A Sign Of The New Times?
This came from Billboard via Reuters yesterday:
NEW YORK (Billboard) – Elvis Costello’s next solo studio album, curiously dubbed “Momofuku,” will arrive April 22, and plans are for the set to be released only on vinyl, with a digital download code included in the package.
No other details are available about the Lost Highway release, which follows 2004′s “The Delivery Man,” Costello’s debut on the label with his band the Imposters.
Apparently, E.C. is seeing the writing on the wall. CDs are increasingly becoming the way people load music into iPods or listen to music in their cars, while vinyl continues to be on the upswing as the favored in-home format. This would make Universal the second major label to experiment with the vinyl-plus-download option after Columbia/Sony-BMG, and the third to offer a vinyl-with-digital-bonus (be it download or CD) after Warner Music (who encloses CDs with recent vinyl releases). It’ll be very interesting to see how this goes.