AKA: when you have an exclusive deal, milk it.

iTunes has the Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross-created soundtrack for the film up for pre-order with a little bonus: an eight and a half minute cut of the trailer. 

Plus, you can get the first single now: a kickass cover of “Immigrant Song” sung by Karen O. 

Watch away boys and girls. I just watched it last week, 20 years crammed into 2 hours by none other than Cameron Crowe. Great stuff.

[via Hacking Netflix]

Grantland has a clip from the documentary directed by Cameron Crowe. Cannot believe this song is 13 years old. 

Under promise, over deliver.

I wonder what this could mean for a cheap cloud iPhone…

Cue the U.S. digital music scene getting a lot more interesting.

Though “Any track, any time, anywhere. And it’s free!” is a bit misleading — you pay to remove ads and/or to use it on a mobile device. And the U.S. launch might have other restrictions as well — we’ll see.

Also, why put up a splash page with a pre-announcement? Perhaps they’re just waiting on Facebook now — you’ll note the first quote under “What people are saying about Spotify”.

That (unstated) deal is going to be massive.

Ethan Kaplan:

The biggest challenge facing the music business is not necessarily piracy or the competition of attention for fan’s money and time, it’s making an experience joyful for people.

And:

People used to go to Tower Records on a Saturday morning, and leave with a three foot stack of LP’s. There was a visceral pleasure in that act.

Totally agree. I used to camp out at stores for midnight album releases. Or I’d wake up early before school to get to a store when it opened for a new CD I wanted. 

Music as an artform hasn’t fundamentally changed, so why has that changed? Shit products. Or, more fairly, products turned to shit by a terrified music industry.

That’s why there’s so much excitement surrounding Spotify. It wasn’t built from the ground up to appease the record labels. It was built to please music fans. And that’s why it’s been such a pain in the ass bringing it to the U.S.

Hopefully, that’s about to change.

I’d also argue that the reason iTunes took off is because Apple is the only company with the gall (or nerve) to not fully capitulate to the labels and still get some of what they want. But even iTunes is/was far from perfect. Notice how it took years before they got to kill DRM, after iTunes was already a huge success and they had leverage. Now we’re starting to get the cloud…

Google and Amazon have been battling for what they want, but so far, they’re not getting it. And there are no signs of that changing anytime soon. 

My Morning Jacket live on YouTube at 9 PM ET tonight. Directed by Todd Haynes.