Beats and pieces

In what could be the savviest marketing move of their career, the Kaiser Chiefs have published 20 new songs on their website that fans can personalize into their own 10-track version of The Future is Medieval, the British band’s fourth album. Of course, in true DIY fashion, both the track order and cover art are variables: You are free to decide on these before downloading the whole thing for £7.50 (about $12). If you share it online — by posting a link on Twitter or Facebook — you can even sell that as a download and pocket £1 for every sale.

Since bursting onto the scene in 2005, the group from the northern English city of Leeds has sold 6M albums. Some of the songs in those platinum sellers have become personal touchstones to lost, alcohol-soaked weekends: I Predict A Riot from “Employment,” their debut, and Ruby from 2007’s “Yours Truly, Angry Mob.” However, the third, “Off With Their Heads,” released in 2008, was only tangentially memorable.

Much has changed since the Kaiser Chiefs went on their three-year hiatus, most especially with the way we consume music. Perhaps echoing Radiohead’s In Rainbows — initially made available as an Internet download in October 2007, with a pay-what-you-want price tag — “The Future is Medieval” is a symbol of where the global music industry is now and where it could be headed. Choosing to roll with the times, the Kaiser Chiefs want to give people a slice of the profits not only, I guess, to make it more special to those who buy it, but to ultimately discourage those who intend to share it for free.        

21st Century Mechanism

This mechanism, of involving the consumer in the artistic process — such as designing the track listing — is very 21st century and is one I support. While talking to an older co-worker about David Bowie, whose back catalogue I only recently discovered, I found out that those who actually grew up with his music are quite methodical when it comes to listening to the Thin White Duke’s recordings: chronologically, he suggested, from the earth-shattering “Space Oddity” onwards, and preferably on vinyl.

The best things in life are free: Even if most fans chose to pay nothing for In Rainbows, it still raked in more cash than 2003’s Hail to the Thief.

It was a novel prescription, but the idea of sitting through a fixed sequence of songs and albums — one carefully dictated by the artist and, in this case, a Bowie fan — sounded quaint. I couldn’t recall ever doing this, as I grew up on CD singles and remixes; if I did play an album, I’d automatically skip tracks I didn’t like. My attention span is built differently. (Anyway, I downloaded Low, Station to Station, Ziggy Stardust and “Heroes”, but instinctively put everything on shuffle. So much for progression.) 

Most People Are Cheap

That said, expecting the public to fork over cash for a download is as optimistic as it is risky. Spin Magazine had this to say about Radiohead’s In Rainbows web experiment: “The verdict? Most Radiohead heads are cheap. Really cheap. According to NME.com, ‘most’ fans chose to pay nothing for the album.” That horde included me.

I do have friends who, citing quality issues, really don’t mind paying for music downloads. It’s a niche activity though, and as CNN Money stated in 2010, “Even after iTunes got people buying music tracks for just 99 cents, it wasn’t as attractive as free.” I admit: I would download a car if I could.

Again, while the Kaiser Chiefs’ The Future is Medieval is groundbreaking, I doubt that its slightly less dodgy musical pyramid scheme will deter people from uploading it to a free file hosting service and calling it a day. The band, to me, is fighting a losing battle.

Legal And Free

RCRD LBL, per its FAQ, is a “premier online destination for free, curated, legal, MP3 downloads from the hottest marquee and emergent artists.” It gives artists, who are paid by the ad sponsorships on the site, a platform to display their music while allowing listeners a money-free audio experience. Since I discovered RCRD LBL in 2008, it has certainly snared my interest, and it has become my go-to source — along with The Fader — for DRM-free tunes. This business model might just be the template of the near future.

On their latest venture, drummer Nick Hodgson tells NME: “It was a great way of working, because you didn’t have to think about what you wanted to say so much. You could concentrate on making the song true to itself, rather than making it fit some bigger picture. You didn’t need to think where it would fit within a running order or a theme.”

The continued push to digital may mean the end of the traditional album, but I don’t see that as a bad thing necessarily. “The music industry has been fragmented as much as every other industry, and the labels should work with that rather than against it,” goes PDA, The Guardian’s digital content blog. I’ve always dissected albums — why live with songs you don’t like when you can delete them? — so that fragmentation is, honestly, all I know music-wise. The shift in format only confirms that, these days, it’s really the listener who’s ultimately in control.   

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