Virtually CD-free: the future of music?

Forty years ago Jac Holzman left a deep mark on popular music with the release of The Doors' first album on his independent Elektra music label. Today he wants to do the same with Cordless Recordings.

Holzman's Cordless label is the first all-digital music label operated by a major record company, the Warner Music Group. The label launches on Thursday on the Web and on digital music services such as iTunes and RealNetworks' Rhapsody.

Music from the label's first six bands is being sold only online for now, in three-song "clusters" instead of full albums. Instead of big tours, the bands will be promoted on blogs and sites like MySpace.

More eyebrow-raising from the traditional big labels' perspective, artists get to keep ownership of the master recordings they release under Cordless. If they want to release their music elsewhere after a short contract is up, more power to them.

If that sounds a little like an indie music label, it's not an accident. The 73-year-old Holzman says he's trying to infuse the new venture with the spirit of the independent labels he created and managed for 20 years, even if it exists in the arms of a major corporation.

"Independent record making is a process, a point of view and a flexibility," Holzman said, noting that he and his partners have already agreed to sign bands just hours after hearing them. "There's a nimbleness that larger companies, where decision mechanisms have become cumbersome, have lost."

The Cordless Recordings label is an ambitious experiment in several ways for Warner Music, which has increased its focus on digital distribution since being sold by parent company Time Warner in late 2003 and going public earlier this year.

Warner's new owner, Edgar Bronfman Jr., has repeatedly highlighted for investors his belief that digital markets are responsible for the industry's growth and recently told attendees at a big gathering for the mobile-phone industry that it was "the music industry's most important conference". (Shelby Bonnie, the chief executive of ZDNet UK's parent CNET Networks, joined Warner Music Group's board earlier this week.)

Cordless Recordings is a bet that relatively inexpensive Internet distribution and marketing may give labels a cost-effective way to nurture bands over time, instead of spending as much as hundreds of thousands of pounds to record and market a first album.

It's also an experiment with patience. The idea is to release short three-song clusters online every few months over the course of nearly two years, allowing musicians to grow artistically and build an audience, an approach that differs radically from betting everything on a single 12-song album.

"It seems like a smarter way of spending money," said Larry Little, co-founder of Los Angeles-based From the Future Management, which represents...

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