On Tuesday, Coran Capshaw, manager of the Dave Matthews Band, said the group had agreed to set up a downloading site with Nugs.net. While other bands following a similar model have focused on selling concert recordings, the Dave Matthews Band intends to begin in March by selling downloads of its album catalog, to be followed shortly by sales of concert recordings. (RCA, the band’s record company, is to receive part of the proceeds from the sale of albums online.)
Even Phish’s record company, Elektra, which receives a small cut of the Live Phish Downloads proceeds, has embraced the band’s online marketing of its music.
“We always thought it would be nice for there to be a happy medium where the band gets more involved with the fans, and this seems to us to be a perfect way to do it,” Brian C. Cohen, Elektra’s senior vice president for marketing, said in a telephone interview. “It gives the fans access to officially sanctioned recordings. It conditions the fans to not expect to get these things for nothing, and I personally think it’s a model, both for the record business and for bands, whether signed or not, to make money from valuable content and at the same time seed the relationship in a very positive way with the fans.”
Source nytimes.com.
