Raconteurs planned wasn't viable. The retail outlets required some prior warning, so an announcement was made on the band's website on March 17 stating that the album would be available in a week's time. Even so, the speed of it all has been unprecedented.

So, REM's album sits on a social networking site along with thousands of unsigned bands; Gnarls Barkley premiere theirs as a download only; Prince gives his away free; Madonna's comes on a phone; and The Raconteurs keep the whole process secret until the last moment. What's actually happening here? Are gimmicks and stealth releases going to become the norm? No, insists Gennaro Castaldo of music retailer HMV.