Dear Sonic Youth, Why Did You Partner With Ticketmaster’s iLike?

02
Jun

Dear Sonic Youth, Why Did You Partner With Ticketmaster’s iLike?

author: editor category: ReadWriteWeb

Awesome New York band Sonic Youth today unveiled The Eternal, the 16th album of it’s 27 year career. The band chose to bring the album into the light of day through an exclusive streaming agreement with iLike.com, a company that Ticketmaster invested $13 million in in 2006. Sonic Youth has always been a band of iconoclasts, growling outsiders, and now they’ve partnered with a property of one of the most obnoxious companies in the music industry? What’s up with that?

From Pearl Jam to String Cheese Incident to Bruce Springsteen to millions of fans whose pocketbooks smart with every inflated TicketMaster service fee – this is a company that almost no one likes. At first listen it’s a good album, but ugh what a marketing decision.

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We recognize that it’s hard for musicians these days, but if there was ever a band that had enough loyal fans that it could send people to an independent streaming music startup site and get the word spread around enough to generate sales – wouldn’t that be Sonic Youth? How many of us grew up in the 80’s listening to Sonic Youth and getting a counter-cultural education out of it? How’s that old saying go? “A young man that doesn’t like Sonic Youth has no heart, but an old man that doesn’t like TicketMaster is a fool?”

StereoGum gave the pre-released album a strong review at the end of April. It will be formally released one week from today. For now, you too can give Ticketmaster some love by giving the album a listen on iLike.

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