Juniper and Cinnamon is expected to show up on iTunes next week. We are also on our way to distribute music on Spotify, AmazonMP3, 7digital and CDON.

We are very happy about these deals, but because of our new agreements, some things has changed in our own store. From now on, digital albums will be sold through iTunes (and the above mentioned online music stores). Physical albums will still be available from our own store exclusively. However, no albums will be sold during September, as a consequence of this restructuring process. When the new Lost Shadow album go on sale, the album store will reopen. We no longer sell physical singles, and plan to discontinue the single format completely in a not too distant future. Until then, digital singles will be sold through our own store, or through iTunes (we still need to work out this deal).

Stay tuned for updates on when Lost Shadow’s music arrive to Spotify!

Why not free downloads?
Why are we making these changes? Well, it turns out that our experiment with free downloads and donations did not yield the effect we had hoped. Last year Phonocratic Records was run at personal economical loss, and we have no reason to expect that this will change in the near future without taking any action. Still, we believe that there is value in the music we make available, so we will try another marketing model, using downloads and micropayments. Last.fm does not serve this purpose very well, while Bandcamp turns out to be a great place to securely sell music downloads (and physical albums). It will still be possible to donate to Lost Shadow through the Store, but we suggest that our listeners instead download the high-quality music files from Bandcamp, and make the small micropayments there. Hey, 3 euros for a 12 song album is about as cheap as a cup of coffee! And it’s even cheaper than a beer!

Remaining free
A number of tracks will remain free. These are:

• Songs from albums released before 2006. These albums will not be made available through Bandcamp, and will therefore remain downloadable from Last.fm for free (still at only 128kps, though).
• All Lost Shadow singles, previous ones, and coming ones. However, only the lead tracks might be made available for free download in some instances. The singles will be downloadable as 128kps mp3 from Last.fm, or in a variety of  high-quality formats from Bandcamp. Regardless of format, the files will be free.
• Selected albums and songs, such as the “Age and Time” album released last year.

Also, free steaming of all songs is available from both Last.fm and Bandcamp.

No more physical singles
As mentioned at the release of the A Nuance of Future single, we will not continue to release singles in physical format. This is also part of the new strategy for Phonocratic Records. We feel both sad and excited about this decision. The good thing is that we can now focus on bringing you the best possible digital experience for the singles. Also, it should be noted that our albums will still be available in physical CD format, as well as in digital download form, and we do not plan to change that.

We hope that our listeners will be positive about these changes and that we’re putting the value back behind the music.

Link to full story

The single is available from here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Lost+Shadow/Pirate+Bay