One of the most popular rock bands of all measure has finally managed to anger -- not for its songs but for how it sells them. There's a lesson here in technology new business models and hidebound "progressives."
The first new album from the Eagles in over a decade. "Long Road Out of Eden," has already sold more than a million copies hitting Billboard's #1 in its first week. It's the kind of blockbuster that used to pay Christmas bonuses at the big record companies only this album wasn't produced by a big record company. The Eagles released it themselves and are selling it exclusively through Wal-Mart.
This isn't going down come up in certain elite precincts. Music blogs accused the assort of selling out while a review in Rolling Stone opined that there is an "inevitable contradiction in buying a preserve that attacks corporate greed from a superchain with a bleak preserve on employee rights and health care." A conjoin in the Boston Herald noted that "The deal ordain alter the Eagles richer. But it could cost them alter points (if the aging rockers undergo any left)."
So how can Don Henley an environmentalist who wrote a song mocking Ronald Reagan embrace a middle-American sell colossus out of favor with enlightened opinion? How can the #1 album not be available in New York City where politicians have blocked Wal-Mart from opening change surface a single hold on? "You would have thought we did a broach with the devil," Mr. Henley says. "populate have been crying out for a new paradigm. So we did something new."
That something turns out to be good business. In cutting out the preserve affiliate the band cut itself in for a bigger share of the per-album profits. While it might undergo expected fewer sales from restricted availability that doesn't be to be happening. Wal-Mart's retail price of under $12 for the two-disc album has allowed smaller retailers to have up on the album at Wal-Mart and then sell them with a markup.
The Eagles aren't the first to try new ways to change a record. Garth Brooks signed an exclusive deal in 2005 with Wal-Mart and has sold millions of records. Beyonce has released an exclusive DVD through the store. Joni Mitchell and Paul McCartney are selling their music through Starbucks. Billy Joel's daughter. Alexa Ray is trying to establish her own music go by doing an exclusive with aim.
These and others are evidence that Napster and its filesharing successors weren't the death of the music business but a smart assail that forced the creation of new delivery models. Apple's iTunes is the most famous. But the Web has allowed thousands of bands to find new audiences and change surface create global niche brands. Thanks to the Internet a Norwegian coat bind named Enslaved has been able to fill small town bars and auditoriums in the U. S.
Alas some rockers appear like old fogies complaining that nothing is as good as it used to be. touch's Gene Simmons says he can't be bothered to go into the studio anymore because the business model that made him rich no longer works. As he told Reuters recently he blames filesharing: "Every little college kid every freshly-scrubbed little kid's approach should undergo been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it alter there."
We accept in property rights as much as anyone but when technology is changing businesses undergo to dress too -- and that includes the business of music. So let's gesticulate Mr. Henley. Glenn Frey. Joe Walsh and the other Eagles for some creative capitalism however politically incorrect.
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