Victor Tsaran

iTunes, LP, Creative Commons… These words don't fit together well in my mind. Looks like I was completely wrong in my assumptions Read below to find out why.

Joey Santiago or David Lovering of The Pixies have a new band/project called The Everybody and have made a collection of songs called Avatar. Not only is it (as far as we know) the first album to feature an iTunes LP package sold anywhere but iTunes, it’s also available for purchase/download with Creative Commons-licensed, royalty-free stems for remixing. Take their music, make it yours, send it back to Joey and David via Soundcloud, and perhaps you’ll make it on to an expanded vinyl edition featuring The Everybody and “The Everybody Else” (you).

Visit The Everybody’s site and you’ll see a few options to check out the record, ranging from FREE (stream the album in its entirety) to $4 for the basic MP3s + iTunes LP, $10 for lossless + bonus tracks + MP3 + iTunes LP, and $40 for Stems in WAV format + lossless + bonus tracks + MP3 + iTunes LP. If you’re so inclined, you can remix the tracks from their record, sell them yourself, share them with the world and/or submit them back to Joey and David. They’ll be selecting remixes and including them in a gatefold vinyl release in the spring. Hell, maybe y’all can get together and play live, too.

Not to mention the best “trailer” for an album this year by a mile (click play on the video at the top of this post).

One of the most exciting parts about this release for me personally is the inclusion of an iTunes LP package. This one is very special in that it includes a simple mixing console allowing you to live mix one track from the album, all inside of iTunes.

For those who don’t know (yet), iTunes LP is the brand new format from Apple that allows for digital “liner notes” to accompany your album purchase and be experienced inside of iTunes. iTunes has released great packages for classics such as Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and The Dead’s American Beauty in addition to new records from Jay-Z and Pearl Jam. The format isn’t wide spread (yet), though, and the iTunes LP page in the iTunes Store features only 25 albums.

But Apple has started releasing specs on the format, which is simply HTML, and a number of people have started programming against it, including Topspin’s own Justin Davis. Justin used iTunes LP to add a really fun feature to the album in iTunes, the ability to live-mix one of the tracks on the album. The video is also featured in the format. You can see the format really expands the notion of the album to encompass anything you can do in a Web browser from a layout and interactivity perspective. Very fun.

Look for Topspin to do more with this ability in the coming weeks and months. I’ve personally been clamoring for this functionality since the early days of Winamp skins. At Winamp we had tens of thousands of “skins”, ways to change the look of your media player, but it was always clear to me this wasn’t the “album cover” of the future. As someone who always loved the raised leather feel of CNSY’s Deja Vu and the big billion dollar bill inside of Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies as well as the early CD-ROMs created by The Residents, Bowie, and others, I knew this idea’s time would come. The question was always who and how. I’m happy to see the iTunes LP specification is based on HTML 5 and is something which Topspin can enable our artists to sell direct-to-fan. I hope you think this is as exciting as we do. It opens a world of possibility for creative content.

Also worth noting here is the use of these technologies along with direct-to-fan marketing and retail to help an uncommercial record find it’s audience. I don’t think Joey and David would mind my calling their record “uncommercial”. This wasn’t meant to be the next record you hear on your local radio station, this is the creative output of a couple of passionate and talented musicians (and their friends) who would like to share it with those who might like it. Our sincere belief is with the way they’re releasing this album, providing a lot of value at a variety of price points and inviting their fans to participate in the art, they’ll make more money and reach more people than if they’d released any other way.

Thanks for reading! Go play with the iTunes LP file and get to remixing!

ian c rogers
Topspin