Established Artists Plan Post-Label Careers

Oasis and Jamiroquai are contemplating distributing their music directly to fans without a label for an optional price the way Radiohead started doing yesterday, according to the London Telegraph. Neither band currently owes their label another album, so there's nothing to stop them from trying, should Radiohead's experiment prove to be a resounding success. (Another British band, the Charlatans -- known stateside as the Charlatans UK -- announced that it will distribute its music for free through website of the XFM radio station, somewhat in the style of Prince.)

As many have pointed out, however, Radiohead is only able to pull this off (assuming that it's working) because of its high profile -- which is, to a certain extent, a result of their having been promoted by their former label (EMI) for so long before that.

On Wired's Epicenter blog, one user speculated,

"The only reason they could pull something like this off without makinga dent in their income is because they are a huge world-renowned forcein the music world. If 'Pablo Honey' [the first Radiohead album] was sold and promoted solelythrough a website at a fan-determined cost, the 17 people who purchasedit via that medium would have been happy, but alas 'Radiohead' would beanother on the 'where are they now' circuit."

It's possible that we're entering a strange stage of the digital music revolution, in which established artists let their contracts run out to sell music directly to fans, and only a certain breed of LA band bothers signing to a label at all. If labels become obsolete as their well-known bands bail out, where are tomorrow's "established" artists going to come from? Hopefully not MySpace.