Weird Al Yankovic: Download my songs as soon as I record them

by Brad Linder Oct 3rd 2008

Weird Al Yankovic, best known for his parodies of popular music and popular culture, is taking full advantage of the digital revolution to release his songs to the masses as soon as humanly possible.

Most popular musicians do things the old fashioned way by going into a studio, recording a bunch of tracks, editing the heck out of them, deciding what order to put them in, choosing album art, and then waiting a few months to release the whole thing to the public. Yankovic has signed a deal with iTunes to distribute his songs digitally as soon as they're recorded. A few days ago he announced on his blog that he was busy recording a single which would be available for purchase on October 7th.

The move makes a lot of sense for Yankovic, whose songs often spoof current events and current songs. As the musician notes, he typically only releases an album once every few years, which makes it hard to keep things topical. Digital distribution changes that.

I'd love to see more popular musicians take a similar approach. Not that I don't appreciate a well crafted album with a group of songs meant to be played back to back. But if there's no good reason to hold a song back for a few years until an album is ready, why not release it as a single online?

[via Slashdot]

Tags: itunes, music, weird-al-yankovic

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

kojo87 said 4:45PM on 10-03-2008

i thought this was going to be something about him offering his music for free online. didn't he do something like that at one point?

TurboFool said 8:27AM on 10-04-2008

Cool concept, but I'm so sick of the iTunes exclusives. Exclusivity to a specific store is one thing, but when that store is tied exclusively to one brand of devices it really becomes unfair. I don't own an iPod and don't want an iPod. I'm very happy with my Zune, and I buy my music in MP3 format so when something else comes along that draws my attention that's not a Zune, I'm not screwed. Deals like this just sour me on the whole thing.

Ridgecity said 8:28AM on 10-04-2008

When you are in the minority you will not everything you want.

Walmart gets more music than itunes, itunes get's more than amazon, amazon gets more than zune store.

not to mention, do you feel microsoft won't do the same thing to zune music that it did to "play for sure" if it never catches on? they don't even add zune support to their xbox360, what's up with MS?

Ridgecity said 8:27AM on 10-04-2008

He does have a song called "Don't Download This Song", that sounds like "we are the world"... very sad song... makes feel sad that Lars Ulrich can't afford his solid gold hummer anymore...

Excellent news, Hopefully more artist will follow and instead of a singles getting all the attention in a cd , every song could get playtime during a more than a couple months...

TurboFool said 8:28AM on 10-04-2008

(replying to your second post since I can't reply to a reply)

Oh, okay, then I guess since I'm in the minority I should just shut up and smile and take what I'm given? Lovely argument that I'm sure historians would agree with.

And Wal-Mart gets more music than iTunes? Lol, okay, sure. I see a hell of a lot more iTunes exclusives than Wal-Mart exclusives. Besides, Wal-Mart's shutting down their DRM servers, so they've got their own mess there.

Regardless, though, did you even READ my message? I very, very, very clearly stated that I ONLY buy my music in MP3 format for that EXACT reason. Please read before you respond. I didn't say Zune's any better in this (although I really haven't noticed any Zune exclusives yet), but I do drastically prefer their device at the moment. And that's why exclusives (notice that after the first sentence in my comment I spoke about exclusives in general, and not iTunes) are terrible for the consumers, as they lock us into specific brands of devices for as long as we want to keep the music we paid for, and they screw over large portions of the community because, after all, they're in the minority, and we all know minorities don't matter, right?

btw, the Zune and 360's marketplaces will be merging in the not-too-distant future and have heavy cross-functionality. Microsoft's already made statements to that effect. Don't take your Zune/360 news from the crazy, impatient, unobservant Zune tattoo guy.

Abdo said 8:28AM on 10-04-2008

Great! As said, why wait years to put together your songs into an album, when you can just release as soon as it's done. I thought they would be free though...

Josh said 5:07AM on 10-05-2008

I would much rather see him distribute them via the new business model ie. Trent Reznor style.

Jon Doe. said 4:07PM on 10-06-2008

Oh Al. Why did you have to go the iTunes route. $10 says it will have DRM on it.
Why couldn't you have gone MP3 on Amazon's site?

David said 10:26PM on 10-06-2008

that is incredibly genius. that is perfect for him. this is amazing.

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