Marillion Gives Away New Album

The British rock band, Marillion, have pre-released their new album by giving it away for free on P2P file sharing networks. Their new double-album, Happiness is the Road, is set to be released on CD, October 20th. For file-sharers though, the good news is that the 19-track album can be legally downloaded now from certain BitTorrent sites, such as The Pirate Bay, Mininova, ISOHunt, etc. When the songs are played for the first time, a pop-up screen will ask for your email address. The band hopes that they can generate money from the sale of CDs, merchandise that it sells, and gig ticket offers via email promotions.

The rock group's Keyboard player, Mark Kelly, told BBC news, "We're willing to try new things and we want to see what happens. Everybody's aware of the effect of peer-to-peer file-sharing on CD sales and the music industry in general."

Following on from the likes of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, Marillion have now raised the bar in the way that music is offered to the masses. This move is likely to annoy representatives of the music recording industry, like the RIAA and BPI, who have targeted P2P file sharing networks in particular as the biggest source of music piracy. What makes Marillion remarkable is that it has bypassed record companies since the 90s and has used the Internet to great effect for its promotion and revenue.

In an interview with BBC news, Mark Kelly commented about Radiohead's Internet experiment, "People forget Radiohead were still number one in the album charts. They also say they weren't very successful because they only got an average of £2 per download. But they wouldn't have got £2 per sale from EMI, so in those terms it was actually a big success, and they still sold CDs."