Who Needs Record Labels?
This is the story the record labels have always feared. Canadian rocker Matthew Good had been recording professionally in North America for the past 12 years. When his U.S. record deal with Atlantic Records expired, he had some choices to make: try to find a new label that would distribute his music in the States, try to get a new deal with Atlantic, try something totally different, or completely give up on getting his cds (which are hugely popular in Canada) heard here in the USA. As he was finishing up his latest album, Hospital Music, his tenth full-length release, he got an email from some young Americans from iTunes in Cuppertino, offering to distribute the new tracks, worldwide, digitally, through their popular and groundbreaking iTunes Store. Good, an avid Mac user, if not fanboy, jumped at the chance to boldly dive headfirst into the 21st century and bypass the heretofore necessary evil – the record label. iTunes threw in a promise to make the first single off the album “Born L
