De La Soul Loves You

For their 25th anniversary, they're giving away their discography for 25 hours. Ends tomorrow around noon.

http://www.wearedelasoul.com/

sweet

I love De La Soul. So much so I already downloaded all their music for free. I'm so fucking evil, stealing music etc. Nail me to a cross.

They had all their albums plus one that was all remixes, instrumentals, and other rare shit. It's about four albums worth of tracks.

But yeah, it's more the gesture than anything. It's really rare that you find artists who just want to share their work at that level, with no compensation.

It's obviously not just about "loving their fans". I mean I love De La Soul, and think what they've done is awesome. But let's not kid ourselves - it's a PR stunt. It's pretty likely that they'll be doing the festival scene around Europe this summer, and this little exercise will surely increase ticket and hence merchandise sales.

That's true... and it's not that I never let the more cynical side of me push that thought to the forefront of my stream of consciousness, but even still, I'm happy to participate in their marketing effort. Seems like a perfectly fair deal to me.

I'm certainly not knocking them, it's a fantasitic thing to do. It's just I see if for what it is. Radiohead did the same thing a few years back with In Rainbows, and they got both plaudits and critisism for it. Radiohead are wealthy enough now that they could do this with their entire back catalogue forever, and still make a shit ton of money. I doubt De La Soul are quite so financially successful, but I still can't see them being short in demand when it comes to festivals and concerts.

But yeah, fair deal indeed. Here, have our old music for nothing, and if you like us enough, pay to see us and buy our new album.

Fine by me.