DRIFT Series 2 speculation

[khouri]

I could be mistaken but I’m pretty sure the very first person to sell a digital download song was David Bowie, but possibly Prince?

[purlieu]

Actually, FSOL (again) have the Guinness World Record for first internet release. I think it was free, mind you.

[jetpig]

Drift 2 is gonna be a return to the classic singles leading up to album release cycle of DNBWMHM. Also only sold in brick and mortar stores.

[joethelion]

Originally Posted by khouri

I could be mistaken but I’m pretty sure the very first person to sell a digital download song was David Bowie, but possibly Prince?

I think it's all down to how it's phrased:

Because Duran Duran claim to have released the "internet's first-ever digital single for sale" ... but that was in September 1997, and Bowie's "Telling Lies" came out as a digital single in September 1996 - a full year earlier, albeit as a free download.

However, I don't know if you could technically call Bowie's "Telling Lies" 'a digital single' because they released a new remix each week, for three weeks. So, I guess it comes down to - whether or not you consider the staggered release as negating "the single" ...but then again, the downloads eventually were released in physical format as well.

Prince might've been the first to have exclusive releases available online? (Does that sound right?) ...Or he may have been the first (or one of the first) major performers to release an album as a download.

So maybe it was just that Duran Duran were the first to charge for a digital single.

[purlieu]

Thinking about the current sporadic drops, with an older alternate mix and selling off some old remix 12"s and such, and listening to Drift Series 1 with a few alternate versions on the final album, I began to wonder if Drift Series 2 might see a return to the self-remixing thing. Maybe each episode would start with a track and then we'd hear it develop over a few weeks into something very different. Then onto a different track. I'm not sure how well it would translate to a final 'product', listening-wise, but it would be a something different for them to try. Imagine getting Dirty, Dirty Guitar and Dirty Epic over the space of three weeks. Or Pearls Ver2, Pearl's Girl, 14996 and Tin There.

edit: from the Cowgirl drop, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean:

Sometimes, before records arrive at their perfect point - all compact, tight and bright - they’re allowed to stretch their legs fully in order to explore their own perimeters. Mixes are carried out live, they journey around the edges of the mixing desk, following a note to see where it leads.

This previously unreleased version of the 1993 single Cowgirl is such an experiment in sound. Mixed live a few weeks before the final version arrived, this is an expansion of familiar sounds across nearly eighteen elastic minutes. It is both a chance to understand a working process and a killer piece of music in its own right.