Fed up with the Recording Racket's bureaucracy and skulduggery,
The Cure abandon
recording labels, announce they will release their new material
exclusively on the Internet. This will include band material as well as
Robert Smith's collaborations with unnamed outside artists. And judging by
Robert's sentiment, it's quite likely to be in MP3, and not some fascistic access-controlled format.
Mind you, this will not include the back-catalogue, as in the US,
AOL Time Warner owns that in perpetuity, thanks to the RIAA's legal manouvering.
"It was something the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association Of America, the major labels' lobby group) put through. It is so anti-artist, it is incredible. It almost defies belief. I don't own any past Cure material, full-stop, in North America. It reverts back in the rest of the world, but that doesn't help me."
Of course, they could try doing something like this guy did, and make their MP3s available for downloading anywhere outside of the US.
(via 1.0)