Well, metal dudes and dudettes, a new beginning is here. Envy-inspiring label Seventh Rule Recordings is taking it up a whole nother level by, well, check it:
“Seventh Rule has started a BANDCAMP page and will eventually offer all our releases through it for digital streaming and downloads.While we are not going to sit here and predict the future, we are constantly making decisions on how we want to handle our presence in the digital world. In reality, the digital market has always existed as a name-your-price model, but there have always been just two prices: free, or whatever iTunes is charging. What we like about BANDCAMP is the price flexibility and the ability to support a release with whatever you want to contribute. The first 200 downloads of every release will be free. Please check here for the downloads before supporting mediafire-mega-space downloads. We are helping to cut out the middleman and albums you download directly from Seventh Rule, via BANDCAMP, will be of a much higher quality. After the free downloads have been used, the release will go up to a “Choose Your Price” scale. We are basically telling you where to get our releases for free, but you already had your own source, right? If it was up to us, we would release everything only on vinyl. Since we have chosen to share our audio files from our hard drives with you and charge a modest fee for transportation and accommodations, it’s only fair to let you decide its value.”
This is a ballsy, exciting and forward-thinking approach. Instead of whining about random blogspots, the label is joining them to beat them. Now you can easily get your free fix while also having a chance to give the bands their monetary props and, of course, the label will still be providing their face-kicking vinyl sweetness. Don’t be surprised if more labels take a similar route soon after finally coming to grips with this new paradigm. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Diesto record to check out.
