Back in
the early nineties, Pearl Jam was one of a handful of bands
who swooped down out of Seattle and changed the face of rock
music seemingly overnight. Now, a decade later, with fellow
grunge bands gone by the
wayside, Pearl Jam stands alone, having outlived its peers
-- quite literally, in the case of Nirvana and Alice in Chains.
Considering that the post-grunge road is littered with fractured
bands and dead vocalists, just lasting this long stands as
perhaps Pearl Jam's most improbable accomplishment.
Earlier
this year,
the band gained a new distinction: Pearl Jam
is the most famous band on
earth without a record label.
And by
that, I don't mean "between record labels," or "seeking a
new record label," or "broke
up a long time ago and no longer makes records". I mean,
they don't have a label anymore, for
crying out loud.
You see, when Pearl Jam's long-term deal with Sony Music's
Epic label finally expired
this year, Eddie Vedder and company simply chose to go
forward on their own. At this time of crossroads in the
music industry, Pearl Jam is content go forward producing
and marketing its own records and handling its own affairs.
As a fan of the band from day one, and a follower of
their career throughout, I can tell you that I'm not
surprised by this one bit. The band was the first to
stop making music videos for MTV, the first to shun Ticketmaster's
high fees, and certainly the first alternative rock to
testify to Congress about the matter.
This month,
Pearl Jam took its first baby steps of its post-record-label
existence when it recorded the song "Man of the Hour" for
a movie soundtrack, and then began selling physical copies
of the single from its own website for five dollars. Although
it took a few weeks, the song finally found its way to the
iTunes Music Store yesterday, as the "New Music Tuesdays"
email from Apple was so cheerful in informing me. Not a surprising
move, considering the fact that Pearl Jam has been offering
bootlegs of its recent concerts on a per-track basis in iTunes
for some time. But when I decided to check up on the band's
progress by visiting pearljam.com,
I went to the downloads page and was greeted by this:
Yep,
those are iTunes "buy" buttons, of the same variety that
AOL throws at its users. And sure enough, clicking on an
iTunes button launches iTunes, takes you to the Music Store,
and displays the appropriate album for preview or purchase.
I haven't seen the boys from Pearl Jam get this blatantly
commercial since...well, ever. It's simply not the band's
style to latch onto any corporation's promotional
ventures. But nonetheless, there's a "download iTunes" button
right on Pearl Jam's homepage, just
in case anyone doesn't already have the software.
Granted,
all of the albums listed above still belong to Sony/Epic,
so they were covered when Apple did its negotiating with
the "big five" record labels. But with this new single, Pearl
Jam is apparently doing its own negotiating directly with
Apple to get the song into the iTunes Music Store. And when
Pearl Jam releases its next full album next year, the band
will do so with no record label, but we can only assume that
it
will appear in the Music Store as well.
So
guess what? For all practical purposes, iTunes is Pearl
Jam's record label...or the closest thing the band is going
to have to a label. Now sure, the band might go ahead and
produce a physical CD to place in retail stores, and I'd
imagine
that the album might be available through Napster and the
other also-rans. But the bottom line is that Pearl Jam is
pointing its fans to iTunes. Including all the live bootleg
albums and links to individual songs, pearljam.com contains
over two
thousand
clickable links
to iTunes. Can you tell which way the band is leaning here?
As
time goes on and more bands follow Pearl Jam's lead in choosing
to go forward without a record label, will they further follow
that lead by fully embracing iTunes? I hope so. Pearl Jam's
first album was the first CD I ever owned, and I remember
thinking back on how much improved the CD was over the cassette
tapes that came before it. I believe the big selling point
was that I could actually jump specifically to the start
of a track. A dozen years later, the technology hadn't improved
one bit, until Apple got into the game. Today, I bought Pearl
Jam's latest single by clicking the mouse once
and
waiting
about
eight
seconds for it to download. I've been listening to it ever
since. Step, up, I dare you, and tell me that Apple hasn't
changed my life.
Oh, and
the song itself? It's a soft and subtle
track, and most of it doesn't even feature percussion. Nothing
at all like Pearl Jam's first album all those years ago --
but still just as excellent. Things sure change, don't they?
