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The Great Pumpkin has announced he'll release the next Smashing Pumpkins album -- all 44 projected tracks of it -- piecemeal online for free. Superfans can shell out for periodic EP packages of 4 songs each, and super-duper fans can buy a box set of the whole shebang once (if?) all 44 tracks are released.
Yeah we're skeptical of this plan, and are filled with great doubt it'll actually find its way to completion, but we do have to give kudos to Corgan for embracing this business model, especially after shafting both indie stores and fans with their latest overly marketed flop. No kudos at all, though, for naming the forthcoming album Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. Ick.
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Embracing this business model? He was giving away free albums on the Internet 9 years ago.
It's no wonder he has some kind of complex when people give NIN/Radiohead all this praise for releasing free music when he beat them to it by a couple years.
I assume you're referring to this album. I guess what Radiohead did with In Rainbows was slightly innovative since it allowed people to name their own price, William Shatner style.
Machina II was a collection of outtakes, so it doesn't quite qualify as the same thing as Radiohead or NIN releasing an album of new material, but I'll grant he at least offered them up -- in low bitrates I might add -- for free.
About being outtakes: he wanted to release another double album but the record company wouldn't have it. So yeah, technically outtakes in name but not really in spirit.
Low bitrates: this was 2000, before many people cared about what a bit rate was or even had mp3 players. He also gave the vinyl edition to several prominent fans to be transferred over into FLAC for the die-hards.
It's good news, I'm just saying that there was a precedent and you can hate on the ol' Billster all you want but credit is due where credit is due.
If I'm not mistaken, his original idea was to offer Machina II as a free download when people bought Machina, which the record company wasn't interested in.
So again, still innovative and ahead of the curve.
And I believe the vinyl of Machina II was also given to media outlets who had shown the Pumpkins long-time support, including Chicago radio stations WXRT and Q101, both of whom broadcast the record for people to record.
On the SP collection on archive.org, there are a few different rips of the album from these different sources.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=machina%20ii
Might I add that the Radiohead "In Rainbows" thing basically amounted to a publicity stunt? They signed to a label after all was said and done. NIN and Pumpkins are going at it without a label.