The last few months have been pretty interesting. I’m thinking back to Prince’s freebie distribution of his Planet Earth in a Sunday paper. Lately, we’ve had Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails dissing and then divorcing his record label. Radiohead have gone and released their album over the Internet, allowing fans to pay whatever they think the album’s worth.

There’s an interesting article over on the CNN website about all this, citing other major artists making innovative decisions about their careers:

Earlier this year, Paul McCartney signed with Hear Music, a startup label launched by coffee retailer Starbucks Corp. and Concord Music Group, rather than going to a major.

Even the Eagles are going it alone with their upcoming album, “Long Road Out of Eden.” The group, which has sold more than 120 million albums worldwide, will release the album exclusively through Wal-Mart stores.

The latest news is that Madonna may be considering dropping her long time label Warner Bros in favour of a new arrangement with Live Nation.

It’s worth noting that at the unsigned scale, artists have MySpace and other Internet properties to connect with their audiences. At the level I like to call ‘international superstar’, the opportunities are far greater. And while I’m not really interested in what Madonna’s arrangements are (as long as she keeps her aging lycra-clad arse away from me), this hopefully represents a seismic shift in how musicians think about promoting their work.

I don’t think this means the end of the traditional ‘evil recording industry’ model – too many artists still want nothing more than a major deal – but it’s nice to see other opportunities springing up for musicians.

The wait-and-see will be in how these pioneering artists fare in this new industry – will they sacrifice their careers for their beliefs, or will they eventually return, cap-in-hand, to their original labels?

It seems for a number of years, acdc.com was actually a porn site. The owners cashed in on fans who typed in the domain name expecting to find information about the band, but instead they got a wide variety of porno.

Although the band are well known for sexual innuendo in their songs, apparently the porn link was a ‘touch too much’:

“The young fans are so net savvy it’s the first thing they do,” label manager Sam Horsburgh told News.com.au. “The push to get it back came predominantly because they knew there were a lot of younger fans coming through.”

“Feel free to visit us from work, school or, for long-time visitors to the site, from the usual privacy of your basement,” a statement issued by band members said.

Good news for AC/DC, and apparently they’re on the verge of releasing a new 5-disc live DVD. Just in time for Christmas.

2007 is definitely a watershed moment in post-Led Zeppelin history. Not only do we have a one-off gig by the remaining members of the band, but there’s a new ‘Best Of’ compilation, Mothership coming up for release. The biggest news of all is that the band have finally succumbed to releasing their music via digital downloads.

This is a big deal for Led Zeppelin. Remember, this is a band who refused to release singles in the UK and who thought that their albums should be experienced as a complete package.

Now, people will be able to buy selected tracks individually. I hesitate to say ‘fans’, because any self-respecting fan will have the entire back catalogue anyway! Imagine buying The Rain Song without having Over The Hills And Far Away. Or Stairway To Heaven not being preceded by The Battle Of Evermore.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not comfortable with that. However, if it gets Led Zep’s music out there to a new generation of fans, I’ll hold my tongue. On the positive side, if Stairway is available to purchase as a single track, it could feasibly make it into the UK singles charts for the first time ever. I’d buy an extra copy just for that reason.

More On The Zeppelin Downloads

The quotable quote from Jimmy Page was:

?We are pleased that the complete Led Zeppelin catalog will now be available digitally. The addition of the digital option will better enable fans to obtain our music in whichever manner that they prefer.?

This move by the band will see their music distributed via services like iTunes, although the scarier notion is that the songs will now be available as ringtones. Props to Rolling Stone for the line “Because no cell phone is complete if it?s not screaming out the opening lines of ?Black Dog? when it rings”.

As well as being able to search for music via the website, you can download a piece of software that plugs into your iTunes or Windows Media Player and it’ll give you recommendations based on your MP3 collection.

I tried a random sample and chose some old Alice Cooper songs in iTunes and it trawled my music database and pulled out related material I’d forgotten I even had! And I have to say, the relevance was pretty good.

As well as determining the related music, The Filter helpfully creates a playlist for you in iTunes and it looks like it can export your music to an iPod or any connected USB storage device.

The interface has some neat tricks to help you find related artists, albums and reviews on the web. For music discovery it tied into my iTunes music store and found the albums I needed to complete my collection. All very neat tricks.

The Filter seems to avoid unsigned, non-mainstream bands though. That’s something I’ve like to see addresses at some stage, perhaps also with social voting to allow good quality music to rise to the top whether it has big label backing or not.