Happiness is the Road is Marillion’s 11th studio album since the band and original singer Fish went their separate ways. Scheduled for official release on October 20, the album has been widely available as a legal free download for the past four weeks, attracting a lot of support as well as a number of less positive reactions that the band has posted on its website along with their own comments, with the aim of explaining the unprecedented move of legally giving the album away using P2P internet networks for distribution.
A good number of posts were from disgruntled fans who didn’t quite grasp why Marillion was giving away an album completely free to everybody when these same fans had paid for the album upfront as early as last October, when the band first posted its call for pre-orders.
Marillion have been using this sales technique to finance the recording of their albums as far back as 2001, when the band relied upon its loyal international fanbase to finance the Anoraknophobia album by asking fans to pre-order it in return for a special 2-CD edition of the album that also featured a list of all contributors in its accompanying booklet.
The new album will be available in various formats, including a deluxe 2-CD ‘Campaign’ edition and a standard release, which will be split in two volumes, Essence (Volume 1) and The Hard Shoulder (Volume 2) that will be sold separately.
In their replies to comments by fans on their website, Marillion explained various aspects that prompted their decision to distribute the new album through internet networks ahead of the official release date. One of the primary reasons was that the band recognises the downloading phenomenon and both its advantages and less positive repercussions.
Their strategy entails asking for details in exchange for the free MP3s: the band is seeking to collect information about those who have downloaded the album, in the hope of persuading them to either pay something for it or at least go to one of the band’s gigs on its upcoming tour, which starts on November 8 in Inverness, Scotland.
Furthermore, in a press release issued in relation to the matter, the band said the free download was not as good in quality as the CD version and stressed that this move did not mean they supported illegal file-sharing. They added that after the album’s official release, there will definitely be someone who shares it, and with this in mind, they decided to take direct control of this situation.
Marillion is the latest in a line of bands – including Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and The Charaltans – that have attempted to harness illegal internet file-sharing and maximise whatever of its power can be extracted towards a situation that all parties will be satisfied with.
www.marillion.com