You think Radiohead or David Byrne or Trent Reznor or Girl Talk had unique distribution models? Well, Scottish outfit Idlewild are taking distribution to new heights with the announcement that fans can now pre-order the band's new album BEFORE IT IS EVEN RECORDED.
According to the album's website, the group is offering a chance to buy (for £15, or about $22) a limited-edition CD and free download of the to-be-recorded album, plus at least one bonus track, which will all come within weeks of the LP's completion. The album will be the band's sixth, following 2007's Make Another World (Sanctuary Records).
Your £15 also gets you:
- 15 download tracks of your choosing from live recordings of the band's series of "album by album" shows (where the band plays an entire album each night for five nights) in Glasgow this December
- your name in an album booklet and on a roll-call on the website, and
- exclusive access to a members-only area of the Idlewild website.
If you are wondering who is going to buy into this, then you probably don't live in the United Kingdom. Since forming in late 1995, Idlewild have had much success across the pond, placing 17 singles on the UK Singles Chart, with 4 of them reaching the Top 20. Meanwhile, American fans keep confusing the band with "that Outkast movie [they] heard was shitty."
The group is hoping, not guaranteeing, that the record will be available for consumption in April, although they do say with more certainty, and generality, that it will be "way before any general release," which would likely occur some time in the summer of next year.
Tourdates:
@ - playing Hope Is Important & more
# - playing 100 Broken Windows
% - playing The Remote Part
^ - playing Warnings/Promises & acoustic set
& - playing Captain & Make Another World
