Thrill Jockey's Digital Investment

By Julene McCoy in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 1, 2006 5:26PM

It’s a digital world, and indie labels are figuring out how to compete when they still believe in the album as a whole, not just singles. The Meter takes a look at how Thrill Jockey is selling their catalog online with full-length streaming of songs and artwork with liner notes in jpeg format.

The design of the site allows us to read about the artist and listen to their album while deciding whether we'd really like to buy. Downloads will be encoded at a whopping 256 kbps – much higher than the standard of most services at 128. Also notable is that their approach is much simpler for paying the artists who sell their work through the site; each label will receive $7 out of the $10 per album sale. Individual tracks are not sold.

The formal launch of the site with more labels and artists to choose from comes later this month.