Raja Jasti’s Blog - Renaissance Thinking

The music band Counting Crows is terminating their relationship with their label Geffen Records and will go independent.

The Counting Crows have ended their eighteen-year label relationship with Geffen Records (now part of Universal Music Group), lead singer Adam Duritz says on the band’s website.

Duritz says the band will go it alone, saying “the internet opens a world of limitless possibility, where the only boundaries are the boundaries of your own imagination.” Apparently UMG didn’t approve of breaking down some of those boundaries. Duritz added “Unfortunately, the directions we want to go and the opportunities we want to pursue are often things that our label is simply not allowed to do.”

The band joins Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and others who’s explored releasing music outside of the normal label/distributor world, and more are sure to follow. Labels are pushing all of their artists to sign 360 music deals that give them a cut of every revenue source, as CD sales become increasingly shaky. Without those deals, the labels are unlikely to be able to make much money from even their top artists after 2011 or so.

We will see more and more of this. The old model of controlling distribution benefits the music labels at the expense of consumers. In the new media that allows for frictionless abundant distrubution, musicians can go directly to their fans. Budding talent can be discovered by their fans. This is a good thing.