The Black Keys might be at the front line of a movement.
No, they are not the saviors of rock ‘n roll. They are not stirring up a spurt of blues rock couples, filthy-sounding guitars or jumpstarting a wave of Nickelback-dissing in the media. Those are well-established trends.
But the Black Keys might have demonstrated a way of increasing album sales at a point when paying for music seems so last century.
In December, the Keys dropped their 7th album, “El Camino,” and landed it at No. Two on the Billboard sales chart. This may seem like a minor accomplishment for a band fresh off 2 Grammy Awards in 2011 and contemporary appearances on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Colbert Report.” But let me refresh : It’s their 7th album, and netted their highest first-week sales.
Sure, the band has steadily grown in both recognition and accessibility over the last decade. But with the buzz, the Akron, Ohio pair chose not to make “El Camino” available on release on the taking-the-Web-by-storm streaming services Spotify and Rhapsody.
Did making the album a bit harder to enjoy at no cost make it more attractive on store shelves? It’s tough to think otherwise.
Services like Spotify can be a great discovery tool for music fans. I’ve used it to dig into unfamiliar bands for months and hope it continues to pick up steam. In December, Billboard reported Spotify had notched up more than 10,000,000 users. And now with full Facebook integration, more and more users will be digging into the library of more than 13,000,000 tracks.
Another supporter for this tactic is Billboard juggernaut Adele. “21″ isn’t available to streaming services, and not only was the best-selling album of 2011 but is in the middle of a Billboard-topping run not seen since 1998′s “Titanic” soundtrack. It’s been No. One for sixteen weeks, only the twentieth album in history to reach that milepost.
Naturally there are infinite other variables in play with the success of “21,” though not giving listeners the ultra-convenient luxury of streaming the album on Spotify likely is a factor.
It’s worth pointing out that although neither “El Camino” or “21″ are streamable, the biggest singles from each record are accessible on Spotify. As maybe a way to whet fans’ appetites and permit new listeners to take some notice, the Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy” and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” are out there, free. Both songs still are ranked in the top forty of Spotify’s most-played songs. If the singles are getting play, interest in the full works must be aroused.
It might not benefit up-and-coming artists to skip out on streaming services because such access can get new music into the earbuds of the public just as easily as radio play particularly as the amount of rock radio stations continues to dwindle. But for mid- to top-tier acts, taking a page out of the Black Keys playbook could be a smart business call.
The entire concept appears to be obvious. In a recent issue of Rolling Stone mag, the Director of Taylor Swift’s label compared it to the film industries’ approach with melodramatic and rental releases. A film hits the Cineplex, then the DVD shop, Redbox and Netflix and at last, many go into steady cable Tv rotation.
Maybe this is the way ahead for the industry. Like a big-budget blockbuster, an album may be supplied for buying in physical and digital forms on one date, and then a couple of months later get even more generally available thru streaming services.
An album hitting the Web could mirror a production playing on wire. Maybe sometime the Black Keys’ “El Camino” will be to Spotify what “The Shawshank Redemption” is to TNT as reported tagza.com.