I'd like to hear your thoughts!!!

So, as you may recall (I remember briefly seeing ads for it), Pennywise released a free album through MySpace records and Textango (a pay by text messaging company) in the month of March titled "Reason to Believe". The album was released for a little over a month, with no option to pay for any format of it online. This was a free download only. What did you have to do to get the album for free? Just add Textango as a MySpace friend, and you'd be reached on instructions on how to get your free copy.




The reason I'm making the post, is because the numbers are in, and the album certainly reached new heights of Pennywise fans. I remember listening to Pennywise's release "Unknown Road" in 1994, thinking to myself, why is this band not bigger than what they are? The whole pop-punk generation of early 90's artists on Fat-Wreckchords never reached super-stardom. Why? Was it because they didn't want to reach the heights of MTV? Or was it simply that their approach was too underground to reach that market?

Over 500,000 downloads have come through, and they haven't even released the video for the single, The Western World. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this album release and see what you think. Will Pennywise now be a larger band 20 years after they were formed? Either way, this band deserves everything they've put into the last 2 decades as a band.

May's Ulitmate Ears chosen winner is...............

It's been a couple weeks since I've made a post. I thought I'd give some detailed insight to this months winner chosen by Ultimate Ears to be featured on "Artists To Watch". I can't blame UE for choosing them, especially after Tribal Seeds released their newest self titled album on Indistr 1 month before it was available for physical distribution. Congrats guys, and keep up the hard work in sunny San Diego.

Just to let everyone know......

Indistr has partnered with Ultimate Ears. This partnership is here to benefit the artists involved with Indistr. We are very proud to have partnered with the best earphone company in the world.

How it works:
1. Ultimate Ears picks an Indistr artist at random once a month to be put on their "artist to watch" page. (Hint: You have a much larger chance to win if you are actively utilizing the tools we provide such as our embed player or links on Myspace, etc.)
2. UE then notifies us, and tells us which artist has been chosen that month.
3. We contact the artist to tell them they've been chosen and receive the proper information we need from them to provide UE.
4. UE sends the artist 1 FREE set of Super fi. 5 pro in-ear monitors. After the first set is sent to the artist, they are offered a discount code for any other products for 40% off retail price. Learn more about the Super fi. 5 pro here



We started this partnership this month (April), and the first artist chosen was Elijah Emanuel

Congrats to Elijah, and I'll be making a post next week based on the artist that is chosen for May. Best of luck!!!

New Jaws Attacks Release!! Death & Taxes: Volume One

The long awaited release of Jaws Attacks full-length album, Death & Taxes: Volume One is now available for purchase here at Indistr.com We're excited to have this release available through Indistr, being that frontman Carter Benson (formerly of the Mad Caddies) has a great vision on innovating the whole music consumption experience, plus we dig his music.

13 songs for $10, it's a steal if you ask me.

We're sponsoring a Contest!

I just want to inform everyone that we're sponsoring a contest through a site called Kompoz. Kompoz is a great site for people looking to make music with other people located in far away places. Titled as an "Online Music Collaboration" site, we really dig what they're doing for artists, so who better to sponsor a contest for. The contest is being endorsed by Glen Phillips, and we'll be giving away some schwag for the winners. Some other prizes include a guitar, a Stealthplug USB audio interface, along with some other prizes. The contest starts today, April 2nd, and ends on May 30th. Best of luck to all of you!

Ticket purchase = free download = Dave Matthews

Just days after I post about Elvis Costello being innovative in getting people to purchase his music, Dave Matthews jumps to it, with a new concept (not that new, Prince has done this in the past) of giving away his new album digitally for free with the purchase of a ticket to any of his concerts.

I personally feel that Dave Matthews fans are Dave Matthews fans, and their going to buy a concert ticket regardless, however I think this is a pretty cool bonus for the cult following of fans that Mr. Matthews has, and I'm sure they will much appreciate it.

Will this make him sell more tickets? Probably not, but what's the loss when you're selling out venues of 30,000 + capacities and selling thousands of t-shirts every night for $25.

Congrats to Dave Matthews for thinking outside of the box.

Trivia:
What will Best Buy do with all of the CD aisles they have in their stores in the near future? More washers/dryers? Vinyl?

Vinyl + Digital? Will it work?

So I know this is 4 days late, but I want to write about it, and also get some feedback to see what everyone thinks. As we all know by now, or most of us, Elvis Costello is giving the CD a no-go for his upcoming release "Momofuku", which releases next month, April 22nd.



Instead of the traditional ways of releasing a CD, Costello is releasing the album in the form of vinyl, and with that vinyl purchase you receive a digital download password of some sort. Should this work? I don't know, however I'm very curious to see how this plays out, especially since he's going to be on tour opening for The Police to promote this new album.

Again, it's an innovative way to keep selling music. I know I'll be buying one of these records, hopefully he'll look all goofy like he did 30 years ago with those pop bottle glasses on, dancing like the other Elvis. It will go perfect over the fireplace.